say quietly, even as ! study his perfect face, "I'm allowed to be worried it's a very natural emotion. You don't always have to fix it. Sometimes things are worrying - and so I worry."
"I know," he says, his full lips curving at the corners. "I just want to make it all easy and good, even if I can't."
"Because you are so sweet," I whisper, continuing to trace my fingers through his hair.
"No, I'm very tough and scary," he says, his voice pitching deeper, more threatening. But I just laugh. “Nobody needs to reminded of how sweet they are the night before battle."
"Don't worry, I won't tell the enemies” I say softly. “Your secret is safe with me.”
He nods once, dropping a kiss to my cheek.
"What about you?" I whisper, my eyes moving slowly over his face – his long lashes, his straight nose. "How are you feeling about what happened this afternoon, all the news we got?"
"It's weird, isn't it?" Jackson sighs, rolling away from me so that he's laying on his back, staring up at the stairs. I prop myself up at his side so that I can look down at his face, listening closely, wanting to help in turn ifI can. "I never...thought about where my magic came from before I came to this Academy -it was always just mine. And now I have so many questions." Content belongs
"Does it upset you?" I ask quietly, slipping a hand across his hard stomach, kind of unable to not touch him. "That your magic is not a Goddess-given gift? That it's from someone else?"noveldrama
"No," he says, turning his head to look at me. "Especially if it opens the possibility that I don't have a second mate - someone I met earlier in my life who made the magic start."