Dreamwalker's Bride - Chapter 315

Chapter 315: Forgiveness or permission?
Mia blinked several times, trying to determine whether or not Ford meant what she thought. She’d discarded his presence from the middle of the night in the clearing as being a strange dream, but now…

“You can’t mean…” She glanced pointedly at his hand, and then her own. Ford’s lips twitched slightly and he turned away to yawn. “Did you sleep at all?”

“A little,” He shrugged. “When Seth had his watch, I couldn’t exactly be missing indefinitely.”

“What if he’d caught you?” Mia’s heart pounded.

Ford shrugged again, as if it wasn’t any big deal.

“You need your magic as much as I need mine,” She told him. “If you run out…”

“Probably why Grandpa told me to come clean,” Ford’s mouth pulled to the side in a grimace. “So I didn’t have to use it all night.”

“It’s… not proper…” Her voice faded as Ford gave her an incredulous look.

“You once asked an almost total stranger to run away with you in the middle of the night, spending several nights with no chaperoning or supervision whatsoever,” He reminded, “One of which–”

“Shh,” Mia hushed him, though Ford was looking more amused than he had a right to. Did he have no fear in him at all?

She looked over her shoulder. No one seemed to be paying them any attention, either vigilantly surveying their surroundings or preoccupied with their own thoughts.

“I’m just saying, if your complaint is based on propriety…” Ford yawned once more as he turned away.

“My complaints are manifold. Firstly, you need sleep. Secondly, you shouldn’t use your magic to the point of exhaustion, or at all really, unless necessary. What if there’s another situation involving a chimera, or something worse?”

“No personal complaints?” Ford asked, then grimaced.

“Personal complaints?” Mia repeated, confused.

“It has occurred to me… that I have not given you the opportunity to refuse on the grounds that… you don’t want your hand held while you sleep.” Ford’s voice was barely above a whisper.

This was the most grateful Mia had ever been not to have her grandmother around to magnify sound. Her face flamed, and she turned forward.

“As you said… it’s the best I’ve slept in a while,” She responded thickly. “How could I have any personal complaint about your kindness?”

She wanted to crawl into a hole and hide. Anything but answer more of his questions. She had to make it stop.

“Good,” He sighed. “I was worried.”

“How could you be worried?” She turned on him, “After… after what you mentioned a moment ago. And the nights after that.”

She would absolutely refuse to make any more direct reference to sleeping in his arms than that, or to holding his hand every night as he dug into the cave with Denholm.

“I don’t know,” He answered simply. “I just was.”

“Well, don’t be,” She chastised, then paled. What was she advocating, exactly? That he should never be worried about her being offended by a display of affection or physical contact? “Worry about saving your magic.”

“Yours is more important,” He shook his head. “And for some reason, you seem to replenish faster this way.”

‘This way’ he said. As if sitting up all night to hold her hand was a feasible way to proceed with their lives! She almost laughed, but paused.

Her magic was draining because of how much she’d been using, and perhaps even abusing it, lately.

But her pull towards Ford, that secondary pull that she always felt, disappeared when he hid himself with his magic. Could it be that hers replenished more quickly simply because the second pull wasn’t there to drain her?

Or was it far simpler than that?

She felt a pull towards him. But when he was touching her… was it gone? Every time she’d been aware of him touching her, she’d been too distracted to really notice whether the pull was there or not.

Mia hadn’t exactly been paying attention to her powers when she’d woken up in his arms, but… every time she found what she was looking for, she stopped looking. Was holding his hand enough to assure her magic she’d found him?

Her fingers tightened on the reins. She suppressed the urge to find some excuse to reach over and touch Ford. Brush an imaginary speck off his shoulder, or something. To figure out for herself. Was it his invisibility or his holding her hand that made her powers replenish more quickly?

Mia couldn’t ask him what he thought without explaining the entire–or at least most of–the problem she’d been facing since meeting him. There was a lot of mental work required of her even in just routinely resisting the urge to gravitate towards him!

“Anything else you want to come clean about?” She repeated Grandpa’s words from earlier, just in case there was something else lurking behind Ford’s eyes. They widened and turned away. “There is, isn’t there?”

“Well…” Ford flinched. “Can we delay this part of the conversation for another time?”

“I suppose,” Mia conceded. His admission thus far had been a bit startling, but in the group’s best interest. In her best interest. She could allow some grace here, couldn’t she? “When would you like to talk about it?”

Aside from that day they’d scouted ahead together, cloaked by Ford’s powers the entire time, and when he’d accidentally found her on her way back from swimming, they hadn’t had opportunity for any sort of private discussion better than what they were faced with right now.

Ford was clearly stumped.

“During my watch?” He asked a little blankly.

“When others might wake up and hear?” Mia raised an eyebrow. “I suppose since you’re the only one who knows what it is you want to discuss, that’s up to you.”

“Ah, no,” He frowned. “I suppose there’s not a better time, is there?”

“Not that I can think of,” She told him, “but that might just be my curiosity talking.”

“Well… fine. I suppose,” He swallowed and looked away, intensifying her desire to know what it was he was having trouble saying. “I just wanted you to know that I overheard something, before.”

“Overheard… something.” Mia repeated dully. That could mean almost anything, but her heart was pounding with the potential for humiliation.

“When you talked to your father about your powers… and me. I didn’t mean to eavesdrop. I wanted to ask your forgiveness. Please?”