The Springborn

CALDER

“ G ood night,” I say to Sparrow as I leave her on the couch in the sitting room that adjoins the bedroom she shares with Sabella. I shut the door and lean back against it. The clock in the downstairs hallway bongs ten times as I stare at the shifting shadows that play in the second-floor corridor.

What a night it has been.

Blazes, if I had not been in love with Sabella before, I would be now. She dances like a three-legged pony and could out-eat a lumberjack. Her laughter is as pure as a child’s, but some of the looks she gave me this evening could scorch the fur off a muskrat. I suspect those glances said more than she wished them to. She’d blush scarlet for a solid month if she knew how badly they made me want to kiss her breathless.

Ah, but Yonaz did raise me to be a gentleman. Whatever he was guilty of, he did a proper job of that. And so I will not kiss Sabella—for as long as she insists we remain friends.

“Calder,” Sabella says, and I jump. She’s just to my left, at the top of the staircase. She holds a candlestick. The light flickers over her features, rendering her ghostly yet stunning.

“You scared me. Well done. Robbie will be jealous.” I stand up straight and notice the soreness of my feet. When I was dancing with Sabella, my feet were the last thing on my mind. Now I curse these stupid, fancy shoes.

“Why are you standing there? Is Sparrow unwell?” she asks with a frown.

“She’s fine, but tired.”

“Good. But you didn’t answer my other question.”

The truth of the matter falls out of my mouth. “I was waiting to say good night to you, I suppose.”

“Calder.”

I cannot tell if this quiet utterance of my name is meant to admonish or encourage me. I wait for her to say something else.

She says, “I think you should go.” But she doesn’t sound altogether certain, and the candlestick quakes a little in her grasp. I move a step closer to her.

“You think I should go?” My hands settle on the curve of her waist. Her breath catches. “Now?”

Her eyes close. Blazes, she’s beautiful. The side-to-side movement of her head is so subtle that anyone might have missed it, but I see it. Gently, I tug her closer.

“Uncle Calder?” Fabian’s voice echoes down from the floor above. “There’s a mouse in our room! Come quick!”

I say a word that would have earned me a mouthful of soap from Yonaz. Sabella laughs rather than scolding me.

“You swear like a coal miner,” she says.

“I should go,” I say.

This time, she nods and moves out of reach. My hands fall to my sides. It was a grand almost , I think as Fabian hollers my name again.