This was the closest she’d ever been to him before, and she was realizing now just how big he was. She’d known it intellectually, of course; it was easy to see. He, like the other dragons, towered above the witches. He was strong and buff, his arms bigger than her thick legs at some points.
But this near, in such proximity to him, Christine not only noticed it, but she felt it. She could feel his sheer, oppressive size. It made her feel tiny and insignificant, in the most delightful of ways.
Then there was the heat. Whether because his blood was up, or naturally, she didn’t know, but Altair was practically radiating heat. It tickled her skin and teased goosebumps all up and down her front and sent shivers down her spine as it reached out to embrace her, pulsing its waves across her body.
Or was that her own heat rising to match him? Was she feeding off him somehow, the simple act of being so close to him causing her to warm, her blood to flow faster? She didn’t know.
Footsteps sounded nearby.
“Everything okay over here?”
Their heads whirled to see the face of someone else poking around the corner of the stacks.
“Yeah, just fine,” she said with a nod. “Book fell, that’s all.”
The other witch glanced at her, then at Altair, before her eyes were drawn to the table with its massive dent.
“Um, okay. Sure.”
“All is well,” Altair rumbled stately. “We’re sorry if the noise disturbed you. It won’t happen again.”
The witch smiled broadly at Altair. “Okay, sure. Not a problem. Bye.” Her gaze lingered for a moment longer, triggering a spike of irritation in Christine.
Am I jealous?
“Your spell must have come down,” Altair said as the other witch departed, leaving them alone again.
The tension she’d felt before was gone though, broken by the interruption, leaving her dejected, many thoughts of just where it might have led brushed aside. Why was she sad about that though? And what was with her getting so angry at the look the other witch gave Altair?
Christine was asking a lot of questions of herself, which was the exact opposite reasoning she’d used when coming to see Altair. This was supposed to be about him, not her. She needed to focus.
“Must have been when I fell,” she said, realizing she’d yet to acknowledge his comment. “Concentration kinda disappears when you get bumped on the head sometimes.” She focused her mind on her magic and cast the spell again, once more wrapping them in privacy.
“Why are you here?” Altair asked, looking down at her with all the weight of his blue-eyed gaze.
Christine was caught up in it once more, unable to look away, just like with the snow elementals. She stared directly into his face, trying to read the unreadable emotions contained within, trying to piece together just what was driving him to do what he had done?
“I told you,” she said quietly, noting that neither of them had moved apart, leaving very, very little room between them. “I came to try and find out what’s wrong.”
“No. I mean why is it you?” he repeated, changing the focus of his question. “Why not Master Pinton? Why not Gardener? Why you? Why does no one else come to chastise me and pry into my life, but you do?”
She hesitated. “I didn’t come here to chastise you, Altair. That was never my intention, even if I did. I’m trying to understand. Because you won’t let me in at all.”
Altair frowned, but she pushed onward.
“What would you do in my place?” she asked, throwing the question, and her entire scenario, back at him, forcing him to analyze it from a different perspective.
Altair thought about it for a few moments, but all he could do was shake his head helplessly. He didn’t have an answer. She hadn’t thought he would, because there wasn’t one. She was doing what she had to do.
“As for why me?” she said quietly. “Well...I was told that I might have the best chance of getting through to you?”
“Why is that?” Altair asked hoarsely.
Shivering at the suspense, the pressure filling her little bubble, Christine threw caution to the wind. Now wasn’t the time to hold back, and truthfully, she didn’t want to hold back. She wanted everything out in the open, so that they could stop this little dancing around one another, and figure out whatever this truly was, if it was anything at all.
“Because apparently, we have some sort of connection,” she replied, biting her lip for a moment before realizing what she was doing and calming her face.
“We do?”
“So I’ve been told,” she said with a wry smile. “By several people. They see us looking at one another during training all the time. They think we’re...we’re a thing,” she said, hanging her head in embarrassment, not really sure why she’d said all that out loud.
“I’m sorry,” Altair said, drawing her attention back up to his face from where she’d been staring. Which, she realized abruptly, was not the ground.
Cheeks burning, she lifted her head, terrified that he would know where she’d been looking, even if she hadn’t meant to be.
“I find you very attractive,” Altair said. “Which is probably why I was looking a lot. You’re very pleasing to the eye, but I didn’t mean to be staring, especially not in any sort of awkward, or uncomfortable way. I’m sorry if I made you uneasy.”
She smiled. “Thanks,” she said, unsure of how else to respond to the compliment. It felt very unnatural for someone of Altair’s...stature, to be complimenting her, saying that he found her physically good looking. She didn’t know what to say. “I didn’t know I was looking until someone pointed it out to me.”
The two of them paused for a moment, then they shared an awkward laugh, trying to unhinge the situation.
But like magnets, their eyes returned to one another. There was a lot left unsaid between them. A lot left undone.
