“Of course. It would be totally clueless of me to offer to show someone like you where to find a bird’s nest.”

Sid shrugged, but he didn’t argue. Just waited with that gleam in his eye that seemed to have gripped him since Vansh had mentioned the hatchlings.

So Vansh told him to go around to the back of the house to the redwood behind the pool with the hammock swing hanging by it.

“Perfect. Thank you.” Sid was gone so fast Vansh wondered what having such a raging desire to see some newly hatched birds must feel like.

Chapter Thirteen

Where are you?” Esha whispered the words into the air. They seemed to stay suspended there, not knowing quite where to go. Just like she didn’t quite know whom she’d addressed them to.

It had been a few days since she’d seen Garuda. She’d come out onto the balcony more than usual and he hadn’t come to see her. She’d walked around the estate a few times, but if he’d been circling above her head the way he usually did, he was too far up in the sky.

“Why haven’t you come to see me?” she repeated, an unusual frustration nudging at her.

“I’ve tried my best. It isn’t easy.” The voice came from behind her, beyond the balcony’s ledge.

Spinning around, Esha ran to the railing and leaned over. “Sid! It’s you? You came back!”

“Whom were you talking to? Who else comes to see you like this?” He pulled himself up to the balcony’s very narrow overhang and squinted up at her.

His hair was loose today and the wind blew it around his head. The sun caught the dark depths of his eyes as they took her in. She’d never seen a person lit up by the sun like this, and for a moment the world seemed to narrow down to her view: a man on her balcony’s ledge staring up at her.

“Esha?” She loved how he said her name. As though it were a question tilted up at the end, a nudge.

“No! No one else comes to see me.” That seemed to satisfy him, but saying those words made her think about how strange all this was. “I’m not sure you should either.”

“I thought you wanted me to come see you.”

She had. In fact it was all she’d been able to think about since he’d scaled the walls of her home like an acrobat. Or a very skilled thief.

“Please say something. Do you want me to leave?”

“No! Please don’t leave.”