If Padma's eyes had been open she would have noted a distinct failure where her spells were concerned, but her eyes were not open, and her attentions were elsewhere. This time she could feel Anthony's hesitancy, a creeping thing that seemed to return following the moment's impulse that had banished it. Was he afraid for her, of himself? Should she be?
Questions and consequences she could hardly contemplate in the dungeons.
She dropped from a kiss to press her cheek against his collar bone, as though listening for a pulse, for music. Padma did not want him to retreat to formality but feared, too, what she was slowly beginning to understand could keep him from doing so.
Padma felt hardly daring enough for all of this, for all her limbs and senses suggested otherwise.