Oathbound (The Legendborn Cycle #3)

Chapter 39

39

I WAKE THE next morning to the sound of the shower running.

Nick must have gotten up before me, letting me sleep while he gets ready. When I look over at the chaise, I find the remnants of his attempts to make it comfortable—quilts and small embroidered pillows. I frown; he couldn’t have gotten a good night’s rest. If I’d seen him do all that, I would have—I flush, looking at the empty space in my own large bed.

My belly twists in a combination of curiosity and apprehension. How much do you have to know somebody to invite them to share a mostly empty bed? I flash back to the moment at dinner when he’d jerked away from even casual contact. Accidental contact would be even worse. Sleeping in the same bed is too risky, I decide. For him and for me.

I barely remember climbing up the one-step platform and crawling into the bed myself. The mattress beneath me is soft and thick, more an oversized cushion than the firm bed I’m used to at Erebus’s house. It takes two attempts to sit up, and even then, I have to fight against the mountain of embroidered pillows against the headboard just to examine my surroundings in the daylight.

Not that there’s much light in the room; the long, heavy curtains around the windows are drawn closed, blocking out much of the morning sun. Odd. They were open last night, the view of the maze in the back gardens visible from our window seat. Nick must have closed the curtains on the way to the bathroom this morning, to block the light and keep the room dim.

To let me sleep.

I don’t need to know every person in my past life to know, on a deep level, that this is the type of quiet, thoughtful gesture that I have come to treasure more than ever since my mother died.

I let myself wonder, for a moment, what it would be like to feel this way all the time. A slow morning in bed, hair still in my satin bonnet. The muted shhhh sound of a shower running in the background. Too many pillows. The luxury of safety before the day begins. A knock at the door jerks me out of my vision—and reminds me that it is a fantasy.

I climb out of the bed with my heart kicking against my ribs, my eyes trained on the collection of weapons Nick has already stashed by the door—a large, heavy candlestick; a wrought iron poker and ash pan; a letter opener; a rock-solid marble bust about the length of my arm.

Smart boy.

There is no peephole, so when I reach the door, I call out instead, “Yes?”

The voice on the other side of the door sounds preoccupied. “Clothing service.”

Right. Mikael is providing costumes so we can play make-believe in his grand mansion, when in truth we’re captives in his dollhouse nightmare. I reach for my masquerade mask on a nearby table and slip it on before unlocking the door. My right hand curves behind my back, palm up and open with a tiny ball of root called to its center.

Like Nick said, we’re at war here. I can’t afford to be complacent.

When I open the door, a young man with messy curls wearing an ill-fitting suit greets me without looking up from the phone in his hand. “Delivery from Mr. Di Centa,” he mumbles. If he’s one of the estate’s staff members, he doesn’t seem very concerned about the etiquette so prized by his boss. Behind him is a cart with a dozen black garment bags, all labeled by yellow notes pinned to the top with names and room numbers scribbled across them. He pulls the cart forward, swinging it around closer to our door. “Clothing for the weekend for the newlyweds or whatever?”

“We’re not married,” I begin to say, then correct myself. “I mean, not yet—”

“Perfect timing.” Nick’s voice, raspy from disuse, comes from behind me.

As he approaches, he brings with him the expensive scents of PENUMbrA -labeled bath products. He must have dressed quickly; his masquerade mask sits across his nose but his hair is damp, still dripping on the collar of the same white button-down dress shirt he’d worn under last night’s tuxedo. The top two buttons are left open, exposing the glistening skin of his throat and Adam’s apple, while the shirt falls untucked over his tux pants and bare feet.

When he steps forward, his shoulder nearly brushes mine—and I jump back to avoid our collision. He shoots me a swift look with a clear message: Relax .

To our visitor, Nick says, “Thanks, we’ve been waiting for new fits.”

I open the door wider so that he can join me at the threshold, then step out of sight while he talks to the staff member.

“Thanks again,” Nick is saying as he pulls our bag down from the cart. The young man mumbles something unintelligible as he drags the cart down to the next door. Nick drapes our garment bag over one arm, then shuts and locks the door behind him before removing his mask to give me a stern look.

“What?”

He looks down at my hand pointedly. “You gonna put that out?”

Oh. I follow his gaze to my still-burning ball of root and curl my fingers inward, squeezing it until it disappears. “I didn’t know who it was. Mikael said he won’t be around during the day, so no one can sense my root but Zoe.”

“That’s fair, but…”

“But what?”

“Lemme think about how to phrase this.” He strides past me toward the bed.

“Phrase what ?” I toss my mask back on the table near the door and follow him through the cloud of annoyingly amazing scents still lingering on his skin.

He hooks the garment bag on one of the wooden crossbars of the bed and unzips it before answering, flipping quickly through the assortment of clothes on the hangers within. “Something that might sound indelicate.”

I cross my arms. “I hate it already.”

His mouth curves as he pulls out individual hangers of plastic-covered clothes and inspects the items before hanging them on the makeshift rod above. “Of course you do.”

“What did they send?”

“Mostly gender-neutral styles, with a few other options thrown in. Some more formal than others, suits and dresses mixed in with slacks and sweaters. All seem to be in one of the two sizes we gave Bianca last night. Everything still has the tags. And something tells me each guest gets a unique selection so that no one has to suffer the embarrassment of ‘who wore it better?’?” He stands back. “How does Mikael work this fast? A weekend wardrobe for a hundred people?”

“Have you seen him? All the fancy outfits and the filed-down fangs to fit in? He’s demonic Gatsby, remember? It’s all a show,” I murmur, lifting up the plastic around a few pieces to examine the fabrics. “That Shade probably has his claws in clothing stores all over the country.”

“Greed loves its pomp and circumstance,” Nick mutters, rubbing at his neck and wincing.

“Let me guess, you woke up pretzel-shaped because you tried to sleep on the fancy half couch?”

He grimaces. “It wasn’t… the most comfortable.”

I gnaw at my lip. “If there’s a fight, you’ll be better off if you’re rested. This bed is huge. You can—”

“I’ll be fine,” he interrupts. He turns to walk along the raised platform and, to my surprise, sits on the very end of the bed and pats the empty space beside him. “Come here.”

I raise a brow. “Why?”

He rolls his eyes. “Just come here.”

I walk slowly along the platform around the bed until I reach him, but stand in front of him rather than sit down.

“Stubborn girl,” he mutters.

“Is this when you say the indelicate thing?”

“Yep.” He sighs. “We need to practice touching each other.”

I blink. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me,” he says. “You leapt out of your skin at a delivery guy.”

“He could be a warlock.”

His expression turns wry. “Like you can’t handle a warlock.”

His easy praise hangs in the air between us, until I headshake it away. “Your point?”

“My point is, you didn’t get startled because of him,” he says. “You got startled because you thought I was going to touch you, and we can’t do that this weekend. We’re supposed to be engaged. We need to act like we’re engaged if we’re gonna stay off Bianca’s and Mikael’s and the Collectors’ radars. We’re new here. When it comes to violations of ‘discretion and truth,’ if we aren’t prime suspects already, we will be.” He jerks his chin at the door. “That kid looked distracted, but he was observing us. Taking notes on his phone. Did you see that?”

I flush. “No.”

“Ava says this is a well-known community of buyers. Under the fancy masquerade masks, the Collectors are corrupt politicians, greedy CEOs, and self-serving dignitaries, just to name a few. There are killers here, Bree. I can feel it. Wicked human beings with a lot to lose who won’t hesitate to do what it takes to preserve their interests and favorite pastimes. Which not only include collecting shit that doesn’t belong to them, but—”

“Murdering their own, for sport and entertainment,” I murmur, remembering the easy way Eric went to his own death, and the easy way his ‘community’ witnessed it. A part of me still hopes that Mikael’s mass mesmer is somehow at the root of the Collectors’ behavior before dinner, but that hope is dwindling. “You’re right. But…”

“You don’t know me,” he says.

“It’s not just that,” I reply. “You don’t want me to touch you, remember?”

The muscle in his jaw ticks. “Accurate enough.”

I cross my arms. “So what do we do?”

He holds out his hand. “We start slow.”

I extend a hesitant palm to him, but to my surprise, Nick doesn’t take it—instead, he wraps his fingers around my pajama-covered forearm. Still, I jump slightly. Can’t help it.

“Easy…”

“S-sorry,” I stammer.

“You’re fine.” When I nod for him to continue, Nick tugs me forward until I’m standing between his knees. When he looks up at me, his hair falls into his eyes. I resist the urge to sweep it away—and breathe a silent sigh of relief when he does it himself before I can. “Okay?”

I nod. “Yeah.”

His other hand finds my elbow, cupping it through the fabric with his palm—and I don’t jump. “And this?”

“?’M good.”

Nick stands in slow increments, giving me plenty of time to move away. As he rises, his torso presses close first, brushing against me before he straightens. When he stops moving, I take a deep breath—and look up.

His damp hair is starting to dry, the ends lifting and curling. If I wasn’t standing so close to him, I wouldn’t have noticed the quick rise of his chest as he inhales. The rapid pulse beneath his jaw. The faint blond stubble at his throat. The pine-and-cypress scent of his shampoo, deep woods on a spring morning. An ember sparks in my belly, curious and quiet. “This?” he asks, voice low.

My eyelids flutter. “What?”

He squeezes my arms. “Is this okay?”

“Oh,” I whisper. “Yes.”

“You can touch me back,” he says.

I hesitate. “Pretend?”

His throat bobs. “Yeah. Pretend.”

I swallow, the sound loud between us, and slowly raise my hands to his chest. When I press my palm into warm muscle and rest my fingers at his collarbone, he sucks in an audible breath. My mouth quirks. “How you doin’?”

“Good,” he rasps, then clears his throat. “This is why we’re practicing.”

“Right.”

“Right.” He releases a slow sigh, the tension in his body melting beneath my fingers. This close, I can see the flecks of stone in his eyes—and the sudden flicker of silver-blue across his pupils as he gazes at me. This close, I smell bright cedar, ozone, and petrichor—a scent that doesn’t belong to Penumbra, but to him .

This is the signature I caught last night in the storage room. Magic, swift as a blade.

“Nick?” I whisper, uncertain.

His brows tighten as his face draws closer to mine, as his eyes turn searching. Piercing. As if he can see even the very corners of my mind. His voice, when it comes, is a low murmur between us. More breath than sound. “What did he do to you?”

I stiffen in Nick’s arms, our spell broken. “I don’t know.”

When I pull away, he lets me go. When I retreat back and down from the platform, he does not follow. My mind returns to the black-haired woman working with Daeza, and the way she’d looked at me like I was something unknowable. A frustrating problem for someone to solve.

But when I look back at Nick, he’s gazing at me as though I’m exactly who I should be. Like I am complete. Nick looks at me as if, no matter what’s been taken from me, in this moment I am more than enough. As if I am so much that I could overwhelm him if he’s not careful.

I don’t want him to be careful.

I take a small step forward. “What were we?”

He releases a sigh, as if he expected my question. “I don’t think I should answer that.”

“Why?”

“Because I understand what it means to choose a different life. When I left the Order, people guilted me. Shamed me.”

I release a broken laugh. “That’s nothing new. Guilt me and shame me, if that’s what it takes.”

“No. None of that helped me figure out what I wanted to do after I left.”

“What did help?”

His lips quirk. “Not a what. A who.”

“Who—”

“ You , Bree,” he says. “You.”

I take another step. “Tell me how I did it. Tell me what you felt.”

He sits down on the mattress and turns to the window, silent for long enough that I worry he won’t answer. Then, he does.

“The day we met, I saw you walking on the quad. Before I called your name, I watched you, just for a few minutes. You were so focused. Already on a mission. And I thought you were indescribably beautiful. Obviously. But it was more than that. I wanted to… experience you up close. Know your mind, watch your defiance, hear your sharp tongue. When we finally spoke, it felt like dancing, even though we were standing still. Push and pull. The first time we kissed—actually, every time we kissed there was an ache, a burn, a…” He shakes his head, shrugging helplessly. “I don’t know. Kissing you feels like a reminder that…”

“That you’re still alive.” The words leave me before I know them.

His eyes snap to mine, recognition flooding them. “Yes. Like climbing a cliff at the ocean, both feet solid beneath you, and peering over the edge. Not to jump, just to—to—”

“Just to see.” My heart pounds in my throat. “Just to…”

I can’t finish—but Nick picks up where I falter. “Just to feel. To know what it’s like to stand right where the world begins and ends. Right at the infinite.” His chest rises with every breath, his blue eyes sparking into something raw and unguarded. “Kissing you is like touching the sky, like touching the horizon. God, Bree, it’s even like touching the—”

“The fall,” I whisper. “Not just standing at the edge, but going over. All of it.”

“Yes,” he says quietly. “All of it.”

We hold each other’s gaze for one long, lingering minute before he stands, clearing his throat. Our spell, broken again. “Right, so. That’s how it was.”

“Was?” I gasp.

“Yes,” he says. “Was.” Each step Nick takes toward me folds in a new layer of him, a new mask, a new role. By the time we stand close once more, the raw, open heart I’d glimpsed is gone, leaving only his determined focus behind. Only his drawn brows and stony voice. “Right now, I’ll only kiss or touch you to help keep up the lie. And only the way we practiced. Understand?”

I hear the unspoken in Nick’s words. He won’t touch me in private, only when we need to put on a show and only with Mikael’s dress-up doll clothes as a barrier between us. We’ll only be together because of corruption and rules and blood spilled on the floor. No sky, no horizon, no fall. Our infinite is over and done, not just here at Penumbra, but outside of it too. When Zoe and I leave, all the doors I’m foolishly teasing open with Nick will close.

I answer with a silent nod.

Nick dips his chin to catch my eye. “Hey, I need words. I need to hear you say it. Can you do this for me, Bree? Can you concentrate on the here and now? On surviving?”

Not what we were or who we were, or what we could become.

“Yeah,” I say. “Of course.”

An hour later, we’re dressed to head down to the dining hall. Nick pauses at the door to adjust his shirt collar. He’s chosen a deep blue knitted sweater over dark gray slacks, and I’ve picked out a long-sleeved sweater-dress and flat shoes—no more heels for the rest of the weekend.

“Stick to what feels comfortable to say,” he advises as he finishes fiddling with his collar. “The most realistic, truthful version of an idea rolls off the tongue more smoothly than a complete fabrication. The closer to the truth your lie is, the easier it is to remember.”

“Is that what you do?” I ask, tugging at my curls.

He rolls one sleeve up, a grim smile playing across his mouth. “It’s what I’ve learned to do.” He glances at me as he rolls up the other sleeve. “And you know how to do it too. I’ve seen it. You did it last night with Zoe.”

“I told her who I am.”

“Not everything, though, right? You didn’t mention that you’re a Bloodcrafter or a Rootcrafter like Mariah.”

I huff. “One secret at a time.”

“Always the mystery girl,” Nick muses, eyes going soft.

“What’s that mean?”

“It’s what Sel calls you.” He tilts his head. “Frequently, in fact.”

I turn that phrase over in my mind. Mystery girl. Mystery girl . “I wish I knew what his voice sounds like so I could remember how he says it.”

“When we find him again, I’ll get him to show you. He has a”—Nick smirks—“very distinct way of speaking. To everyone, but especially to you.”

I gamble on a more personal question. “What’s Sel like?”

Nick considers before answering. “Mercurial. Moody like you wouldn’t believe. Strong. Talented. Opinionated. Dedicated.” He sighs, halfway to a groan. “Passionate. Rude. Terrifying when he wants to be, which is often.”

I’m intrigued but also bewildered. “Do you like him?”

Nick’s brows rise. “Like? That’s… ah…” He huffs a laugh. “We don’t always like each other, no.” He pauses.

“After you left, the Order had no leads, no clues. I exploited a loophole, a formal protocol that would force the Regents to allow me to leave without Order supervision so I could pursue a quest of my own choosing. I used the quest to seek Ava and the Morgaines out, hoping they knew what happened to you and Sel. But Ava didn’t know where either of you were. She had fewer leads than we did. Months of searching and it was a dead end.” He sighs. “But just because someone’s not fully with us doesn’t mean they’re gone.”

I swallow, eyes suddenly pricking. Should I tell Nick that Selwyn could be with his mother? Without knowing where she is or even if her son is still with her now, four months later, I’d only be offering him another frustrating dead end. What is a small comfort is that, even apart, Nick and I have both landed on hope for Selwyn’s return.

When I look up, Nick’s already looking down at me—and I know he’s not only talking about Selwyn over the past few months. He’s talking about me, here and now. “Yeah.”

Nick reaches for the handle to the door, but before he can open it, a slip of paper appears beneath it at our feet.

“Zoe?” he asks.

“She’d come through the passageway,” I say, kneeling down to retrieve the paper. “Not really a note-writing kind of person.”

I read the scrawled message aloud. “Gardens. Twenty minutes.”

Nick takes the note from me, jaw ticking. “Ava.” He pockets the note, his expression shuttering as he speaks. Like a cloud covering the sun. “I should go meet her. She may know something useful.” His eyes have shifted, more stone than ocean.

“Sure, yeah. You go on. I can get to breakfast on my own.”

“Are you sure? I don’t want to leave you alone.…”

“I’ll be with Zoe and Mariah.” I stand straighter, fixing my face until it shows nothing, reveals nothing. Not to Nick, not to anyone. “I’m fine.”

Nick sees the shift in my own demeanor and makes as if to comment on it, but instead, he closes his mouth and reaches for the door again. “Okay.” When we enter the hallway, he turns left while I turn right. Before we part ways, he gives my covered elbow a squeeze. “I’ll find you after.”

As I watch him walk away, I can’t help but want to follow. To understand what exactly is happening between Nick and Ava the Morgaine. How a search for me and Sel turned into a partnership between the Scion of Lancelot and the Order of the Round Table’s sworn enemy—a girl who wants me dead.