Chapter Twenty-Six #2
Talibah snapped into action, running upstairs for paper and a quill. ‘I’ll send ravens out at once.’
‘Good.’ Zofka yanked the apothecary door open. ‘I need to fetch Gretel; I don’t want her alone if that creepy man is coming back, there’s safety in numbers. I’ll warn everyone I see along the way.’
As the two women split in different directions, Jasper pulled Thea aside.
Deeper into the apothecary, where the moon was in her waning phase, and the lemon and sugar scent turned buttery.
‘Are you well?’ he asked, scanning her face, as if expecting to find something troubling there.
‘I was worried after you fled the ball.’ A vein pulsed in Jasper’s forehead.
‘I’m fine,’ Thea said, absent-mindedly looking across the apothecary at the crack threatening to split their ceiling in two. It echoed the deeper rift outside. It had been there, warning her all along, but she’d refused to see it. ‘Jasper, I . . . I have to ask you something.’
His gaze turned wary.
‘I made a mistake,’ Thea whispered. ‘I didn’t take a price from Malek for the key I crafted him.
’ She swallowed nervously. When Jasper said nothing, waiting for her to continue, she ploughed on before she lost her nerves altogether.
‘It was. . . a large price, and the moment I refused it, the Magic Quarter, it . . .’ She trailed off, unable to force the words out over the guilt, wedged into her throat like a blade.
‘It broke,’ Jasper finished for her.
Thea closed her eyes. ‘Did I break the Quarter?’
Jasper ran a hand over the back of his neck.
‘Honestly, I had my suspicions over the crack in the ceiling but when you told me Wojslav’s antique shop had broken first, I dismissed it.
Then I thought fate had sought to balance the scales through your health instead.
’ He shrugged. ‘I have no idea what happened to Wojslav’s windowpanes, but yes, I do now believe it was you all along.
The timing of the large price and the rupture of the Quarter is too coincidental. ’
Thea’s stare turned incredulous. ‘Why are you taking this so lightly? I have ruined everything!’
‘You made a mistake, Thea,’ Jasper said gently. ‘You’re not the first and you won’t be the last.’
‘Everyone’s going to hate me for this,’ Thea whispered. ‘I’ve endangered them all.’
Jasper gave a single shake of his head. ‘They will understand.’
‘Why are you being so understanding? You told me that you weren’t nice, but this is suspiciously nice behaviour.’
‘Because I can’t keep up this pretence any longer.’
Thea’s anxiety sharpened. ‘What have you done? If it’s about my memories—’
Jasper’s voice lowered, turned guttural.
‘I can’t keep pretending I feel nothing for you when I live with you inside my heart every day.
’ His face was stripped bare, not a hint of a frown to be seen as he waited for Thea’s reaction.
The hollow of his throat pinkened. A reaction she usually associated with their barbed exchanges, but tonight it seemed to be .
. . nerves? Thea watched it in fascination. Did she make Jasper nervous?
‘Are you going to let me in on any of those thoughts?’ Jasper asked, his flush creeping up his jawline.
Thea sighed. ‘You infuriate me. The things you’ve dared say to me, the way you’ve refused to cut a new deal with me to return my heart, how you still insist on keeping my memories locked away, though my past could be the key to everything the Magic Quarter faces today—’ Heloise had recognised her.
Thea was beginning to suspect that her own past was why she was being threatened, why the Quarter was being attacked. She needed to remember it urgently now.
Guilt flashed through Jasper’s gaze. Still, he said nothing. She half wished he’d argue back: it would make things less confusing.
‘But I broke the Magic Quarter,’ Thea whispered.
‘I’ve been slowly breaking it all along, and you haven’t judged me or criticised me for making a mistake.
I know you’re hiding something from me, but curse it all, you’ve stolen inside my thoughts, my dreams, and that afternoon we shared in the forest hasn’t stopped haunting me. The way you kissed me—’
Jasper strode towards her, the same way he had in the forest. Thea’s head tipped back as he bent over her.
Her golden gown hummed in excitement and she tugged at its material, making it silent before it revealed every feeling racing through her head, her quickening heart-spell.
‘You need only say the word and I will give you everything you need, and more,’ he said hoarsely.
‘But I will not, I cannot kiss you again, knowing that you hate me. That you resent my presence in your life. I want this to be real.’
The ferocity in his dark blue gaze halted Thea’s thoughts. Channelled them into one singular roar. ‘Kiss me,’ she gasped.
He reached forwards, his hands sweeping up her neck, into her flowing curls, and placed a single kiss on her cheek. ‘Not yet.’
Heat coiled in Thea’s stomach. ‘Don’t play games with me.’ She rested her hands on Jasper’s forearms, holding him in place, his fingers splayed in her hair.
‘I would never,’ he vowed, his breath coming faster as he kissed her other cheek. ‘You don’t realise what that afternoon in the forest meant to me. What you mean to me. Until you do, this is all I can give you.’
‘Please.’ Thea moved her head to the side, seeking his mouth with hers, desperate to feel that warmth, that softness, an easing to their unbearable tension.
‘It meant everything to me, too,’ she half cried, her gown falling silent as she became overwrought, unable to pick out a single emotion to sing out.
His hands tightened in her hair as he pulled back to consider her.
‘I felt seen,’ she said simply. ‘Now kiss me, Jasper Stiltskin, because nobody in this life has ever made me feel the way you do. It matters not if I hate you or love you, only that it feels as if I might die if you don’t kiss—’
He kissed her.
She’d expected that same passion that had swept them into its current in the apothecary when they’d shared their first kiss, in the forest when they’d charged into each other’s arms, but this was sweet and soft and tender in a way that brought tears to her eyes.
She blinked them away, sighing as his arms fell to her back, embracing her as he deepened their kiss, tasting her.
A sharp whistle screeched outside. Puncturing their moment with a fresh threat.
Jasper tore his mouth away and strode over to the windows.
‘What was that?’ Thea asked breathlessly.
Zofka and Gretel burst through the door as one. Footfalls sounded on the stairs as Talibah reemerged. ‘I sent the ravens out and received just as many back; we’re standing down tonight.’
‘Your weathervane just roared.’ Zofka braced her hands on her knees as she fought for her breath back.
‘Didn’t you hear?’ She gave Thea a curious look.
Thea smoothed her hair down, hoping her lips weren’t reddened.
What a time to have succumbed to her passions; she’d always been dubious of the romance novels she’d read where the characters had declared their love for one another in the midst of danger.
Now she doubted them a little less. It was the nerves, the threat of what was to come, the uncertainty of it all.
It invited strange behaviours. Like begging the secretive fate-weaver whose apprentice you are to kiss you.
‘It’s the Hunters,’ Jasper said grimly, observing from his vantage point. ‘They’re here.’