Chapter Forty-Three
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
When Elara awoke again, she didn’t scream. She tested the boundaries of her mind. The darkness was in place, the memories at bay, but there was something else.
Light.
She glanced up at Enzo, still asleep, his muscled arms wrapped around her. She saw the book laid on the table. Under the quiet morning Light, she studied him, closer than she’d ever dared when he was awake. Her heart pounded as she slowly released one emotion to observe him. Guilt.
There were shadows under his eyes, and she felt that foreign pang again as she allowed herself to experience the feeling. He must have stayed by her bed every night in that chair, waking when she had. She gazed at the charcoal dusting of his lashes, the softness of his forehead as he slept. With the lightest touch, she traced the freckle under his eye to another below it, running her finger to one by his other eye. Mapping out her own constellation. She let her finger run under his jaw then, tracing the smooth cut of it. It stopped then, hovering over his full lips. She saw his eye open and twitch in surprise.
‘Good morning,’ he mumbled, his eyes on hers.
‘Morning,’ she replied, swiftly removing her trailing finger.
‘You didn’t dream?’
‘Not at all.’
His face relaxed as he lifted her.
‘I can walk, you know.’ She batted his arm, and he lowered her gently to the floor.
‘How are you feeling?’
‘Lucid.’
He squeezed her hand as they walked back into her room. The small action almost wiped the energy from her, leaving her legs trembling, and she sank on to the bed, breathing hard.
‘There’s something happening with my mind. Every time I grasp for something, it leaves me.’
‘Why don’t you rest—’
‘No, Enzo,’ she pleaded. ‘I don’t want to rest any longer. I’m tired of being weak, and drugged. Of barely feeling anything.’
Enzo nodded. ‘Right, then,’ he said, and strode to Elara’s wardrobe, picking out the kind of two-piece she was used to training in. ‘We’re going to the gardens.’
He helped Elara shrug out of her gown and into the clothes, keeping his eyes on hers.
‘Don’t give me any more of that potion,’ she said, as black spots began to dance in her vision.
He nodded, taking her arm.
‘Wait—what about my glamour?’
‘Merissa has been visiting each night. She’s been making sure it’s intact for any servant or other who may come in.’
Elara fought to quell the lump in her throat at the mention of her friend’s name.
He took her arm and led her outside, his brisk demeanour the first hint of warrior he’d shown since before the masquerade.
She followed him, her breath coming in gasps. Navigating through the palace, she let him lead her past an atrium trickling with water. Birds chirped outside. Elara hadn’t heard the sound in weeks, between imprisonment and unconsciousness. Enzo continued to guide her until they passed Kalinda’s garden patch. A golden-headed figure was bent in the flowerbeds with a trowel, and Elara’s breath quickened as Merissa turned around.
‘Elara?’ she said hopefully, sticking the trowel in the mud and pulling off her gardening gloves.
The black spots that had been dancing in Elara’s vision grew worse, as her heart pounded.
‘No,’ she said hoarsely, taking a step back. Enzo looked at her in alarm, Merissa’s brow creased with worry.
‘El?’
‘I can’t do this,’ Elara whispered as images of Sofia’s blank, grey stare danced around and around her mind.
She broke away from Enzo, and began to stumble down the path.
‘Elara!’ he shouted after her.
She couldn’t do it—couldn’t be around Merissa, couldn’t call another a friend when her closest had been brutally murdered. The gardens swam before her as she staggered on, the path twisting, trees beginning to crop up. They all passed in a blur, the sound of rushing water growing nearer. Colour and sound flitted by her until sure footsteps caught up with her.
‘El—’
‘Give me more medicine,’ she demanded. ‘I don’t want to feel this, I’ve changed my mind. Let me forget it all, please let me forget it.’
Enzo’s worry smoothed away as he led her down the stone steps before them. ‘No.’
She halted, realizing that they were in the sunken garden where the revel to celebrate the Descent of Leyon had taken place. It was empty of people now.
‘No?’ Perhaps she’d misheard him over the roar of the waterfall.
Enzo tilted his head. ‘That’s what I said.’
She looked to the skies as she tried to process what she had just heard. The sky looked bruised and oppressive, deep burgundy with heavy orange clouds, a tang of metal in the air.
‘Storm’s coming,’ he remarked.
‘Why won’t you give me my potion, Enzo?’ A strange emotion was swirling within her, one she hadn’t felt in a while.
‘Because I can’t see you like this any more. I’ve tried to be patient and slow, but I can’t stand it. This drugged shade of who you are…Running from your pain. It’s not you.’
She frowned, confusion stirring in her. He paced agitatedly.
‘I have had to sit and watch you each night for weeks. Watch you scream and cry from the nightmares that plague you, then have medicine forced down your throat as you’re held down.’
She gazed at him coolly. Words were forming on her lips before she could process them. ‘I’m sorry that my pain bothers you.’
His jaw clenched as he stopped, his gaze flying to her. ‘That’s not what I meant,’ he said, his voice low.
Another emotion flickered in her. It went out before she had time to understand it.
‘The Elara I know is a fighter. A queen.’ Elara blinked. ‘She would face her pain. She is not a coward.’
Thunder clapped above them, a booming sound that shook the skies, the clouds roiling.
‘What did you just call me?’ Elara asked quietly. There was a weight building in her. She could feel the darkness that had been protecting her was now writhing and hungry.
There was another clap of thunder, and the heavens opened. Rain poured, fat drops of it pounding down, warm in the humid Helion air. The rain began to soak him, his arms crossed in that ever-arrogant stance, drenching his loose white shirt. It triggered an irritation in her, and a stronger emotion was hiding somewhere deeper. Her palms itched.
‘ Coward. ’
Black wreathed out of her, her shadows itching and leaping to be released after weeks trapped within her nerves. They twisted and formed from her palms as she held them out, eyes flashing. Monstrous shapes streamed, not animals, but something other.
The rain beat down, soaking her to her skin, but all she could feel was the furious darkness within her. The twisting shapes lunged at Enzo. He gave a vacant laugh, light blasting from his hands and turning her shadows to ash as he sprang up.
‘Now that’s more like it.’ He whistled. Lightning forked the sky up above. She stiffened, flexing her fingers, wet hair sticking to her skin in sheets.
‘Have I gotten under your skin, princess?’
She bared her teeth, twisting her hands. The landscape changed, the rain still pouring, but her illusioning had brought them both to a place devoid of stars, of light. Instead, this was a place so black and so overwhelming that it weighed on them.
‘Nice spot,’ he said in a dry voice, casting his gaze around before he sent a wave of fire to her. She threw up a shield of shadow which ate the fire whole. He sent another and another, and she wiped them out one by one, her magick craving them. Craving more.
The illusion finally shattered with a burst of his light, and she found herself panting on the lawn, water running down her.
‘Is that all you’ve got?’ he called over, and she roared, rage flying over her as she launched herself at him, and they tumbled to the sodden grass. She had no blade, nothing but her hands, which bunched his shirt between her fists.
‘What about that silver magick you summoned at the bottom of the lake?’ he gasped, breathing heavily. ‘You have any of that to throw at me?’
Elara stilled as scrambled memories surfaced of Enzo drowning while skeletal tails and dark waters surrounded him.
‘No,’ she snapped. ‘I don’t know what that was.’
He pushed himself forwards. ‘Then what other weapons do you have at your disposal?’ He tilted his head. ‘Tell me, princess, do you still carry that dagger on your pretty little thigh?’
His burning hot hand skimmed up her leg, her sodden skirt riding up. His fingers brushed her outer thigh.
‘Ariete took it,’ she replied raggedly.
She stopped breathing as her focus narrowed on his rough thumb resting lightly on her naked thigh. She could see the raindrops forming on his lashes, dripping off his lips. Enzo tilted their balance so she had to lean back on her elbows as he prowled further forward between her legs.
‘What do you feel, Elara?’ His voice was low and soft. Her chest heaved.
‘Anger,’ she hissed. ‘So much anger.’
‘Is that all?’ A slow grin spread across his face as he tilted his head, studying her. His hand didn’t leave her thigh, his mouth now sharing her breath.
‘Hatred.’
‘Mmm,’ he rumbled. He leaned into her neck, his smell filling her senses. There was a tickle of breath, and then his nose ran up the sensitive column of her neck. She drew in a ragged breath. Desire, another foreign emotion, swirled through her. He breathed out a laugh, and in the same instant flicked his tongue on the sensitive spot behind her ear. She exhaled an unsteady breath, eyes closing.
‘Are you sure that’s all you feel?’
Her eyes flew open. ‘Yes,’ she snarled.
His half-smile remained on his face as the soft rasp of drawn steel filled the space between them. Her dagger appeared before them, and he held it up to her as he whispered on to her lips, ‘Then why don’t you show me how much you loathe me?’
Her eyes widened as she saw the weapon. ‘How do you have that?’
‘I took it from Ariete at the Opera House.’
‘And you waited until now to give it to me?’ Elara was shaking with rage, with exhaustion, with desire, with relief. All emotions so foreign to her after numbly wading through nothingness for so long.
She grabbed the dagger, though her eyes remained on him—his wet curls, his soaked, near-translucent shirt clinging to his muscles. Her emotions poured molten hot, and she had half a mind to fling the blade back down at him.
But instead she pushed off him, casting one last look filled with loathing. But behind it, there was want, and they both knew it.
Then she stalked back to her rooms without a word.