Chapter 37
Thirty-Seven
Pierce
My steps are slower than the others’ as they head away from the Vault and back towards the Clock Tower. Kyrith is still tucked under Jasper’s arm, where she’s been since he so easily told her he’d stay locked up here forever with her.
How wonderful it must be to be able to completely ignore all of your responsibilities in the name of love and know that your family won’t fall into ruin without you.
A hundred lifetimes locked in the Library with the rest of them would be peaceful compared to what I’ll have to deal with once I ascend to the parriarchy.
Unfortunately, my strongest cousins are necromancers. If I pass over the position, one of them will take it. Then we’ll be right back where we started.
Does it need to be my problem, though? a quiet, tired voice in the back of my mind asks. Why do I have to be the one to restore Carlton to what it once was?
Because my grandfather cared. Because I’m still trying to make up for the horrors my mother has inflicted on the world, for the deaths I’ve caused, for the souls I’ve funnelled into spells.
Lambert looked ready to throw up at the very idea of murdering someone. What would he say—how would he look at me—if he knew how many lives I’ve helped extinguish in the name of power? In the name of survival?
I stare down Botanical Hall for several long minutes before I realise I’ve lost sight of everyone else.
Shaking off my maudlin thoughts, I abandon all pretence of following them and head right, up the spiral stairs and into the Shrouded Hall.
There was a piano there before Mathias took over.
The Arcanaeum created it for me when I asked.
Music always makes for a good distraction.
Yet, predictably, when I get to the top, there’s no instrument waiting beneath the immense stained-glass window.
Mathias doesn’t care for music. It must’ve been one of the first things he destroyed.
Kyrith has managed to replace all the windows in the building, but the shelves here are still utilitarian metal. It was a stretch to believe she’d replace the piano as well.
I’m not talented at transmutation. I can’t fix this part of the Arcanaeum for her. Besides, it plays to her plan to leave areas like this, even if I hate it.
A plaintive mewl breaks the silence. The cat is attacking one of its toys on the floor a few feet away. Every now and again, it stops, drops the feathered mouse, and then stares at it.
But instead of wiggling along the floor on an invisible string, the mouse stays still.
I guess Kyrith’s not the only one missing the Library. The little fiend has lost his invisible playmate.
With a sigh, I reach into my grimoire and aim a fine stream of magic in the toy’s direction. It rises into the air, then takes off, dashing across the hall. The cat chases after it—only to run straight into the leg of a nearby desk.
Damn. If the thing wasn’t brain damaged before, it probably is now. This is why I don’t have a pet.
It must not be too badly injured, because it scarpers away before I can check on it.
Mouth twisting, I meander onto the Gallery just so I can look at something else. This morning, we all restored this part of the Library for her while she worked in the tower with Leo. Now I lean over the cool marble of the balustrade and fix my eyes on her desk.
It’s exactly as it was. The trapdoor to the Vault is hidden beneath a thick wine-coloured rug, and the cat toys have been put back. Here, I can pretend the last month didn’t happen. My grandfather could walk down the hall at any second, wearing some ridiculous outfit.
My chest pangs so hard that I have to turn my face away from the pain of it.
No. No such delusion can persist when the loss of him is still so raw.
My eyes fix on a bare patch of floor beside me. I swear there was a rug there before. Sighing, I draw my grimoire out and lay it on the wide banister as I flick through, searching for the right spell to conjure one.
“You shouldn’t be alone.”
Her voice cracks through the empty room, echoing off the domed ceiling, and I roll my eyes.
“I think I’ll survive.”
Kyrith’s arms wrap around my waist, her face resting against my back as she hugs me.
“I want to do it,” I tell her. “I want to cast the spell that kills him.”
She goes painfully still against me. I think she even stops breathing. “I would never ask you to use that magic.”
“You’re not. I’m telling you that’s what’s going to happen. He’s taken everything from me, and I—”
She squeezes me tighter. “Pierce…this won’t bring Benny back.”
Kyrith’s not a necromancer. She’s never lived among them or seen how perverse their humour can become. So she can’t possibly understand how those words hit differently to someone like me. It kills me to know that my grandfather’s body is unaccounted for.
If I’d been able, I would’ve—
I shut that train of thought down viciously, because I was there. I could’ve done something. If Blanche hadn’t gotten in my way…
I’d probably be dead along with him.
The truth corrodes my anger like acid, leaving only despair.
I want to hate Blanche. It would make everything so much easier. But I can’t.
She was the only reason we even made it to his cell. Probably the only reason I didn’t get Lambert and Leo killed by attacking my mother in front of all those agents. We’d never have broken him out on our own. It would’ve taken months of planning for us to stand a chance.
We had hours.
In the end, time thwarted us. My grandfather died surrounded by people who cheered for his end, his soul siphoned away in the pursuit of more power. His final act was telling that sergeant to get me out of there. Saving me. Again.
Then his death was broadcast like a spectacle on every channel, so much so that the moment Lambert turned on the television, there he was. Light streaming out of his eyes and mouth. I know Leo numbed him, but it still looked like he was in pain.
Not knowing for certain whether he felt everything is one of the worst parts.
I couldn’t take it. I lost control.
I can’t even kill my mother for what she did.
Now the only blood family I have left is Anthea, and she’s marked for death by enforcement.
“I want to,” I insist, twisting in her embrace until my back is to the empty air. “They made me like this. They forged me into one of them, and now I’m going to wield that power to destroy him.”
Her huge parchment-coloured eyes sparkle with power and sympathy, and I roll mine a second time.
“Don’t pity me, darling. Use me. Everyone else does.”
The alternative is her learning necromancy, and Kyrith is the one thing in my life that hasn’t been ruined by dark magic.
She was almost killed by it twice.
She can design the spell, but I’ll be dead before I let her write it into her grimoire.
Her head is shaking as she steps away, leaving me colder for her loss. “I’ll help you get revenge, if that’s what you want, but no one is going to throw you at him—”
Frustration bubbles in my gut, and I reach out, hand cupping the nape of her neck to stop her retreat.
“I’ll do it anyway.”
Her eyes flash. “You’re worth more than that, Pierce.”
She’s wrong. She’s so wrong. Before I can correct her, she raises herself onto her tiptoes, pressing her warm body into mine in a shock of heat. Her hands tangle in my hair, pulling my head down the last few inches so that she can fuse our mouths together.
Kyrith’s lips are just as warm as the rest of her, and her kiss banishes the last of the cold from my bones as I give in and cradle her against me.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers as she draws away. “This was supposed to be a—”
She’s trying to put us back on track, to return to the conversation where she asks me to teach her necromancy and let her shoulder the burden of killing Mathias. The one where she tells me I’m too raw from grief to fuck her.
I don’t want to hear it.
My grandfather’s final moments are burned into my brain.
I see his final, agonised expression every time I close my eyes.
More than that, I see the spells he taught me every time I open my grimoire.
My buttons are etched with runeforms that are supposed to bring him running when I need him.
I see a hideous coat, or hear a too-loud laugh, and I remember.
Loss is wrapped around my throat like a choke chain. I can’t breathe.
So I dive on her like she’s my oxygen. Desperately. Pleading.
Make me forget.
Let me slip the leash until I forget what it feels like to exist in a world without him, even if it’s just for a moment.
My hands drop to Kyrith’s ass and squeeze. With her caught off guard, I twist us until she’s perched on the banister before me, her legs wrapped around my waist and my hand around her throat as I lick across her lips. Her taste washes over me, and my cock stirs in response.
Magic, I love kissing this woman. I think I could happily do it every day for the rest of my life.
She submits so beautifully under my touch, her whole body relaxing against mine like she knows how much I need her right now.
I indulge in her mouth a minute longer, muscles relaxing as it becomes clear she’s not going to deny me.
Her shiver when I ghost my lips up to the spot beneath her ear is intoxicating.
“I was going to take you to dinner at a vineyard in Italy,” I apologise against her throat. “I was going to wine you and dine you.”
“Fuck wine.” The words come out on a moan as I suck the skin between my lips hard enough to mark. “Pierce. I want you.”
I inhale her ice-and-lily scent like a drug. “I wanted to carry you home and make love to you for hours on a bed for our first time.”
She pulls back, trusting me to keep her from falling. “Do you want to stop?”
No. Stars, no.
I force a smirk, take her hand, and press it into the erection that’s trying to break my zipper in an effort to reach her.
“Does it feel like I want to stop?”
She shakes her head.
“I’ll do all of those things,” I promise, kissing her again. “But right now I need it fast and hard. Is that okay?”