Chapter Thirty
Mrs. Flops was not at all thrilled to have been left alone for the entire day. Alora attempted to appease the disgruntled rabbit with an enormous salad, but she could tell from the reproachful stare it would be some days yet before she was forgiven.
“Maybe Mister Zanfold will take pity on me, and you. I’ve another long day tomorrow. I’m not sure when I’ll return. Perhaps he’ll come up and visit. I’ll ask him in the morning.”
Alora said all this while she combed her hair.
The air was cool outside, blowing through the open doors of her terrace and finding its way into her bedroom.
She’d changed into a nightgown, but one that hardly brushed her knees.
She didn’t enjoy being over warm, and she’d felt feverish for nearly the entire day. Ever since—
Her wrist paused at her shoulder. She dreaded what the following morning would bring.
Of being subjected to the scrutiny of yet another Urchin or guard or whatever else Madam Feebledire deemed to send her way.
Of using prancing horses over George. She dreaded seeing Opulence again.
Of all the memories it would bring that she’d rather not have.
Another bout of sweats came upon her. She sank to the edge of the bed and took in the room—the color of the walls.
That green. She couldn’t bear it. She’d never be able to look at the shade again; it would have to go.
Only, what if she never found it again? What if she forgot it forever?
Was that better? Would it be better to accept Merridon’s membership for a single night?
To take advantage of Door One and allow just a trickle of that enchanted water to coat her skin, seep inside and steal all of what transpired between her and Bash—both versions of him—away?
The pain was horrid, but it was also hers.
She pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes with a sigh. It was too soon to decide. About all of it. She would leave the walls alone—for now.
Her palms lowered to cup her cheeks. “Enough of this nonsense, Alora. Go fix your goddamned drink.”
It’d taken her entirely too long still, but at last Alora had made it into the kitchen.
A sprinkle of cayenne settled atop her tea in a red flurry, and she watched it drift and sink, dreading the moment when she’d be forced to choke it down.
But she trusted Ellie Turkens. If the old woman said it would restore her to a semblance of her former self, well, it was worth a sip at least.
She blew across the surface, her nose wrinkling in discomfited anticipation, when a gust of wind rustled past the terrace doors.
It whistled across the mantle, dislodging a painting and sending something heavy clattering to the floor.
Alora grumbled in annoyance—she didn’t know if she could gather the courage to sip the tea a second time—and abandoned her cup to see what it was.
Sunk into the floorboards in front of the fireplace, wobbled a knife. Alora bent, her fingers enclosing around the hilt, its blade thin and sharp and glinting in the soft lamplight.
She remembered the sting of it. A phantom throb in her ear reminded her more succinctly, and she straightened from her crouch, reaching up to the small scar before her hand covered her mouth, her eyes pressed tight.
If it’d been only lust she had felt, she didn’t think she should still be so affected.
The dreadful William had been correct in his accusation. There were true feelings there. How long would they stay, muddying her emotions?
She’d come to trust him. Bash. The Urchin captain. Not in that he wouldn’t hurt anyone, but in that he wouldn’t hurt her. Did that make her a bad person? That she might have turned a blind eye to his past and present? But what if his future had looked the same?
Hypotheticals, really. It didn’t matter now. Yanking free the blade, she strode to the terrace doors with purpose. She didn’t need the wind reminding her of what she’d lost. She grabbed ahold of the handles, but when she would have muscled them shut against the elements, she froze instead.
Because there should have been light outside.
Not lights on the terrace because she’d never bothered with any, but light beyond it. Streetlights. Starlight. She could feel the moon above her, but directly ahead there was nothing. Only darkness. And it was absolute.
Goosebumps littered Alora’s skin. She held the knife in front of her like a warning. What the devil was this conjuring? Was her mind finally on the verge of collapse?
But the darkness didn’t waver. Nor did it make any move against her. As the seconds stretched, she began to feel less threatened and more wary. Confused.
“Are you smoke?” she asked of it, moving nearer. “A shadow?”
The dark didn’t shift with the wind, and there was nothing to cast a shadow. Alora held the knife out farther and stepped closer, until only the smallest fraction of movement would push it through. “It can’t be,” she murmured to herself.
She shoved the knife inside.
She couldn’t see the blade, nor her arm, as it was swallowed, and she pressed farther, sure that any moment, she’d feel the point scrape against the terrace’s stone edge. When it did meet resistance, however, it was more forgiving, and from somewhere she couldn’t see, came a noise.
Like a hissed intake of breath.
“I can tell by the grip alone you’ve not listened to me and learned to use it.”
She jolted, faltering, and when the feel of a gloved hand enclosed her wrist, she allowed the blade to clatter to the stones.
“Bash?”
In the next heartbeat Alora found herself tugged inside the dark.
Both her wrists were captured. In the pitch black, it was all she could sense.
She squirmed against her constraints, the broken light leaving her disoriented and overwhelmed.
Or maybe that was the feel of her hands now, pressed against a leather-clad chest. A familiar current traveled all through her, warm and electrifying, and her breath shuddered with ragged gasps. She felt like she’d run for miles.
“Bash, is it?”
His teasing was gentle, but still Alora hesitated. “Am I dreaming? I’m not sure I like it if I am.” His voice was a perfect, rasping replica of what it was in life. Heaven help me if this is a dream.
“No, this isn’t a dream. Though now I’m interested to know what you do dream of.”
Which was exactly something she thought a dream would say.
With her free hand, she reached up, feeling her way, along the fabric of his shirt and the leather of his coat, up to his neck.
She reached beneath his hood. She could feel the hitch in his breath against her chest as her fingertips brushed across the raised row of scars.
Then her hand crept higher.
She found the edge of his mask and soon discovered the clasp at the back of his head.
It loosened with one quick movement, and Alora tugged it the remainder of the way until it hung around his neck.
“I thought you’d died,” she whispered, full of relief and pain and, mortifyingly, something a lot like longing.
“You told me not to,” he said, and it was his voice. Bash’s voice. The rough, low pitch remained. The rasp was gone.
She pressed her forehead to his chest then, a sob breaking free from her lips.
And only once he pulled his coat aside, wrapping her up against the thin shirt beneath, did she realize he smelled of something she knew.
Had grown to crave. Of vetiver. She breathed that scent in now like it was her only air.
She felt him curve around her, and her fingers stayed tangled in the folds of his shirt.
Some wary part of her thought he might not yet be real.
“You’ve kept so many secrets,” she said, an edge creeping into her voice.
“I know.”
“Don’t I deserve to know them?”
“I think so.”
She scrunched her eyes closed, thinking of all Ellie Turkens had said, of her warnings and advice. “Are you really a devil then? Have I chosen wrong?”
She refused to cry anymore, though her breaths remained unsteady. She sniffed against him, and he tucked her in further. “Not with you, Alora.”
He didn’t answer either question, she noticed. Damn. Perhaps she was a bad person after all, because in that moment, it sounded like enough to her.
She angled her chin, though she couldn’t see even his outline. “Can you fly?”
She felt his huffed breath against her nose. “No?”
“Then how are you on my terrace?”
“I walked the ledge.”
“That’s hardly wide enough for a cat!”
His hands left her back to skim down her hips, only to return to her arms, neck, and lastly cupping her face. “I was motivated.”
She wondered how her eyes looked to him now. Wide? Her pupils dilated until their color was more black than gray? And then she remembered. “I thought the Urchin captain’s eyes were dark, with a rasping voice and a certain unfavorable opinion about a Potions and Peculiarities shopkeeper.”
“You’re not incorrect about my eyes. As far as the voice, the mask is enchanted, another facet of disguise. And I stand by my opinion of the shopkeeper. He can be an idiot. Like not telling you how he felt the moment you’d come to his doorstep, politely demanding a distraction.”
Alora’s cheeks warmed over how forward she’d been. But it was nothing compared to the heat she felt everywhere else inside her now. “That was rather idiotic of him,” she teased.
His nose met the tip of hers. “Please say you’ll come to me and only me if you ever need another.”
“I suppose so. I can’t imagine anyone doing it better,” she said, and her breath caught when his lips met her temple.
He hummed his approval there. He moved to her cheek.
When she breathed again at last, it was jagged.
She couldn’t believe how easily affected she was.
It was not ever like this. Not with anyone else.
She stammered, “Is your name really Bash?”
“Bash Merridon. I don’t suppose I properly introduced myself the first time.” His lips settled upon her opposite cheek. “I’m sorry,” he said, against her skin.
Her mouth turned toward his, a pull she couldn’t ignore. “I thought it might be Ezra.”
“Ezra? Why?”
“The Urchins said he had died. And I’d seen the body behind Opulence, and William said it was you.”
Because her hands had found themselves gripping his waist, Alora felt the moment Bash stiffened beneath her fingers. He had to have been built of nothing but muscle, to become so rigid. She frowned. “Did I—”
“William spoke to you?”
Alora almost reached to his mouth again, sure the mask must have somehow been replaced. His voice rasped with barely contained fury, the cold of it raking across her skin. She shivered.
“He found me outside the Room of Desire.”
“For what purpose?”
She knew he could feel her hesitation, sure as she could sense everything rising inside him.
And she wasn’t frightened of him, precisely, but more the chain of events she might ignite next.
“He told me you were dead. Then he tried to—” The Urchin captain’s grip tightened upon her arms until they almost hurt, then they dropped away. She felt him move back. “Bash…”
Suddenly, her wrist was in his hand again, though this time she could feel his gloved fingers roving across the skin. Too late, she realized it must have bruised. She’d guessed it would.
“He did this?”
Alora winced at the whisper of death in his words. “I hit him over the head right after.”
She’d thought that would appease him. She was wrong.
“Is he dead?”
“No, of course not!”
“Then it isn’t enough.”
“Surely you wouldn’t! Merridon said I shouldn’t be worried over him anymore. That no further harm would come to me while on Opulence’s grounds.” She clung to his arm, desperate, but felt him slipping through her fingers.
“And what about outside them?”
“Outside them?”
She could see again. A gradual change. Black to gray to the soft light of the moon. When she was reoriented at last, she found the night densest at the ledge and ran toward it. “Bash,” she hissed.
He didn’t respond. Instead, she heard something unexpected. The soft rattle of a latch. A scraping of metal against metal.
The angle was all wrong to see her front door, so she sprinted from the terrace and through the flat, nearly crashing into the door as the rug bunched beneath her feet. She opened the peephole—
To a leather fist meeting a clean-shaven jaw.