Chapter Thirty-Six #2
Alora blinked as she recalled the feel of him beneath her fingertips, a dressing tied into place. There’d been no small dose of horror that day, too, though she couldn’t drudge up the particulars. And relief. She’d been so relieved, she could have perished.
Her finger reached to trace the fresh scar. His hand clenched beside it.
“So you’ve come to inform me that all our interactions before were of you nearly dying in my company?”
His kohl-rimmed eyes creased by the smallest measure. “No. You’ve had your fair share of unfortunate experiences too.”
“What? Why would I ever—” Alora stopped and pressed her eyes closed. It didn’t make sense to her, that she would spend so much time with someone who barely outran death. What sort of dangerous situations had she gotten into because of him? It didn’t sound like her at all.
But then his hand covered hers, there on his hip, and she knew.
Oh god, she knew. She didn’t only tolerate this person. Or like him some. She must either be a little bit obsessed or a little bit in love. And that was why nothing sounded like her—because she’d never felt like this before.
What a tragedy. Her nails clawed at the vanity wood. “Is this all I can hope for? Bits and pieces to return but nothing whole?”
“It depends. I need to know what he did to you. It can’t be the darts. They’re the most concentrated, entering the bloodstream. The batons are less, mixing with the wounds they leave behind, but I see no marks on you.”
She couldn’t tell him everything, the entrancement forbade it. But she could say, “I touched the lamp.”
“The oil?”
She nodded, teeth ruining her cheek as she stared at the water coating the floor. “You had no part in this? Truly?”
“Goddammit,” he growled, dragging her face back to his. “Alora, look at me. I would never.”
She focused on his masked mouth, something else returning to her as she took in the stretch of leather. “You’re an Urchin, aren’t you? I remember Mister Whitters warning me away from you.”
“That is only part of who I am.”
But she couldn’t help it, this distrustful emotion. “What did”—she swallowed, fighting it—“Master…wish from you?” Her voice was hard, even as she fairly choked on the word.
“We’re still in search of Mister Macaw, the groundskeeper who eloped just this morning.
You’ve met him before. Rumor is he realized whom he sculpted upon that topiary and fled in disappointment.
I think it’s more likely he fled in protest; he did seem to like you quite a lot.
And then he asked after William. He hasn’t been seen all day. ”
William. Mister Macaw. Alora knew those names, one invoking much more pleasant feelings than the other. Her brow furrowed as she tried to rein in every memory that bombarded her brain. Mister Macaw protested my joining Opulence?
“Alora.”
“Yes?” She scrunched her eyes closed.
“I will save you from this.”
She shook her head. “You don’t know what he’s done.”
“I think I do,” he said, and above the mask, his eyes turned pained. The darkness in them had gone.
She frowned over it, tracking his fingers as they reached behind his head. He tossed the mask to the floor, which Alora hardly noticed as she stared instead at his mouth. “You do?” she said, full of disbelief. Merridon had led her to believe only the pair of them knew what had been done. “How?”
“The topiary,” he said.
Oh god. His voice was everything. Deep still, and rough, but no longer rasping. She yearned to drink it in.
He continued like she wasn’t becoming undone before him.
“That was my first concern. And when I’d been informed you’d arrived, I had planned to intercept you, to remind you of your promise in not entering into another contract.
To make sure you were all right. But I was detained over business. An Urchin, missing.”
“And then?”
“I confronted management, who didn’t seem keen to give me any information.
I said some things she will no doubt report me for, but it hardly matters; she isn’t so above me as she thinks.
After, I found an employee waiting to act as escort for the new performer, he said. I told him I was to take his place.”
“You eavesdropped?”
“He was already making his final demands, and I knew I’d come too late. That you were bespelled. In that moment, I’ll admit, I went almost blind with rage. But my bursting in would have done nothing for either of us.”
“So you waited.”
“I waited. Did I do the wrong thing?”
Alora thought over his question. At what chain of events would have begun had Marshall Merridon’s own son, the captain of his dreadful Urchins, betrayed him so openly.
Her instincts told her she would have survived it, bound in her head as she was now, but Bash would not.
Merridon didn’t appear to tolerate liabilities, no matter how close they were to him.
After that, she really would have been all alone. Alora shook her head.
“No, I don’t think you did.”
Except her words didn’t seem to relieve whatever bothered him.
“There is something else,” he began, swallowing.
“Something I want to admit to you, but I know you’ll hate me for it.
God knows I hate myself.” Alora stiffened, preparing herself for another betrayal.
Bash noticed, and his hand came forward to cup her face.
“I only wish you would remember me first. Remember everything that happened before.”
A new sensation fell upon her suddenly at his earnest request. Like a clearing of clouds or dawn over night. Or maybe it was better described as a passageway, opening straight into her mind. Bash’s wish was his and not her own and he’d spoken it to her to fulfill. He desired for her to remember.
The smile that stretched her face was hopeful and luminous with triumph. “If that is what you desire,” she said.
And set her memories free.