Chapter 56 #2
We roll into the pit, Quin’s quick thinking cushioning our fall. The gust protecting us dissipates and I scramble off him to push open the lid. “Get in.”
He sighs, and rushes rose-scented air through the coffin. Then he whips off his cloak and lines the box. “After you.”
I don’t need telling twice. I cram myself to one side; Quin slides in, half on top of me, and pulls the lid over us. “They may check inside,” he warns.
“Act dead.”
He shifts and we’re barely a puff of air from being plastered together from legs to heavily breathing chests. Already our noses graze. I press against his with a whispered growl. “That’s not acting dead.”
I tense at the muffled sounds overhead, and Quin bumps the back of his knuckles against mine. We’ll be fine.
A barked “Check the coffin.”
I hold my breath and sink the back of my fingers between Quin’s, desperate for continued reassurance. He squeezes.
I wait for the inevitable sounds of feet landing in the pit beside us, the sudden movement of the coffin lid . . .
“Uniform’s still there, sir.”
I release my breath in a whoosh before capturing it again. They’ve checked the neighbouring coffin first.
“Good, good. These damn graverobbers are the bane of my existence but they would’ve left emptyhanded this time. I recall this lot getting buried. Not a precious thing went with them.”
“Are we sure they’re robbers? Why these graves?”
“Of course it’s robbers. These graves are the freshest, much easier to dig up recently turned earth.” There’s a pause, and then, “Cover them up. Let’s help track the bastards down.”
“How did they get in?”
“New ward spells. My idea—easy to get in, hard to get out.”
I expel my breath again, and whisper, “Graverobbers?” I thought people were too concerned about stirring up spirits. But I suppose there are always exceptions. Or they do it anyway, out of necessity.
“More likely from the north,” Quin says. “They don’t have the same fear.”
Rose lingers in the wood around us, and I’m glad for it—it takes me a few deeper inhales to normalise my breathing. “How’d you scent the air?”
“Thank all those petal-filled baths I have.”
“Best use of roses ever.”
“Never to be repeated.”
We’re quiet again. It was dark before, but as more soil surrounds us, the darkness seems to deepen. Quin’s slight shifts sound louder and my skin prickles. The ticklish point where our noses tap seems to radiate across my cheeks, my brow, my lips.
Quin’s breath curls over my jaw, too softly. I tense in the darkness. The thickening air makes it almost impossible to breathe. It’s the coffin making my chest tight.
When I no longer hear the sounds of dirt raining over us, I whisper, “How long do we wait?”
“They won’t give up looking for a while. An hour. Two.”
“In here? Like this?”
He speaks softly against my lips, “Does this closeness bother you?”
A long shiver runs down my middle. I clench my stomach and untangle my fingers from his. “No.”
“Your heart is racing.”
“You . . . hear that?”
“Feel it.”
I can too. It’s pounding against my ribs, and when I concentrate on my chest, I feel another rhythmic thumping close to it. Not my own. My whisper cracks, “Are you bothered by it?”
“No.” His ‘no’ is said simply and feels vastly different from my own.
My heart betrays me by racing more. “It’s nothing to do with how close we are. I’m . . . panicking. This is not the first time I’ve been trapped in a coffin. It’s . . . bringing that back.”
Quin is quiet for a long beat. “Cael . . .”
His voice is too soft; unbearable.
I clear my throat. “To reinvent myself through crude healing, I’ll need better tools. A set of acupuncture needles, stitching needles, small sharp knives, portable brewing pots.”
It’s a lifetime before he responds, but he does, and relief sweeps through me. “Anything you need.”
His leg jerks, bumping mine, and he hisses.
I can’t feel auras of pain the way I used to through magic, but I know it’s there.
He shifts and so do I. On instinct, our hands briefly meet against his cramping thigh and I hesitate a moment before massaging his muscle alongside him.
It takes a few minutes and some tightly-gritted grunts, but the worst of the pain subsides.
“I was too rough rolling you in here,” I say.
“You’re fine. It’s been doing this at random and inopportune times since the beginning.”
The beginning. “When was that? What was it like? How did you cope?”
A teasing lilt warms his voice and thickens the air around us. “Want the intimate details of my childhood, Cael?”
“P-purely from a healing perspective.”
“I used to love exploring. Nicostratus and I were masters of sneaking out, and we’d walk and run everywhere. Our guards had a hard time catching us, and we were often punished, but to be free . . . it was always worth it.”
There’s a wistful quality to his memory that has my stomach tensing at what’s to come.
“As we got older, ten or eleven, we began to understand more of the complexities of the royal city. My father and mother had been shielding me from many dangers I was unaware of.”
“There were people who wanted you dead.”
“Mm. I started to see those around me in different lights; I became more wary. When I went outside the boundaries, I pretended I was someone else. Sometimes I’d wear my aklo’s clothes, or pretend I was a nobleman’s son, or a merchant’s. A performer.”
“Was it always the high duke after you?”
“He was there, starting his quiet schemes, but back then, it was my father’s second wife that posed the greatest danger.”
“Nicostratus’s mother?”
“A heartbreaking realisation.”
“What did you do?”
“Refused to let anyone tear me and my brother apart.”
“She poisoned you right after you saved him from drowning.”
“He’s told you.”
“It pains him, how much his mother hurt you.”
Wood creaks softly under our weight, and the darkness amplifies his uneasy exhale. “It’s never easy to be torn between two people you love.”
I stir, and my knuckles bump against his. My voice roughens. “You went from gallivanting in disguise at ease to . . .”
“To lying in bed for months as vitalian after vitalian worked to rid me of poison. There was some success. I could have died. Apex-vitalian Chiron saved me, but my leg . . .”
“I had immortal bone. I could have—”
“It went where it needed to.”
“Why aren’t you frustrated? Angry? When I lost my magic . . .”
My stomach churns.
Quin’s sigh curls over my jaw. “Seeing you struggle . . . was like seeing myself, back then. I didn’t want to believe it.
I cried and pleaded. I bargained nightly with the heavens that if I fully recovered, I’d become the most benevolent crown prince there ever was.
And when I didn’t recover, I withdrew. I didn’t go out of my room, didn’t let anyone see me.
Nicostratus spent days outside my door pleading to come in, but during that time . . .”
“You couldn’t. It hurt too much. You wanted to give up.”
“I couldn’t bear seeing you go through that.”
“That’s why—”
“I was so insistent. Yes.”
My throat aches; swallowing has my nose briefly tapping against Quin’s.
It’s too dark to see him, for him to see me, and yet I have the strong urge to close my eyes.
Some kind of veil, to stop the rawness I feel inside leaking out completely.
“Somehow, losing my magic hurt more when I looked at you.”
“Why?” the question is soft, too knowing.
I open my eyes and laugh hollowly.
His slow, whispered “Cael” sends a bolt of panic through me and I push my back harder against the side of the coffin.
“You don’t need me anymore.”
Silence.
I hear the words again, in my head. You don’t need me. It echoes painfully and I want to take them back. But they’re hanging there between us.
His breath hitches.
The darkness is too much, the confined space far too intimate.
“Cast some light,” I gasp, clawing for air.
He coaxes soft magic to his hands, and at once I wish it gone again. He looks at me carefully, gaze too serious. The coffin seems to shrink around us. He feels larger, warmer, closer. It’s overwhelming.
“Finding an antidote,” I say, squeezing my fist. “It’ll be a tough task. We’ll need all the help we can get. My grandfather wrote a lot about the dangers of amorous fungi. To think it’s used as perfume and incense! No wonder you paled when I gave you some.”
A brief flash of amusement quirks his cheek and he rearranges himself, shifting his glowing hands between our chests.
The change in light draws my eye to the edge of the bruise at this throat, and an image of Sparkles perched atop him, like I had been, fills my mind.
Had she kissed her way down his throat, or had he steered her there in the throes of the moment .
. . Had he truly been drawn to her, or had she worn amorous perfume?
“What are you thinking?”
I jerk my gaze to his. “I’m glad you banned it from your dance house.”
“Did so immediately after it was used against me.”
I stare at him and swallow. I’m curious, but I don’t want to ask.
He answers anyway. “It was used to make me impregnate my wife.”
Veronica. Their son.
“I loathed being forced to marry, and I was stubborn enough to insist I’d never lie with her.
We were locked into a room with those spores.
Far more than a dance house might use. So much, in fact, we both began seeing things.
Things we desired. It was like living a fantasy.
He was beautiful and I craved him, and he craved me. ”
“Veronica.”
“When the spores wore off, when we realised what had happened . . . We despised what had been done to us. The shared anger brought us closer. We talked more, opened up about our needs, confessed to wanting, one day, to find our true loves. Discussed how we might make that work. And by the time Veronica discovered she was with child, we’d become more than two people who respected one another.
We’d become friends. We were happy that we understood one another and that we could be a special kind of family.
With love for one another, just not . . . that kind of love.”
“She told me. When I was upset at you flirting with that aklo.” My brow pinches, and my gaze trails back to the darker spot at his throat.
Just how much of Quin’s skin had Sparkles ravished?
Quin shifts, nose sliding over mine. “Would you like to see?”
I snap my eyes to his flashing ones.
“You keep staring at it,” he says.
I huff a laugh and grit my teeth.
“I didn’t trust her,” he whispers against my jaw. “I didn’t like the way she looked at you.”
“You didn’t like her and you let her—” I poke in the direction of his throat, and he captures my finger in the glow of his. “At least get a vitalian to heal it!”
“I don’t want to.”
I try to pull free but he doubles his grip and pulls my hand to his throat, hooks the fabric and pulls it down, and I see the mark in its entirety. The bruising mark from lips and suction . . . and the twin puncture wounds at the centre.
I stare at the wound, my mind catching up with my body’s realisation. My lips. My suction. My mark.
The world tilts, and a strangled sound escapes my lips.
Quin watches me with calm calculation that feels . . . too intense.
I duck my flushing face and bang my forehead against his chin. He lets go and curls his arm around my back. His breath sifts silkily through my hair.
I groan. “Please. Get us out of here.”
He summons his magic and hauls me tight around the waist. Before he forces our way out of the grave, he nips my ear. “We’re not close to finished.”