28. Harlow
HARLOW
T he large, dark wood double doors to the art gallery stretch all the way to the ceiling. They’re much plainer than the doors in my family’s manor—than those in all of the great houses in Lunameade.
It makes sense. The fort is set with several fallback strongholds, just like the city, but the threat of a Drained attack here is ever-present. They don’t need pretty doors. They need something that will hold against an onslaught of beasts.
Even though I know Gaven has made himself scarce so that we will eventually be able to make eye contact again, I keep expecting to see him there like a grumpy shadow.
Instead, Henry is standing behind me, waiting to show off the gallery.
He didn’t comment on the fact that my bodyguard hasn’t made an appearance this morning, and I hope he will assume that he’s taking time off, instead of the more likely scenario that he’s discreetly snooping around the house.
Hopefully, he’s busying himself figuring out why we haven’t received any correspondence from my parents yet.
My body buzzes with restless energy. I want fresh air and the burn in my legs from a hard run, not a walk through a stuffy art gallery.
I reach for the handle to the gallery doors, but Henry snatches my hand back.
“Hold up.” He gestures to the enchanted lock next to the door .
It’s just like the one in the armory. I’m not a thief, but I’m curious what type of art requires a locked door. Even if someone here could steal it, it’s not as if they could sell it.
“Always with the blood,” I say. “Can I do it now?”
“I wouldn’t be a very doting husband if I let you—but yes. Now that we’re married, you can unlock this door.” He presses his finger to the sharp point of the lock, and a moment later, the bolt clicks. “Art takes blood.”
I wrinkle my nose, but I tuck away this new knowledge. Perhaps this explains why he won’t let me out of his sight. If I can unlock any door in the fort now, there’s no telling what secrets I could uncover, and the sooner I do, the sooner I can go home and get Aidia out.
“I mean it metaphorically, Harlow. Now, if you’ll indulge me.” He holds up a blindfold.
“You must be joking.”
He sighs. “Come on, Harlow. Don’t fight me. You’ll just turn me on.”
It’s against everything in me to just give in, but I’m walking a delicate line. I need him to think he can get to me. If I give in too easily, he won’t believe he’s won me over, but if I fight him too hard, he will never trust me.
I nod, and he ties the silk blindfold around my eyes, blotting out the world. He curls an arm around my waist and pulls me flush against his side. He smells like juniper and fresh snow, and I don’t hate it.
The door creaks open and Henry ushers me inside. He pulls the door closed, and a second later, the lock clicks into place.
Even with the blindfold and my eyes closed, I can see his aura grow wider as he steps into the space. It pulses lightly, probably along with his heartbeat.
He nudges me forward, and I awkwardly let him lead me into the room. I can tell by the echo of his footsteps that the floor is some kind of stone and the ceilings must be high.
I wonder if I’m about to see more haunting sculptures breaking free of marble like out in the hallway, or if there is more than one artist in their family line.
“I don’t like this sensory deprivation,” I whisper. “I don’t know if it’s supposed to be sexy, but I’m not a fan of stumbling around like an idiot. ”
Henry hushes me, his breath ghosting over the back of my neck as he pulls me to a stop and turns me to the right.
His body is warm and solid, and I can’t stop thinking about how that body was naked and on top of me last night. The last thing I want to think about is the way my thighs wouldn’t stop shaking, or the way he knew he could get to me if he was gentle.
It’s unnerving to be known by your enemy. I’m supposed to be the one working him. Luring men is what I do.
“Are you ready?” Henry whispers into the shell of my ear.
I nod.
He removes the blindfold with deft fingers, and I blink, trying to get my eyes to adjust.
Gray sunlight pours in from skylights, forming perfect rectangles on the white marble floor.
The wall in front of us is also white and adorned with three large paintings.
I walk toward the square one on the far left.
The gilded frame looks old and a bit worn by time, or perhaps the hard trip through the mountains or Drained Wood.
I take a step forward, focusing on what looks vaguely like a field of wildflowers. Then, the colors of the painting begin to move.
I squint. Surely it’s a trick of the light, but now the aquas, blues, whites, and greens are moving rapidly, blending together and forming new patterns.
“What in the Divine is that?” I rasp, my mouth suddenly dry.
It’s like no magic I’ve ever seen, and as startling as that is, I don’t want to look away. The colors morph and blend, and the texture changes from soft to something jagged.
Henry steps up behind me, his chest brushing my back. “It’s called mirror art. It shows how you’re feeling. Which looks like—” He casts a glance at the painting. “Prickly.”
The painting has indeed formed a more violent-looking pattern. The texture has shifted to something spiky as opposed to the smooth, sweeping strokes that it started with. It looks like a colorful exploding star.
The impulse to run is so strong that I take a step toward the door. The last thing I need is a room full of art that will reveal to Henry everything that’s tucked safely in my heart.
Henry seems content in here. Normally, there is a controlled rigidness to his body. His movements are purposeful and swift, and when he’s at rest, he’s always preternaturally still.
As I relax, the painting starts to morph again. Henry brushes his fingers over my hip. The silk is so thin, I can feel the heat of his skin.
“Who painted them?” I ask, watching the painting shift again.
“My sister.”
I stop breathing for a second and crane my neck to look at him. “How did she make these if her magic was protection?”
Henry hesitates, but there’s pride in his eyes as he watches the paintings in front of us shift. “Holly was twice-blessed. Once by Vardek and once by Polm.”
My mouth falls open from the sheer shock.
I’ve witnessed years of Divine baptisms, but never once have I seen someone blessed by more than one Divine.
I know it’s possible, because my parents drilled into us to be very vigilant that we didn’t miss any more subtle blessings.
But if the well here is more powerful, perhaps it bestows more frequent double blessings—ones that we have no records of.
He hums low. “Holly had an incredibly inventive mind. She understood how to blend her magics in very creative ways. The way she described it was that she wanted to turn her art into protection, and what could protect my family better than having art around the house that would let us know if our allies were still our allies? That would give us insights into how they are feeling. She channeled the gift of reading emotions—the base of manipulation magic—into each piece so that it would display a feeling.”
I’m stunned. My magic has always been a burden, and while I found a way to transform it into something useful, I’ve never been able to imagine uses beyond just varying the different types of poisons based on plants I learned about.
This art is brilliant not just in its practicality, but in the tremendous skill and creativity that it requires to learn to channel the Divine’s gifts in a new way.
Most blessed by Polm think only about how to use it to manipulate other people, but that manipulation comes from a deep understanding of someone’s emotions and how to read them.
She would have had to weave half of that magic into the painting at the same time she channeled in the protection magic.
I’ve never seen anything like it .
The pride on Henry’s face is endearing. Much as I loathe him, I respect this sincerity.
He loved his sister, but that love means the kind of grief that endures.
That grief might be the thing that gets me killed.
I need to be careful. If he brought me here, it’s because he wants a glimpse at how I’m feeling.
I watched Aidia learn to go from small glamours and appearance changes to freestanding illusions as large as changing the entire facade of our family estate. It’s difficult to learn to use that skill in new ways—only the most Divine-blessed can do it—and that was just for one type of blessing.
Looking at Holly Havenwood’s art leaves me breathless.
“It interprets all feelings?” I ask.
“They all show different aspects of a person. This one is the strongest emotion at the moment.” He nudges me to the right, in front of a narrow rectangular piece. “This one shows desires.”
The painting looks vaguely like a sunset over the mountains. It has a pulsing energy that brushes against my skin when I step closer. A beat thrums through me, and suddenly I feel like I’m back in the ceremony room, Henry looming over me, the ache of pleasure beating through my blood and?—
I step back, out of reach of the painting. All the colors have bled away from the center, leaving a black abyss and a set of dark blue eyes looking back at me. Henry’s eyes.
“Bleeding woods,” I grumble.
Henry chuckles in my ear. “Glad to know I made enough of an impression that you associate me with desire, lovely.”
If I react, it will just give him more satisfaction, so I hold perfectly still, trying to will my desire into anything else.
“How are you feeling?” he asks.
His question snaps me back to the present moment.
I glance over my shoulder at him. He’s too close. This intimacy isn’t a performance like last night. That was meant to convince everyone else. This performance is meant to convince me, but I’m not that easy.
“I told you, everything you did was fine. I’m a little sore, but not in a bad way.”
His gaze heats, and he licks his lips. “I healed all of your bruises while you slept.” He slides his hand up higher so his knuckles brush the underside of my breast. “I told you that you’d still feel me today, but I meant how is your head?”
Warmth creeps through my blood, but I refuse to let him ruffle me. “It’s fine.”
“No pain since the well?” he asks.
“No pain.” It’s only been a day, but I’m as afraid to hope that it worked as I am of what it means if it didn’t. If the well here heals, but the one at home doesn’t, I’m no closer to figuring out why .
The idea of having pain-free days—of never worrying about the spells that come on with no warning and take me out for days, of never having to worry about hiding my weakness from the world—is hard to fathom.
I’m too afraid to want it—too terrified to lose again to let myself truly believe it’s possible.
Still, some small, disobedient part of me refuses to let hope die. Last night was intense, and the fact that I went through all of that after just getting over a headache seems like a good sign.
I turn back to face the art and walk to the last painting.
The base painting looks like a stone wall marked with a bright white scar.
It actually looks a bit like the fort wall, but the breach happened the night Holly died, so it must be something else.
That, or Henry is thinking about the breach—which makes sense since this is his sister’s art.
“What does it do?” I ask.
There’s a static in the air around it. The prickly feeling dances over my skin, and I close my eyes.
Henry steps up behind me, his warmth pressing to my back as whatever magic is in the painting presses against my front.
I lean back into him ever so slightly. I breathe deeply, and it doesn’t even bother me that I’m breathing in the cold-forest scent of him.
A strange calm washes over me. It reminds me of the peace I feel when I’m lying in bed with Aidia and she’s smiling.
When I blink my eyes open, the painting has morphed. There’s a bright red blotch at the middle and smaller spray coming out from the center. It looks like a blood stain.
I stare at it, not even daring to breathe. A flash of memory rises in my mind unbidden—a flash of blood and pain and gasping, sobbing tears.
I bolt. I don’t even think about Henry’s warning never to run from him until I throw open the gallery door. “I’m not running.” My voice is a hoarse rasp.
He’s already behind me. “I know. That’s everyone’s least favorite. It’s hard to look at,” he says softly. “It’s called the heart mirror. It’s meant to show the hidden parts of one’s heart.”
He reaches a hand out to touch my shoulder, but seems to think better of it at the last second.
Henry did this on purpose. He wanted to see what would happen. I shouldn’t have trusted that this was a magnanimous gesture. He always has an angle.
I glance around the hall for anything to distract from my loss of composure.
A half-finished painting directly across from the gallery door catches my eye.
I walk toward it. The left side of the painting is a swirl of dark blues and purples, dappled with yellow.
It looks like the night sky here in the fort—or half of it, at least. In the city, there’s so much light from homes and lanterns that it’s hard to see the stars, but here in the mountains, the fort is so dark at night, the sky is lit up with a brilliant array of stars.
Seeing something so beautiful unfinished makes me feel irrationally sad. It’s not like I knew her, but she was so young and she was just trying to protect her brother.
“This one was in progress when the fort fell,” Henry says.
A small placard below the art reads: In honor of the lost and the Returned from the breach .
“I know who the fallen are, but who are the Returned?” As soon as I ask the question, it hits me.
“Those of us who were called back by my mother.”
I nod. I made everything worse. I want to run. I feel disoriented, like I’m grieving something I didn’t live through and people I don’t know, and my skin is crawling with the desire to run.
“I should have warned you about the heart mirror,” he says softly. “I should have warned you.”
I try not to think of the bloody painting, but it rises in my mind.
Henry ushers me over the threshold and down the hall. “Come. I have a wedding present for you.”
Eyeing him warily, I smirk. “Something more than your eternal distrust and loathing? My wolf, you’re truly too generous.”