Chapter 12
“You can survive almost anything if you keep moving. The problem starts when you finally stop long enough to feel it.” ~Myanin
The Nushtonia went quiet after Shade’s failed blood oath.
Not silent. Silence implied emptiness, and there was nothing empty about this place.
The book breathed around them in slow, heavy motions, like some ancient creature settling after deciding not to devour them.
The parchment sky above had softened from bruised gray to muted sepia, and what looked disturbingly like ash drifted lazily through the air.
Except it wasn’t ash.
Myanin caught one between her fingers and stared at the fragment of paper resting against her skin. Words covered it in faded ink, cramped and hurried, written in a language she didn’t recognize.
The paper dissolved before she could read more than a single symbol.
“Well,” she muttered, dusting her fingers off on her pants, “that was disturbing and satisfying at the same time.”
Behind her, Shade made a low sound that might have been agreement. Or exhaustion. Honestly, both fit.
The strange chamber the book had formed around them no longer burned with fire and memory.
The walls now resembled towering shelves made entirely of stacked parchment, untouched by the fire, and bound pages, stretching impossibly high into shadow.
Somewhere deeper inside the structure came the endless sound of turning paper, slow and methodical.
Like the book was thinking.
That was not comforting.
Myanin walked toward the edge of the room and peered into the dim corridor beyond. The floor shifted beneath her boots, text bleeding briefly across the stone before vanishing again. She was beginning to suspect the Nushtonia couldn’t decide whether it wanted to be a prison or a story.
Which honestly felt relatable.
“You’re pacing again,” Shade observed.
She shot him a glare over her shoulder. “I am aggressively processing trauma.”
“That explanation is becoming less convincing with repetition.”
“That sounds like a you problem.”
Shade didn’t answer immediately.
The lack of response made her glance back toward him.
He sat against one of the curved walls, one knee bent, forearm draped loosely across it. As before there was no arrogance in his posture, no deliberate provocation in the tilt of his mouth or challenge in his eyes. The exhaustion on him had settled too deep to hide beneath sarcasm.
Myanin looked away quickly.
Images of what the book had showed them were burned into her mind. The image of him kneeling beside Tarek refused to leave her alone. Neither did the sound of his voice when he’d said, he died afraid. Then, the promise he’d made Thadrick, his tone full of rage.
There had been no performance in either. No manipulation. No carefully crafted charm. Just grief and rage.
Ancient grief was strange. It didn’t bleed the way fresh wounds did. It calcified instead, becoming part of the structure holding a person upright. Something quiet and permanent. Something they learned to carry so well that others forgot it existed.
She hated that she understood that.
“Stop looking at me like that,” Shade said.
Myanin blinked. “Like what?”
“Like you’re trying to solve a puzzle you resent being interested in.”
Her mouth opened. Closed. She needed to quit doing that. When she finally found her words she said, “Well, that’s annoyingly specific.”
One corner of his mouth twitched faintly. “You’re transparent when you’re distracted.”
“I am literally never transparent,” she said, her tone sharp.
“Literally transparent would be weird. But, emotionally, you absolutely are.”
She scoffed and folded her arms. “Please. I’m mysterious.”
His brow rose. “You once threatened to drown a djinn elder in soup because he interrupted your lunch.”
“He knew what he did.” She didn’t really like being reminded of the memory, considering her much too recent history with the djinn elders.
Shade’s quiet laugh settled strangely in the room.
Not sharp. Not mocking, but warm.
And Great Luna help her, something in her chest responded to it before her brain could get involved. That was unacceptable.
Myanin moved farther into the room under the pretense of inspecting the strange shelves lining the walls. Her fingers brushed the spine of one massive book and jerked back immediately when it pulsed beneath her touch.
“Nope,” she announced. “Absolutely not. We are not touching the murder library.”
“The murder library?” he asked as he shifted against the wall.
She threw her hands up in the air. “It feels appropriately descriptive, damn thing went up in flames, we could have died.”
Shade chuckled. “You name terrifying things like an elderly woman naming stray cats. And it obviously doesn’t want us dead.”
“Thank you.”
“That wasn’t a compliment.”
“Lucky for you, I chose to receive it as one.”
Another paper fragment drifted between them.
Shade caught this one before it vanished. His eyes narrowed briefly as he read the faded writing.
Then something shuttered across his face.
Gone almost instantly.
But not fast enough.
“What does it say?” Myanin asked.
“Nothing useful.”
“Ah.” She nodded solemnly. “So it absolutely says something useful.”
Shade folded the fragment between his fingers before it dissolved into dust. “I almost forgot how annoyingly persistent you can be.”
Myanin pursed her lips. “I’m nosy. There’s a distinction there that is important to recognize.”
“No,” he said dryly, “there really isn’t.”
The strange warmth in the room shifted again.
Not physically. Emotionally.
Too much had been exposed between them too quickly. The sharp edges of their banter no longer hid things the way they had before. Every look lingered half a second too long now. Every silence felt inhabited.
Dangerous.
Myanin hated dangerous silences.
They left too much room for thought.
She leaned back against one of the shelves, deciding Shade was right, though she loathed to admit it. The book didn’t want them dead. At least not yet. She tipped her head toward the parchment ceiling. “You know what’s irritating?”
“I suspect I’m about to.”
She lowered her head to look at him. “You being a real person.”
Shade blinked slowly. “That may be the strangest insult you’ve thrown at me so far.”
“I’m serious.” She waved vaguely in his direction. “It was easier when you were just arrogant and annoying.”
“I’m still arrogant and annoying.”
“Yes, but now unfortunately you’ve added emotional depth.” She frowned at him. “It’s deeply inconsiderate.”
Something softer flickered briefly through his expression. Not amusement this time but something quieter.
“You’re one to talk,” he murmured.
The words felt like a sucker punch to the solar plexus.
Myanin looked away first. And immediately hated herself for it.
Because the movement reminded her of someone else.
A different room. A different silence. A fire crackling low against stone walls while snow hammered the windows outside.
Gerick sitting in a chair across from her pretending not to notice she hadn’t slept in three days.
She’d awakened from another nightmare with blood on her hands that wasn’t there anymore and panic clawing at her throat so hard that she’d nearly shifted into violence before realizing where she was.
Gerick had looked up from the book in his lap. Not startled, or demanding. Just aware.
“You don’t have to explain it,” he’d told her quietly.
And when she’d snapped at him afterward, angry at being seen, angry at herself for needing comfort she didn’t know how to accept, he hadn’t retaliated.
He’d simply risen, crossed the room, and draped his cloak over her shoulders because she was shaking hard enough her teeth had started chattering.
Then he’d sat back down beside the fire and kept reading.
Staying, remaining present because he knew that’s what she needed.
He continually had been what she needed.
And what had she given him in return? Not intimacy, that’s for sure.
That was one area that she hadn’t been able to touch with any poles of any length.
But he never pressed, not her Gerick. The warlock with a kind touch he reserved for her.
The male with the patience of a saint. She was so unworthy of his love.
The memory hit with painful gentleness. Myanin swallowed hard.
Shade’s voice cut carefully through the silence. “Where’d you go?”
Her eyes snapped toward him. “Nowhere. Everywhere.” She didn’t know what else to say and yet she needed to get some words out.
She needed something, and the more she realized what it was, the more her heart felt like it was going to shatter.
Her mind’s eye turned back to a warlock general with patient eyes and steady hands who had loved her without asking her to become easier to hold.
Guilt twisted sharply beneath her ribs. Myanin wrapped her arms around her middle, an attempt to hold herself together because she was sure she was in serious danger of falling apart.
Because Gerick was out there somewhere carrying the weight of her absence while she stood trapped in a living nightmare slowly becoming emotionally compromised by the worst possible male.
Great.
Fantastic.
Really solid life choices all around.
Myanin pushed away from the shelf abruptly. “I need to walk.”
Shade watched her carefully now. Too carefully.
“You only do that when something gets too close to the truth.”
The words were like a blade slipped carefully between armor, hitting the soft tissue of flesh, cleaning between bone and tendons.
Her chin lifted instantly. “Excuse you?”
“And she’s back,” he said softly. “I was wondering when the claws would come back out.”
“I do not have claws.”
Shade practically snorted. “You absolutely have claws.”
“I have boundaries.”
He nodded. “But those boundaries are weaponized sarcasm whenever you’re emotionally cornered.”
She stared at him in offended silence.
Mostly because he was right, and she hated that with the intensity of a thousand burning suns.
Shade rose slowly to his feet.
The room seemed smaller when he stood.
Or maybe she just noticed him more now. Had he gotten more muscular?
Surely not. Had his chest become more broad?
No, absolutely not. It was the book playing tricks on her, attempting to make Shade look more appealing, as if he needed any help.
Dammit, Myanin, stop it. She was trying, but he was just there, looking all fierce and warrior-like.
Which was abso-freaking-lutetly unacceptable.
“I’m not your enemy, Myanin.”
Her laugh came sharp enough to cut. “That feels debatable considering we’re trapped in a homicidal magical scrapbook because you came hunting for me. Or,” she paused. “Was it Thadrick you were hunting?”
He glanced away. His hands picked at non-existent fuzz on his pants.
“Shade? Which was it?”
She saw the acknowledgment flicker briefly across his face. But he didn’t retreat. Not fully. It was as if he was battling with himself. Then he took a deep breath, apparently coming to some conclusion. “Honestly . . .”
It took everything in her not to say “duh,” but she could tell he was being genuine.
“At first it was for him, and then once he was dealt with, I’d come for you.” His words sounded regretful, and his eyes matched, but she still wondered if what he said was true.
Myanin didn’t want to even consider a dead Thadrick, even if there had been many times that she herself had wanted to kill him.
But that was her choice and her actions.
She didn’t want someone else doing it. Or someone else having that on their conscience.
Especially not Shade. Pause. Why especially not Shade?
Why did that bother her more than it being someone else killing Thadrick?
Why was she still stuck on killing Thadrick?
“Someone stab me in the eye with a dull knife,” she huffed as she tried to get her emotions under control.
“You’re afraid,” he said quietly.
“Yes,” she said sharply. She’d nearly forgotten he was sitting there while she had epiphany after epiphany that she had no desire to have. “We’re trapped inside cursed emotional warfare.”
“No.” He shook his head. “Not of the book.”
The turning pages around them slowed.
Listening.
Myanin felt it immediately.
The Nushtonia was responding. Not to magic. To truth.
And suddenly the room around them shifted.
A low groan rolled through the shelves. Pages fluttered violently overhead as somewhere beyond the chamber another corridor began unfolding from darkness, stone and parchment twisting together into a new path.
The book had reacted.
Again.
Shade looked slowly toward the opening.
Then back at her.
“Well,” he murmured, voice roughened by something dangerously close to understanding, “that can’t possibly be a good sign.”
“No,” Myanin whispered, staring at the new corridor forming ahead of them. “I really don’t think it is.”