Chapter 19
“Sometimes the thing that breaks you is not the truth itself, but realizing how long you knew it and still pretended you didn’t.” ~Myanin
Myanin stood at the edge of a corridor that had not existed five breaths ago, her boots planted at the threshold where the floor changed from polished bone-tile to something that whispered when she shifted her weight.
She stared into a darkness threaded with faint gold light, and the back of her neck prickled in that particular way it always did when something old was watching her think.
The walls on either side of her were made of layered parchment pressed so tightly together they resembled stone.
Every now and then a page shifted beneath the surface, words rising briefly before sinking away again like something drowning.
She watched a sentence surface near her shoulder, curl back on itself, and disappear before she could read it.
Behind her, Shade said nothing.
That, more than anything, told her how deeply the last trial had unsettled him.
Normally, silence from Shade was a weapon, a thing he shaped and aimed with the precision of a blade. But this silence had no edge. It just sat between them, heavy and tired and annoyingly sad.
Myanin hated sad. Sad did not fight fair.
“You’re being very quiet,” she said, eyes still fixed on the corridor ahead.
“I assumed you would enjoy the reprieve.”
“I would, if it didn’t feel like the emotional equivalent of finding a dead rat in my soup.”
A faint sound came from behind her. Not quite a laugh. Not quite pain.
Progress, apparently.
She finally turned, slowly enough that her braid slid forward across her shoulder.
Shade stood several feet behind her with one hand braced against the parchment wall, his fingers spread wide against the layered paper as though he were the only thing keeping it from collapsing inward.
His head was slightly bowed, dark hair falling across his brow.
The gold light bleeding through the corridor caught the hard line of his jaw and the exhaustion carved beneath his eyes.
For once he looked less like an arrogant djinn warrior who had decided the universe was personally inconveniencing him, and more like a male who had been emotionally flayed open and was still deciding what to do with all the exposed pieces.
That was unfair. He should not get to look wounded and beautiful at the same time. There should be laws.
“You look terrible,” she said.
His mouth twitched, the barest curve. “And here I thought you were about to be kind.”
“I am being kind. I could have said you look like emotional roadkill.”
“Comforting.”
“I’m excellent in a crisis.”
He pushed away from the wall, and she caught the brief tightening at the corner of his eyes, the small adjustment in his shoulders, the way his weight shifted carefully onto his left foot before he committed to the right.
Whatever the last trial had done to him, it had not let go yet.
It bothered her more that it wasn’t physical pain he was in.
Myanin narrowed her eyes. “What did it do to you?”
“Nothing I cannot manage.”
“Oh, wonderful. We’re lying now. That’s refreshing and not at all stupid.”
His gaze lifted to hers, and for a heartbeat all the old arrogance flickered back into place. Not fully. Not enough to be reassuring. But enough to make her pulse quicken in a way she absolutely refused to examine.
“I have survived worse than a trip down memory lane.”
The words should have annoyed her. They did annoy her. But beneath the annoyance sat something worse, something soft and aching and inconvenient, because she believed him, and because she knew he had.
Myanin crossed the space between them before she could talk herself out of it.
The parchment floor sighed beneath her boots, and she ignored it.
Shade watched her approach without moving, his expression shifting in increments she could chart: guarded first, when his shoulders subtly squared; curious next, when his head tilted a fraction; then carefully blank, the way his face always went when he was feeling too much and hated every second of it.
Good. Let him suffer a little.
She stopped close enough that the edge of his coat brushed the bare skin of her arm, the fabric warmer than it had any right to be. Then she lifted her hand and touched his face.
Shade went completely still.
The contact was nothing. Barely anything. Just her fingers along the rough scrape of his jaw, turning his face slightly toward the light so she could see him properly. But the moment her skin met his, the corridor around them breathed.
Pages rustled along both walls in a slow, deliberate wave.
The gold light brightened until it gilded his cheekbone beneath her palm.
Myanin froze, fingers still resting against his skin. “Oh, for the love of all things mildly tolerable,” she muttered, glancing at the ceiling as if she could lecture it. “Can we not have one moment without the murder book making it weird?”
Shade’s eyes did not leave hers. “It reacts to truth.”
“That is deeply problematic, because I am currently trying very hard not to have any.”
His expression softened. Not much. Just enough to be dangerous. “Myanin.”
“No.” She dropped her hand and stepped back, the heel of her boot catching briefly on the uneven parchment floor before she steadied herself. The space she put between them felt like nowhere near enough. “Do not say my name like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you know me.”
The silence that followed was immediate and awful.
That was the problem. Not that Shade wanted her.
Not that she wanted him, because apparently her survival instincts had packed a bag and left without a forwarding address.
The problem was that Shade knew exactly where to find the parts of her she had buried, and then, infuriatingly, stood there as though he was willing to guard the grave.
His voice came quieter now, low enough that she felt it more than heard it. “I do know you.”
Her throat tightened. “You knew who I was.”
“No.” He took a step toward her, slow enough that she could have retreated if she wanted to.
She did not. Idiot.
“I knew who you pretended to be when pretending was the only thing keeping you upright.” His gaze moved over her face with a steadiness that made her want to snarl, to swing, to do anything that would make him look somewhere else.
“I knew the sharp edges. The rage. The pride. The way you would rather bleed out than admit something hurt.”
“Wow,” she said, forcing dryness into her voice because the alternative was panic. She crossed her arms over her chest, fingers digging into her own elbows. “This is a very touching list of my least attractive qualities.”
“Those qualities were never unattractive on you.”
The words were spoken softly, and that made them worse. Myanin looked away, jaw tight, and the corridor shifted instantly.
Not violently this time. Not with fire or fog or some corpse wearing a memory like a costume.
The parchment walls peeled back quietly, layer by layer, sheets folding inward like flower petals deciding to bloom in reverse.
Stone bled outward from where paper had been.
Heat replaced the cold draft against her cheek.
A chair built itself piece by piece near a hearth that had not existed a breath ago, low flames already crackling inside it as though they had been burning for hours.
A warlock chamber. Stone walls. Low fire. A chair near the hearth.
Gerick sat in it.
Myanin’s breath caught before she could stop it. Her hand drifted halfway to her chest before she forced it back to her side.
Not the real Gerick. A memory. A soft one, the kind she had tucked away because it hurt too much to hold and too much to discard.
He was reading. Of course he was. One ankle crossed over the opposite knee, a leather-bound book balanced against his thigh, the firelight catching in the silver at his temples.
She stood at the edge of the memory, just past the threshold of a doorway that had appeared without her noticing.
Her other self stood ahead of her, shoulders drawn tight, hands fisted at her sides to hide the tremor in her fingers.
She remembered this night now. She remembered waking from nightmares she had refused to name.
Remembered coming to this room because the silence in her own had been too loud.
She had so many nightmares, they weren’t all the same, and he never asked her to explain them.
It was awful of her that she had been thankful that she didn’t have to tell him.
Gerick had looked up.
Not with pity. Never pity. Just steady awareness, the same way he watched a fire to make sure it kept burning.
“Would you like to sit?” memory-Gerick asked.
The words cracked something in her chest all over again.
In the memory, she snapped at him. Something cruel.
Something about not needing a keeper. Something about warlock males being entirely too fond of their own usefulness.
Her voice cut through the room like a blade thrown poorly, and Gerick had only set his book aside, stood, and crossed to her in unhurried strides.
He’d lifted the cloak from the back of his chair and settled it around her shoulders without a word, his hands withdrawing the moment the weight was secure.
Then he had returned to his chair, picked up his book, and kept reading as though sitting with her through the dark was the easiest thing in the world.
The scene held for several seconds, every line of him perfectly etched. Then it faded, stone softening back into parchment, fire shrinking until only a memory of warmth remained against her skin.
Myanin stared at the empty space where he had been.
Shade said nothing. For once, blessedly, he said nothing. She felt him standing just at her shoulder, close enough to feel his presence, far enough that she had room to fall apart if she chose.
Her voice came rougher than she intended. “He was good to me.”
“Yes.”