Chapter 19 #2
She glanced at him sharply, ready to snap at the first hint of edge in his tone. There was none. No sarcasm in his face. No jealousy darkening his eyes. No dismissive arrogance pulling at his mouth. Only truth, and that made something inside her ache harder.
“He still is,” Shade added.
Myanin swallowed. The Nushtonia rustled around them, pages turning in slow, layered waves along both walls, as though satisfied with the wound it had pressed.
“I hate this place,” she whispered.
“I know,” his voice came, low and gentle.
She pressed her fingers to her temples and squeezed her eyes tightly closed. “I hate that it keeps showing me pieces of myself that I want to forget instead of letting me stay angry.”
“I know that, too.”
Her eyes burned, which was absurd and unacceptable and probably punishable by some obscure djinn law. She blinked hard, fixed her gaze on a point just past Shade’s shoulder, and forced her voice flat.
“Gerick loves me.”
“Yes.”
“He fought for me when no one else would.”
Shade’s jaw tightened. She watched the small flex of muscle just beneath his ear. But his voice remained quiet. “Yes.”
“He never asked me to be softer than I was.”
“No,” Shade said. “He didn’t.”
She turned on him fully now, anger rising because anger was always better than grief and infinitely safer than longing. Her boots scraped against the parchment as she pivoted, and the floor pulsed once beneath her in answer.
“Then why are you standing there looking at me like you understand something I don’t?”
He gave a soft shrug. “Because I do.”
“Arrogant ass,” she snapped.
“Yes.”
That should not have made her want to laugh. It did. A small, broken sound slipped out of her before she could swallow it back down, and Shade’s expression changed as though that tiny fractured laugh had done more damage than any blade could have.
“I’m not trying to take you from him,” he said.
The words were so quiet she almost missed them beneath the rustle of the walls.
Myanin went still.
Shade looked away first this time, his gaze dropping to the floor between their boots, and that alone felt like the floor shifting beneath her.
“I wanted to.” His voice scraped against itself. “Great skies, Myanin, I wanted to. When I followed you into this book, some part of me still believed that if I could just stand close enough, say enough, make you remember enough, then the universe would finally correct itself.”
His mouth curved, but there was no humor in it. A small, self-mocking thing that hurt to watch. “That was arrogance.”
She had no idea what to do with that. Absolutely none. Her hands flexed at her sides, looking for something to hold or break or grip.
“I have known you were meant for me for so long that I let wanting become certainty.” He looked back at her then, and the nakedness in his gaze stole every clever word from her mouth.
“But you are not a thing misplaced. You are not an oath I can force into fulfillment. You are not mine because I survived missing you.”
The corridor breathed again. Pages shivered in long, soft waves on either side of them.
Truth.
Myanin’s chest hurt in a way that had nothing to do with combat.
Shade took one step back. Not away exactly. But enough. Enough that she felt the space open between them like a wound that had only just decided to bleed.
“If Gerick is what gives you peace,” he said, voice rough now, “then I will help you return to him.”
“No.” The word left her before thought could stop it.
Shade froze. So did she. The corridor stilled with them, every shifting page going abruptly silent, as though the entire Nushtonia had leaned in to listen.
Myanin could hear her own breathing in the absolute silence, too fast, too shallow. Her pulse beat hard in her ears, thudding against the words she had not meant to say out loud and absolutely could not take back.
Shade’s eyes locked on hers, and for once he looked genuinely stunned. Lips parted. Brows drawn. There was something almost boyish in the way he forgot to school his features.
She lifted a finger and pointed it at him. “Do not look smug.”
“I’m not.”
“You’re thinking about it.”
“I am thinking many things, none of which are safe to say while you’re armed with fingernails and spite.”
“I will end you.”
“I believe you.”
But his voice had changed; It had softened in a way that made her want to look anywhere else. The space between them had not. It still waited, charged and watching.
Myanin looked down at her hands. They were shaking. She curled them into fists, nails biting into her palms, and the small bite of pain steadied her enough to speak.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” she admitted, and the words tasted like blood. “I don’t know how to want something that hurts someone who is good.”
Shade’s face went still.
“I don’t know how to look at him and not hate myself,” she continued, because apparently her mouth had decided truth was the theme of the day and she was simply along for the miserable ride. “I don’t know how to look at you and pretend nothing in me answers. I don’t know what that makes me.”
Shade slowly crossed the distance between them.
The parchment floor whispered beneath each step.
This time he did not touch her. He stopped close enough that she felt the heat of him along her front, but he kept his hands at his sides, fingers flexing once before going still, like restraint had become a physical thing he was choosing to carry.
“It makes you honest.”
She laughed once, sharp and wet, and dragged the back of her wrist across her cheek before any actual tears had a chance to commit to the act. “That’s generous.”
“No.” His eyes held hers. “It’s brutal. But it’s true.”
The parchment beneath their feet flickered. A new path opened at the far end of the corridor, the wall there parting in a slow, deliberate seam. Gold light spilled across the floor in a narrow line that pointed toward them like an invitation, or a verdict.
The Nushtonia had accepted something. Myanin hated that she knew it. She also hated that part of her was relieved.
Shade glanced toward the light, then back at her. “We don’t have to answer everything now.”
She rolled her eyes. “That sounds suspiciously mature.”
His lips turned up slightly. “I’m experimenting with personal growth. It’s unpleasant.”
Myanin’s face scrunched up. “Looks painful.”
He gave her a full, ridiculously handsome smile. “It is.”
She breathed out slowly, watching her own exhalation stir a single page loose from the wall beside her.
Some of the tightness in her chest loosened with it.
Not enough to make this easier. Nothing was going to make this easier.
But at least she could stand without feeling as if the weight of every choice she had ever made was pressing directly against her spine.
The book had not given her answers. It had done something worse. It had taken away another place to hide.
Myanin looked toward the path opening ahead of them, then nodded once at the gold light pooling against the floor. “What do you think is down there?”
Shade followed her gaze. “Something terrible.”
“That’s a relief.”
“I try.”
She stepped forward, and her shoulder almost touched his as she moved past. She stopped when his hand brushed hers. Accidental. Maybe. Neither moved away. The contact lasted only a heartbeat. Then two. Finally Shade’s fingers curled lightly against hers, not holding, only asking.
Myanin stared down at their hands, at the way his knuckles fit against hers in the gold light. Gerick’s face flashed through her mind, steady and kind and good, and pain moved through her in a clean, quiet wave. But beneath it, honest and undeniable, something else moved, too.
She turned her hand just enough for her fingers to slip between Shade’s.
The gold light at the end of the corridor flared, brightening the walls until every shifting word beneath the parchment glowed faintly through.
Shade went very still beside her.
“Do not look satisfied,” she warned, eyes forward.
His thumb brushed once against her knuckles. “I wouldn't dare.”
“Liar.”
“Yes.”
The path ahead widened, and somewhere deep inside the Nushtonia, a page turned with the sound of a verdict being written.
Myanin tightened her fingers around Shade’s. Then together, they walked toward whatever truth waited next.
Shade had imagined this moment a thousand different ways over the years.
In every version, victory had tasted sweeter.
Instead, standing beside Myanin in the shifting gold light of the Nushtonia with her fingers threaded through his, all he felt was terrified.
Not of the book. Not of the darkness moving through its endless corridors.
Her.
The terrifying, impossible female beside him who had just destroyed him with honesty that he knew cost her.
Shade stared down at their joined hands as they walked slowly through the glowing corridor. Myanin had not let go. He could feel the tension still running through her fingers, the uncertainty, the guilt she carried like armor too heavy for one person to bear.
And still . . .
She had held on.
The realization pressed dangerously against the center of his chest.
Mine.
The thought rose instantly. Savage. Ancient.
His djinn power surged toward it with enough force that Shade had to actively leash the instinct before it showed across his face.
Because this, right here, was where lesser males became greedy.
Possessive. Careless. And if he pushed now?
He would lose her. Shade knew it with painful certainty.
So instead he matched her pace through the corridor, keeping his hand wrapped loosely around hers as the Nushtonia shifted softly around them. The parchment walls whispered with moving words he no longer tried to read. Every truth this place revealed seemed to cost blood.
Myanin glanced sideways at him suddenly, suspicion narrowing her silver eyes. “You’re being weird.”