Chapter 29
Chapter Twenty-Nine
EMORY
Y et again, the bone collector had surprised me.
“Your sister?” I repeated.
I wanted to be angry that this man swooped in after I’d confessed my plans to him and stole that bolt right out from under me. But I couldn’t. Not when he’d done it for such a noble reason. His sister. His sister was in the Deadlands. I had so many questions. Maverick Von Lucas had a sister. It shouldn’t have been shocking. He was just a person after all, but I’d never seen him as just a person. I’d always seen him as this larger-than-life figure.
“I’m sure you’ll find her.” I blew out a breath. “It’s just a matter of time. We’ll get out of here, and you can go your way, and I can go mine.”
“What if that’s not what I want?” he asked, then rose to a stand and prowled toward me, a predatory look dancing in his eyes.
There was nowhere for me to go, my back already pressed to the wall, as he stopped right in front of me, his face inches from mine, his eyes searching.
“I’d say you don’t have much choice in the matter.” I attempted to use a haughty tone, but my voice came out breathy .
His gaze traveled over me, starting at the top of my head and rolling down my body like a slow-moving wave. “You’re angry with me.” His breath was warm on my cheeks.
My jaw locked. “As if you haven’t been angry with me.”
“I’m sorry.”
The apology sounded so genuine.
“I thought you’d murdered your husband, Emory. It felt like a slap in the face, I guess. Like a betrayal. And it was so stupid of me to think such a thing about you. I should’ve known better. I was just so caught up in everything else happening around us. So caught off-guard.”
I still didn’t answer him, our gazes fused together, his swirling with so many different emotions.
“So?” he asked.
“So what?”
“Why are you angry with me?”
“You were supposed to be like me.” The words came out as a whisper.
Confusion flashed in his eyes, but he didn’t move, still pinning me to the wall.
I wasn’t sure I realized why I was angry until the words had spilled out. But the truth of it hit me, and the words kept coming. “Do you know what it’s like to feel so alone in the world?” My voice wobbled. “To have no control over your own life?”
“No,” he said quietly. “I don’t.”
“Exactly.” Tears pricked my eyes. “And the entire time we played our games, I thought you did. I imagined that you were trapped like I was. I thought that maybe, for once in my life, I wasn’t completely alone in this world. That there was someone else out there like me.” Tears trailed down my cheeks. “Someone who understood me.”
Maverick’s jaw ticked.
“And the entire time, you were the most celebrated historian on Arathia. You were just playing pretend.”
“No,” he said fiercely, thumbing away a tear. His touch left a searing burn on my cheek. “That’s what I was trying to explain earlier. Before you came along, I was just going through the motions. You showed me how much joy and excitement and passion there is in this job. I wasn’t playing pretend. Never with you. It was my real life where I was pretending.” He took a deep breath. “You asked me why I kept being the bone collector once my career took off. Why do you think?”
His gaze bore into me.
I didn’t know what to say, could barely speak with him staring at me like... like he wanted to kiss me.
“I want to propose a new game.” He reached out and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, and I had to repress my shudder when his thumb grazed the skin behind my ear.
“What did you have in mind?” I asked, wanting to feel his touch again, against all better judgment.
“Instead of working against each other, let’s work together to find my sister and the bolt. Help me get my sister, and you can have that bolt.”
My eyes widened. “You want to work with me?”
He let out a laugh. “With the Lady Emory Growley? Oh yes, I’d very much like that.”
“I’m not a Growley anymore.” I hesitated. “Not now that my husband is dead. I don’t know who I am.”
That fire in his eyes intensified. “You still have time to figure it out, little rabbit.”
He cupped my cheek, and I leaned into the touch, sparks jolting through me. Spirits below, that touch, the way it ignited me... This was dangerous.
“Emory,” he said, voice low, head leaning toward mine. “There’s something else we should really talk about.”
A conversation I wasn’t ready to have because I was almost certain it involved us... and whatever had been simmering between us for years.
“Could you two stop yammering for five minutes so I can actually sleep?” Driscoll groaned and sat up, and we both jumped apart.
Bloody frost, I’d forgotten there was another person in this crypt.
Next to him, the wolf stirred, its body twitching. Just when I’d finally been able to breathe, of course the wolf was waking up.
I tilted my head. Except something strange was happening.
Maverick must’ve noticed it, too, because he stepped forward, gaze trained on the creature .
It began to yowl, paws lifting and thumping, tail thwacking the ground, the twitching turning to full-on convulsions.
That woke Driscoll up as he scrambled back and toward Maverick with wide eyes. “What in the blood and earth is going on now?”
The beast’s torso twisted, its legs bending in awkward angles, back hunching over. I watched in horror, afraid to so much as move. The whole time its eyes stayed closed, but it cried out in pain.
Driscoll and Maverick watched, mouths agape with the same horror I felt. The wolf’s back paw transformed to a long pale foot. Then the same thing happened to the other paw. The two front paws split open, revealing two hands. Fur fell in clumps to the ground, each bald patch revealing pinkish-white skin.
Driscoll whimpered. “I really, really hate it here.”
“So you’ve said,” Maverick murmured, transfixed on whatever was happening with the wolf.
Soon all the fur had fallen away to reveal a pale back with a spine. The tail shrank into the creature’s tailbone. The wolf’s snout shrank into a straight nose, the fur on its head changing to a shade of blond hair, the long teeth fell away, smaller ones sprouting from the gums. When the transformation was complete, I realized it wasn’t a creature I was now staring at. It wasn’t a feral beast.
It was a man.