Chapter 17 #3
I shivered, drawing his attention to my neck, which was riddled with gooseflesh. His predatory focus narrowed on my exposed clavicle, down to the slit that bared my moon-white leg.
I fought the blurring at the edges of my vision. “Do they know?” I asked with a glance toward several girls who were stumbling on glittering heels. Knowing the wine was drugged cast the atmosphere of drunken revelry into a horrifying new light.
Casimir shrugged. “I doubt it. Daemon wine causes euphoria and even hallucinations, depending on the dose, but the effect is somewhat similar to inebriation.”
“Can you drink it?” I wondered aloud.
“Yes.” Casimir chuckled. “Though I’d prefer to keep my wits this evening.”
I lowered my voice to a mere whisper. “Why do you think the Order poisoned the wine?”
“I suspect they had the same idea as you did. Loose lips, and all that.” A flash of gold glinted in his gaze as we locked eyes.
The eyes of the Darkseer, I thought.
Talking was making it easier to keep my body from floating off the veranda.
“Tell me more about glamours.” I knew from reading faerie books as a child that a glamour was a kind of enchantment cast to mislead or deceive. But Daemons weren’t faeries, and this wasn’t a fairytale.
“Glamours cast a sort of illusion,” he explained. “They can make you believe you’re experiencing agony or pleasure, but in general, glamours are used to conceal the true nature of something.”
“So, when Evren is torturing someone, they aren’t truly being harmed?”
Casimir’s brows rose. “Is there a difference between being burned and the experience of it?”
I considered his question before answering. “It depends. Even if the body remains unaffected by torture, the mind certainly doesn’t.”
He nodded in agreement. “I wonder…” His voice trailed off as his head turned toward the throng of people laughing and drinking inside. “It’s a long shot, I admit, but I wonder whether your abilities could be attuned to detect glamours.”
“You mean, I could learn to taste glamours the way I taste lies?” My abilities might be adaptable? Holy shit.
He shrugged. “While I am loath to drag you into this mess any further, it might at least protect you from the worst my kind has to offer. Since you refuse to wear any protections,” he added wryly.
“Don’t think it’s slipped past me that your refusal to accept my gift is born of your mistrust.” His demeanor shifted then, into something almost gentle.
“It’s not too late for you to leave, you know.
If that’s what you wish. You still have a choice.
” His gaze met mine, the pain plainly visible in each line of his pleading expression.
“You’re right,” I said, barely keeping my voice steady. “It’s my choice. Or didn’t you mean it?”
His eyes flashed at the accusation, but softened almost immediately. “No, I meant what I said. It is ultimately your decision, Arden. I won’t force you to go.”
My focus narrowed to that tight space, on the few inches of air that remained between us. “So you’ll keep training me to shield my mind from glamours?”
A half smile curved his lips. “Yes.”
I regarded him with suspicion. “How do I know you’re not lying? Perhaps you and August are both plotting to get rid of me,” I said, only half-meaning it. It wouldn’t be the first time someone I trusted conspired behind my back.
He laughed softly. “If I were plotting to get rid of you, you’d know it. Though it must drive you mad that I’m the one exception to your little trick.”
My little trick!? I knew he was trying to rile me to distract me from my own fears, and I felt my cheeks heat in spite of myself. Unwilling to take the bait, I instead offered him a patronizing smile.
“That’s alright, I don’t need to rely on my abilities to know when you’re full of shit,” I said, referencing his earlier claim.
“Is that so?” he murmured, moving closer.
My breath hitched in my throat, and I was abruptly aware of my thrumming pulse and clammy palms. Heat rushed to my face. We were alone on the terrace.
“Do you know what I think?” he asked.
Every thought and scheme fled from my head at his proximity. There was only his heady scent, his undeniable presence, the crushing heat of his eyes on mine.
Eyes I might very well drown in.
“I think,” he whispered, his voice humming with dark intensity, “that for all the deadly Daemons in attendance, you might be the most dangerous thing at this party.”
I couldn’t formulate a reply.
Dark lashes shadowed his cheekbones as he lowered his gaze to my lips, and I knew with certainty that for all his pretty words, I wasn’t the most dangerous thing here tonight.
Not even close. Casimir had never seemed more terrifying to me than in that moment.
I dreaded the way he could, with a single glance, plunder the darkest regions of my soul without uttering a word.
He was a cartographer who didn’t need a map to decipher my thoughts.
It unsettled me, the way his eyes stalked me with predatory precision, like twin flames set starkly against his velvet curls, bright stars in an endlessly unfolding expanse of darkness.
I wanted him to kiss me.
I wanted him to kiss me even if it was the worst thing he could do.
And oh, this was a dangerous trespass, and not just because I couldn’t taste Casimir’s lies or believe his promises.
He was a Darkseer with the power to infiltrate my mind and wield my memories like weapons.
Casimir’s exterior was cool and indestructible, like marble.
And if he was marble, I was glass. Fragile and paper-thin.
If we collided, he’d break me all too easily.
I stopped breathing when his lips crashed against mine.
Kissing Casimir wasn’t like kissing anyone else.
My encounters with August had been frantic and heated, a hurried clash of tongues and teeth.
Always hidden, ever rushed—stolen moments between the stacks or in an empty corridor.
August was constantly afraid of being seen, and so we kept to the shadows.
No, kissing Casimir filled me with an entirely new kind of terror, both more intoxicating and more deadly than anything I’d ever experienced.
I’d shattered myself against the rocky shores of August’s heart, heedless of how I’d warped and twisted myself into a wraith.
Then I’d met Casimir. Tonight, for the first time in so long, I was in danger of combusting—of losing myself in the sensation of his lips on mine.
Only as I unfurled and melted like liquid gold in his arms did I realize how heavily the last few months weighed on my bones.
Who’s to say he won’t destroy you in the process? August’s words echoed in the back of my mind with the force of a drum, but this time they became a litany that I clung to. Fine, I thought. If this is what destruction feels like, then so be it.
Casimir’s hands on me brought me back to the fiery present. His fingers threaded through my hair, using his grip as leverage to angle me closer, and I unraveled entirely.
I became an imploding star in his arms, a smoldering celestial body, threatening to burn into atomic dust. I should have drawn back while there was still some of me left to spare, but it was my decision, wasn’t it?
Even if it was the wrong thing to do, even if it hurt me, self-destruction was a choice.
I was so sick of the men in my life trying to force my hand.
And so, I allowed myself to burn. Curving my body so it was flush with his, I dragged a hand through his dark curls and reveled in the sweetness of his tongue, imagining all the lies I would never get to taste.
Something of my unleashing must have burned through because Casimir pulled away suddenly, his expression raw, like scorched earth.
His eyes were glazed over as he staggered back several paces.
I had never seen him look so… unguarded.
I gazed up at him, for once not caring that my expression was, too, wholly laid bare, my pulse pounding in my ears.
I took a step toward him, wanting to close the distance he’d created between us once more—
“Arden,” he murmured.
A warning.
I turned to watch as the Bloodthorn Order stepped out onto the veranda.