Chapter 15 Found #2
“That night we met… you appeared one way at first, then another later. I’d assumed it was the potion changing my perception of you, or a male relative’s glamour flickering in and out, but… damn. Have you always been this way? Been able to—”
“No.” She was tired, so tired, every muscle clenched, ready to flee. She knew of only one exit, but there were many tools that could help her—a fire poker, a vase. If she broke the looking glass, she’d have a knife. But would any of those weapons help her fight a man like this?
Built like a blacksmith.
Could bend iron to his will without a hammer or fire.
Whose eyes were soft with questions yet unasked.
Damn her tears. She swiped them away. Damn them.
“It was supposed to go to Apollo!” she cried, her words slashing out of the shadows, decimating them.
He rocked back a step.
She was screaming. She didn’t care. “But for some cursed reason it slipped into my body”—she slammed a fist against her chest—“right before grandfather died. I don’t want it!
It’s done nothing but ruin me. It almost killed me!
You’ll kill me!” Her inhale was jagged. She searched wildly about the room, trying to decide.
Vase, poker, mirror?
He held his hands out, gentle, seeking. “Shh. Diana—”
She batted them away. “No! If you must kill me, I will fight. I will fight to the very end because even if this talent is not rightfully mine, this life is!” She lunged for the fireplace, the poker.
“Diana.” Now he held his hands up like shields.
Were his hands like iron? Would they deflect her weapon with ease? Would she rip through skin and muscle like a knife through butter?
She gripped the handle of the poker so tightly her knuckles drained of blood, but she did not charge him. She backed away. She didn’t want to swing. Not at Temple. Not when she’d thought she’d found a home. No hands to swipe these tears away.
“Diana.” Temple did not back away, either. His eyes were ice as he made his careful way toward her.
“I stole, somehow, what does not belong to me. I should not exist,” she mumbled. “Perhaps it would be best if—”
“No, Diana.”
She allowed him to snag her gaze, to keep it, and she tried to swallow the words that were trembling from between her lips, but they would not go down. “I am an abomination.”
He inched closer, and she held the poker higher, deadly intent vibrating along every muscle. Survival screaming in her bones. But he didn’t care. Either he did not believe she would hit him, or he knew she could not hurt him. Either way, he kept coming until he could touch her.
And she let him, entire body trembling and terrified, she let him.
One hand wrapped gently around her high wrist, lowering her arm. When her arm reached her side, her hand loosed of its own accord, and the poker dropped with a thunk to the floor. His other hand settled beneath her chin, the lightest touch but brimming with warmth, feeling like safety.
“You are no abomination, Diana. You are a marvel.”
She searched his eyes, the lines of his face, for the lie. No intent to harm anywhere. No poisonous envy. No disgust. He wore, instead, wonderment in every feature. It lifted her chin higher through the pads of his fingers, coaxing her to possess the word he’d given her.
Marvel.
He would not hurt her. Of course he would not hurt her. What fear had she let control her? No more.
She collapsed against his chest, relief shaking her body, almost choking her. He gathered her up and lifted her like a babe, climbed onto the bed with her and nestled her in his lap. She cried there. Big gulping sobs and splashing tears that left her throat raw and his shirt wet.
“I could not tell you.” Her words barely understandable. “I could not.”
“Shh.” He stroked her hair away from her temple, rocked her side to side.
“He wants me dead. Everyone will want me dead.”
“Everyone can go to hell. Your cousin first.”
Somehow, she laughed through the tears, and the laughter made her cry harder, clutching at his chest and emptying her fear into his skin.
She wailed.
And he kissed the top of her head.
She screamed.
And he rubbed the length of her back.
She moaned the fear that lived deep inside her.
And he hugged her more tightly to him.
Until she quieted. Until she sniffled. Until she said, “I don’t want this. But I do not wish to die either.” Especially not now. Not with him wrapped around her like a shield against the sneering world.
“I’ll kill a thousand men before I let one of them touch you.”
And, God, it sounded like he meant it. Sounded like an unstained truth.
Wiping her nose, she pushed away from him, just a little, just enough to look up into his face. “You would not have married me had you known.”
Something sly sparked in his silver eyes. “I think I would have married you sooner.”
“You would not have turned me in.” It had started out as a question, but before she’d finished it, she’d known the answer.
He grunted.
“Alchemists like secrets,” she said.
He winked. Then he deposited her on the mattress and stood, pulling back the blankets. “Get in.”
She did, sneaking her feet beneath the sheets and sinking her head onto a pillow. Now he would come to her as a husband. Now there was nothing between them. She felt light enough to lift off the mattress.
“Good God, what are you doing? Are you floating?”
“Oh!” She banished the accidental glamour. “Apologies. I’ve mostly learned to control it, but sometimes…”
“You didn’t know how?” He sat on the edge of the mattress.
She shook her head. “No idea. It was beyond my understanding. It was one of the many, many reasons I had for not wanting to marry Apollo. I was scared he’d find out. And want to kill me. Of course he found out and tried to kill me anyway.”
Temple’s hands became hammers, fisted hard atop the blankets.
“I had no control at all until you told me that some alchemists believe that the talent for illusions exists not in the blood but in the air, in the light. I can… it’s hard to describe. But I can… grab it. Bend it. Shape it.”
“Damn me. We’ve been right all this time.” Said more to himself than to her, but then his gaze was on her, sharp and inquisitive. “No one told you that’s how it worked?”
She shook her head. “Men do not talk about that sort of stuff. At least not with women.”
“Of course they don’t. If they did, the world would know there’s nothing special about them at all. Chosen ones my arse. Divine right. Ha.”
She lifted a brow. “I thought you said I was a marvel.”
The corner of his lips twitched. “You are. Your fellow transcendents…” He shrugged, and far from being a careless type of motion, it seemed to suggest he would toss the lot of her kind over a cliff if he could.
“It seems alchemists are not the only ones with secrets.” He was no longer looking at her. His gaze had gone hazy and hard, his lips pressed into a thin line.
She placed a hand on his fist. “Temple… tonight—”
He kissed her forehead. “Sleep. You’re exhausted.”
She twisted the edge of the blanket in both hands, pulling it closer to her chin. She felt like a child, tucked in and patted on the head. Good night, sweet, sleep well and see you in the morning.
She’d been treated like a child all her life.
No more.
She sat upright. “Do you no longer want me?”
He blinked. “Where did you get that idea?”
“Your cowardly retreat.”
He shot to his feet. “Cowardly? Retreat? You’ve had a shock. I’m being a gentleman and giving you time to… to heal from it. I’m not going to add another shock to it.”
Her life had been a child’s game. Hide-and-seek, but no one had ever come to find her. Except for Apollo, and he wanted to kill her. She would hide away no more.
She pulled her legs underneath her and sat on her heels, her shift pooling around her knees.
“I think you are the one in need of time to recuperate. Your nerves are frazzled. My nerves have been tested since the day my grandfather died. I have hidden away, terrified I would be caught. I have been caught and terrified I would die. I have lived in isolation, praying for rescue, and there were a solid few minutes of my life during which I thought my husband about to kill me.”
“I’m insulted.”
“Me, too, Temple Grant. Insulted you think me so weak.” Insulted she’d thought herself so weak. Worse yet, that she’d acted so weak for so long.
Then she lifted the hem of her shift, and she threw the damn thing off.
She stood before Temple as she’d stood before no one else in her entire life—bare, every inch of herself revealed and vulnerable. Every inch truly herself.
“I do not need a gentleman to coddle me, Temple. I need an alchemist to forge me anew.”
The ring on her hand glowed hot, and a bolt of lust rocked her. Not her lust.
His.