Chapter 16
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Dafni
My surroundings suddenly felt suffocating.
It was dark, a lamp cast a soft glow of light around the space.
There was a book in front of my nose—a book of fairy tales.
How did I get here? I pulled down the book, looking around.
I was in a room that wasn’t mine. A large room.
It had a big bed and a desk. There was even a rug on the floor.
A tall man with black hair and black under his eyes stood staring at me.
Gideon.
He looked at me as though I was a wild animal he’d spotted in the woods.
He was still, careful not to move for fear he might make me skittish.
His pupils were only slightly darker than the rings around them—the whites of his eyes the only division between the black of his under eyes and the dark color of his irises.
As I stared at them, I felt like I was falling into a bottomless pit. There was no end to their depths.
I blinked several times. What was I doing alone with Gideon? I stood from my knees quickly, stumbling backward until I hit a desk. I’d put some distance between us, but his gaze made it feel like my skin was burning like it had when he’d been touching me.
He touched me.
Memories from the closet flipped through my brain like the pages of a book. His lips. His hands. His mossy scent that filled the closet. The way I’d wanted him to touch me.
“What happened to me?” I groaned, pulling the book of fairy tales up in front of my face so I couldn’t see him and he couldn’t see me.
Kissing strangers wasn’t something I did.
I’d never kissed someone before. I hadn’t known what I was doing.
The kiss had been sloppy…but I hadn’t been able to stop myself.
“A love potion happened to you,” he said from where he stood. “I’m guessing you swallowed some during class?”
More memories flashed behind my eyes. The potion drills. The pressure Arcana put on everyone to be the best, to win so that Gideon would pick them as his partner.
Potion after potion, we had to brew. The warm splash of my potion from Petunia’s rock that covered my shirt, my cheeks, and my lips. Ugh, it was sweet on my tongue and had warmed my insides immediately.
Arcana had instructed me to return to my room and change. I’d stumbled down the hallway, my skin hot. Craving, needing someone’s…anyone’s touch. I’d needed hands on my body, someone’s lips on my lips. Opening the first door I’d found. Finding him.
I looked down at my shirt—my wet white shirt that was almost see-through.
It was all real. I’d found Gideon in the closet and had practically mauled him.
That kiss—my first kiss—hadn’t been how I imagined it, and now I was standing in front of the man whose lips had touched mine, a book covering my red face and my breasts showing through the thin bra and white shirt I was wearing.
The healing potion. I felt with my fingers between my breasts, immediately finding the tube still resting there. A small part of me relaxed an equally small amount.
I lowered the book to cover my wet shirt, my eyes connecting with his again.
“I’m not usually like that,” I said.
Gideon took a step away from the door, closer to me.
“Neither am I.” He took another step toward me, his face now illuminated by the light of the lamp on his nightside table.
The closer he got, the more his eyes resembled shadows.
Black veins that traveled down his cheeks toward his chin highlighted the black of his under-eyes.
I involuntarily tried to take a step back but found nowhere to escape.
“What happened to you?” I asked in a whisper. I’d never seen a face like his. How could something so unpleasant be so oddly beautiful? It looked like someone had swooped a paintbrush under his eyes, the excess paint dripping down his cheeks.
“This place happened to me,” Gideon answered as he continued staring at me.
I turned around, dropping the book of fairy tales on his desk. A plume of papers flew, fluttering to the ground. He was quick to fall to his knees, gathering pieces of paper with something black smeared on their surface.
I watched him on his knees, picking up the papers. Was I being rude? Yes, I was probably being rude. This man hadn’t kidnapped me or refused to feed me when I was hungry. He’d kindly pulled me off his lips after I’d kissed him and brought me back to his room so I wouldn’t further embarrass myself.
I could be cordial. I could be nice.
Falling to my knees, I tried to help pick up the papers that’d fallen. Gideon snatched them away from me before my fingers could graze the page. Curiosity got the best of me.
“What are those?” I asked.
“Stupid things I collect,” he replied as he pressed the papers just as close to his chest as I had the book. One paper was facing me, the white letters surrounded by some sort of black substance.
“You collect Latin words?” I asked.
Gideon looked down at the page I’d been reading and quickly flipped it over so I could only see the back—a blank white page. “Wait, they’re Latin?” he asked.
“Yeah, I recognized the word perdere on that page you just flipped,” I said. “It means destroy.”
Gideon looked at me, tilting his head to the side, staring at me again with those dark eyes. “You can read Latin?” he asked.
“Yeah…” I walked over to him, a new air of confidence in my step. I knew something this experienced witch didn’t.
He held out the papers to me, shaking them slightly as if he was debating letting me take them.
I pulled at the papers he still gripped in his hand.
“You can really read Latin?” he asked.
“Of course, I can.” My grandmother had taught me to read Latin at the same time she’d taught me to read English. It’d been part of the training she’d given me for when I’d enter the Coven. “Can’t all witches read Latin?”
The corner of Gideon’s lip twitched. I guess not.
He let go of the papers, and I flipped them over. The first one was perdere, which meant destroy—I’d already read that one. The other two read alloco, which meant let, and ille, which roughly translated to the.
“Destroy, let, the… That doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, Gideon.”
“That’s because it’s a code.”
“A code?”
Gideon ran his fingers through the hair on the top of his head. The strands strewn, poking out at all different angles after he brought his hand back down to his pocket.
“Another stupid thing. When I was young, I’d always pretend it was a secret code or language—that once I understood it, would unlock a door, any door, to the outside so I could escape this place.”
I looked up from the papers, our eyes meeting. The way he was looking at me—his gaze—made the darkness around his eyes, the lines down his cheeks look like tunnels to his soul.
Dropping my gaze, I shook my head to clear it. I couldn’t get lost. I couldn’t lose my way. Getting mixed up with Gideon would be a terrible idea.
He tilted his head at me the same way I’d been continually tilting mine at him, trying to figure him out. “I don’t know your name.”
My name? No, he didn’t need to know that. This was just a minor detour—an unfortunate detour that ended in me getting my first kiss…or taking my first kiss. The memory that I’d try to rid myself of for the rest of my life. “I have to go,” I stammered, shoving the papers back at him.
He grabbed them, moving aside to let me through the door. “I hope you’re not disappointed in how I look.”
I froze right as my hand turned the knob.
“It would ruin the whole knight-in-shining-armor thing I’m working on.”
I almost smiled as I opened the door. He wasn’t disappointing to look at—he was fascinating to stare at. But there was no way I was going to tell him that.