Chapter 41 #2
Desmond slid one hand over my jaw, plunging strong fingers into my hair, loose and free from its typical braids, and instead of giving me space, he closed the scant inch between us and fed from my mouth as if I were the source of all life. As if I were the sustenance of his very soul.
I fell into his touch as if he were the earth itself, pulling me toward his center with a force I could not see, yet could not fight.
I could feel him—every single part of him—even where we were not touching.
He broke free from my lips and kissed away my tears.
His hands roamed over me slowly, both a comfort and a slow, hot torment.
A reminder of our grief and a blistering, bruising way through it.
Desmond removed my thin nightdress without a word, though his eyes seemed to speak volumes in the weak flicker of a low- burning candle. I clutched at him, starving for comfort and solidarity. For warmth and for touch. For any sensation with the power to obliterate thought. Memory.
After weeks of desperately trying to remember what I’d lost, I wanted nothing in that moment but to forget.
I touched every inch of him I could reach as he stripped off his own clothing, then I pulled him down over me, seeking to block out the entire world with his body. With his touch and the very force of his presence, like a shield brandished against all of existence.
I sank my teeth into his earlobe, and Desmond groaned. He parted my thighs and slid fully inside me with no preamble, urgency drawing a cry from deep in his throat.
My body tightened against him, holding him for a moment. He murmured senseless syllables into my ear, breath hot against my neck, and I arched upward, drawing him deeper, captive to my own desperate need.
He moved inside me wordlessly, slowly at first, then faster when I tucked my ankles at his back. When I dug my fingernails into his arms, demanding more. Faster. Deeper.
We moved in a frantic rhythm, trying to outpace grief and memory, and something deep inside me began to loosen—to unwind—even as that intimate tension steadily built.
Finally, Desmond drove himself into me frantically, and his need pushed me toward a blistering edge.
Fresh tears slid down my cheeks as release washed over me, and I clung to him with my arms, and my legs, and all of my very being.
I could not let go, even when he brushed hair back from my damp face and tried to withdraw.
When I refused to release him, he rolled us onto our sides and tucked my leg over his hip.
We held each other, my face buried in his shoulder, and I pretended I could neither interpret his rough sniffles nor feel the warmth of his tears as they soaked into the pillow.
Sleep claimed us both, and I clung to that release as well.
It was still dark when I woke again. Desmond was dressed, scribbling haltingly on a sheet of parchment with his back to me, but he turned the very moment I opened my eyes, as if he’d sensed my waking.
He smiled, but the expression was more pain than joy.
“I have to go,” he said. I opened my mouth to object, but he spoke over me.
“I’ll be back shortly. The Refectory has finished serving the evening meal, but I’ve requested that they pack something for us.
I will retrieve that, and I must stop by the lab to mix up an elixir for you as well. ”
I could not argue with his reasoning. “Mix up a double batch,” I said. “I cannot fathom how we will get through this, if not together.”
He nodded, and something heartbreaking flickered briefly behind his eyes. “Please do not leave this apartment.” And then he was gone.
I slept all evening in Desmond’s bed, waking only to drink the elixir and the broth he offered and to relieve my bladder.
By morning, I felt much better, physically, and though I still had no urge to rise from the bed, when he left to get more food at midday, I forced myself to tread several small circles around the room, to test my stamina.
Then I washed myself with the rag and the bowl of fresh water he’d left for me.
Clean again, and feeling stronger than I had since waking, I pulled fresh clothing from the bag Yoslyn had packed for me, and when my fingers brushed a familiar smooth wooden surface, I realized she had included my mother’s box.
When I opened it, I further understood that in the chaos of Wilder’s death and my injury, she’d thought to shove the box into my satchel and bring it to my room without anyone discovering how we’d managed to open a secret staircase beneath a floor that generations of the world’s best alchemists had trodden for more than a century and a half.
Dear, dear Yoslyn.
I’d been too distracted by grief to ask if they had expelled her, too.
I folded my worn frock, and as I was about to stuff it into my bag, I noticed in the corner of Desmond’s apartment a wooden crate that appeared to contain a bundle of material.
I knelt next to it, certain that must be where Desmond kept his soiled clothing, and was surprised to find one of my own handkerchiefs lying atop the pile, neatly folded, with my mother’s embroidery visible in one corner.
All of the material in the crate was folded, and though I couldn’t say it was all clean, precisely, very little of it appeared obviously soiled.
I removed each piece, one by one, and found several of my own handkerchiefs—two stained with blood—and three whose ownership I could not ascertain.
I found a pillowcase, neatly folded, an unfamiliar linen tunic, and an entire set of bedsheets, also of linen, though of a finer weave than the fabric on my own bed.
At the bottom of the crate, I found a journal I recognized from my own childhood.
My heart thumped as I opened it to see my mother’s handwriting.
It was a volume of notes from her time at the Alchemary, written in a mixture of my native tongue and her own, which she’d spoken to me when I was a child, until I’d become embarrassed by the differences between the other village children and myself.
As I was scanning the book, surprised by how much I could still read, the door opened behind me and Desmond stepped into his own chamber, carrying a fragrant cloth-wrapped bundle of food.
“Are these mine?” I asked as he set the bundle on the table in one corner of the room. “The things in this crate?”
“They are.” And though he looked pained by the admission, he hadn’t hesitated to admit that he’d had a crate of my belongings this whole time yet had never mentioned them.
He’d never lied to me, that I could tell. Not even when a little white lie might have made me more pleasant to be around.
“Why do you have these things? Why didn’t I have them?”
Desmond exhaled so long and hard that the loss of breath seemed to deflate him. “Will you sit and eat?” He pulled out a dining chair for me, then he sat in the other.
“Will you answer the question?” I returned as I sat, willing myself to ignore the scents of cheese and roasted meat, as well as the needy grumble from my stomach.
“I will, and though I’ve been dreading it for weeks, after all that’s happened, I suspect this discussion will come as a relief. Amber, your things are here because you left them here.”