CHAPTER NINE #2
He gripped the armrests as her stare seared him straight down to his flimsy skeleton.
Something in the way she looked at him made him feel vulnerable like no one else could, like her soul reached inside his without effort.
Gods, it was unbearable, but it had always been like this between them. That push and pull.
His scabby knuckles strained, ready to split, so he released the armrests and tucked his hands under his thighs. “How much do you know?”
“More than I did before, no thanks to you.”
He couldn’t keep track of it all. Did she know about the marriage bond? Should he tell her? It seemed irrelevant at this point. “Please, just humour me.”
“Right, well”—she tapped a finger to her chin—“About ninety-five years ago, you and Izzy found me across the gate. Then we were engaged in a crazy blood oath.” She shot him a scornful glare. “To marry.”
Fuck. The fact she hadn’t heard it from him was so much worse.
She continued, “Then Destonne killed Iz, and I was gravely injured somehow. I guess I also … blew up Ellynne.” She studied the floor, her trembling hands clasped together, like she tried to hide the quake.
“Someone sent me back over the gate. I lost my memories and thought I was gone for two days, not two years. But I kept the scars as souvenirs. Lucky me.” She paused, like she sifted through her thoughts.
“You were in servitude to Destonne until he made a deal to free you and give your kingdom back in exchange for me. So you agreed to retrieve me, used me to try and bring Iz back, and then handed me over. Oh, and you kept this from me. For a month.” She gave him a bitter smile. “Did I miss anything?”
He didn’t know what to say, his tongue heavy and mouth dry. Yeah, he was an absolute prick for hiding this from her, but he’d convinced himself she wouldn’t have believed him anyway. The truth sounded insane each time he’d rehearsed it aloud, just to see if he could get it out. Make it feel real.
“That about sums it up,” he muttered. He ran a shaky hand through his hair. “Look, I—” He couldn’t meet her eyes as his conscience berated him. “I’ve done bad things, Emmery. I made mistakes—”
“Mistakes are trivial. Harmless. What you did was wrong.”
“I never meant to—”
“Where did you get it?” she snapped.
He cocked a brow. “What? The book?”
“Of course the book.”
Vesper’s stomach twisted. Not only did he owe her the truth, but if he had any hope of repairing this broken thing between them, his honesty might mend it. He sighed, then murmured, “Fionn asked me to give it to you.”
Her cheeks reddened again, but whether from anger or embarrassment he couldn’t decipher. “Why didn’t he give it to me himself?”
“I asked him to … stay away from you.” The confession spewed from him, like putrid water. He hated himself for it, but continued, “Seeing him would have tipped you off to everything going on. And I couldn’t let that happen.”
If looks could kill, he would have dropped dead. And not from hatred, but from the crushing disappointment in her eyes, which was so much worse.
“Wait. Wait a damn moment.” Her jaw clenched, and her hands formed into fists as she slotted each piece of information into its designated spot. “When did you get it?”
He couldn't look at her. “When we went to Malheim.”
Her scalding stare froze over, and the honeyed warmth left her gaze, like a smothered flame. Voice strangled, she said, “That was the day he overdosed.”
“It was.” The heavy admission dripped with remorse. In fact, he hadn’t stopped beating himself up over it since he’d heard the news. And though he’d wanted to bring Fionn to Castle Dusk, as much as he hated to admit it, Destonne was right: Fionn was in better care in Asaella.
Emmery looked like she wanted to wring his neck. Or drag her dagger across it. “Did you know? Did you know why he was there?” she demanded.
Vesper gritted his teeth. “I had no idea he was there for Bone Ash. I—I thought he’d taken my post, or maybe Destonne had sent him to spy, but—” He exhaled a long breath.
“Honestly, I wasn’t sure. It’d been so long since he’d relapsed.
And he was just carrying your book around in his satchel, like he thought he’d run into you. I assumed that was why.”
“Give me my fucking book. I’m leaving.” Venom clouded her eyes as she thrust out her hand.
That’s when Vesper saw it.
The rose scarred into her palm. Wrapped in thorns.
Thorns.
His stomach sank. Oh, fuck no. No, no, no.
This couldn’t be happening. This he couldn’t save her from. “What have you done, Emmery? You made a pactum? With him?”
“Don’t patronize me. You did the same thing.” She fisted her hand to conceal the scar.
Vesper’s racing heart climbed up his throat. “What did you promise him? Tell me. What is he making you do? What did he offer?” The questions spilled from him, and he couldn’t contain them. He—oh gods, Destonne was up to something, and he couldn’t possibly have good intentions. She was in danger.
“Unlike you, he’s helping me,” she snarled. “I need to retrieve my memories for this prophecy, and he’s giving me a way forward.”
“Emmery, I need you to listen to me.” She opened her mouth to rebut him, but he surged forward.
“I know he can be charming and make you think he’s not all bad, but he’s a talented liar, and you need to be careful.
He’s hurt people. He killed Izzy. He forced me into his service for decades.
I’ve seen him do some terrible shit.” He swallowed hard.
“And I want to help you with this prophecy. You didn’t need to sell your soul to him, I could have—”
Emmery sprang up from the chair and snapped, “Would you stop pretending like you care about me?”
His patience teetered on the edge of something hot and angry and wild. “Would you stop acting like nothing that happened between us mattered?”
“It was a lie,” she said. Her voice quivered, like a dandelion in a storm. She tore her gaze away and squeezed her eyes shut. “All of it. It was all a lie.”
“It wasn’t! I meant every fucking thing I said to you. Every bloody word! Don’t you dare lie to yourself. You know I meant it.”
Her muted vestige pulsed in a sad golden halo, like a puff of pollen, not its usual starlight. He was going to uppercut Destonne.
“You handed me over like I was yours to trade!” Her eyes sprang open. “If you cared about me, you wouldn’t have done that. You threw me into a cell like some brute!”
“That wasn’t me! That was the compulsion from that bloody pactum.
I would never hurt you like that. And I do care about you, whether you choose to believe it or not.
” His fists tightened and the scabs along his knuckles split open again.
“Look, I didn’t tell you about our past because I …
fuck, I didn’t know how, Emmery. I’m not good at any of this.
I just—I fucked up. I really fucked up.”
Vesper drew a breath to slow his pulse and calm his anger.
His magic thrummed with his heart, skated along his flesh, and he released a wisp of it from his fingers.
The relief provided a morsel of clarity, like a sunbeam that burned through dense fog.
His wind rustled the papers strewn atop the table and knocked open the cover of a beige book about Ellynne law he’d cracked yesterday.
Emmery blinked at the expression of magic.
“When I saw you for the first time, after all those years, you were like a … stranger. I don’t know how else to explain it.” Blood pricked his knuckles as the scabs split further. “I almost told you. Too many times. That night at the inn, I wanted to tell you so fucking badly.”
“Then why didn’t you?” she hurled back at him.
“I couldn’t.” He stared at the ground until the words spilled out of him.
“It killed me all those weeks lying to you, but I thought it was for the best. I thought that when we brought Izzy back, she could override the pactum. Somehow, I don’t know, stop the compulsion, but things went to shit so quickly—” He sighed, and his head fell into his hands.
When he looked up at her, tears stung the back of his eyes.
“I never wanted to hurt you. Don’t you know that? ”
He willed his words to carry weight so he could fix this, or at least make it up to her. Anything. Anything at all.
Her stare hardened. “I don’t. I barely even know you.”
The words formed an arrow and shot straight through his throat. Bleeding out right there would have hurt less than taking the blow.
“Even though you claim you didn’t want to, you still lied to me.” Her eyes grew glossy as she said, “You acted like I was nothing to you.”
“That’s not true.” He shook his head. “You were never nothing to me.”
Her brows drew together. “But clearly what we had wasn’t enough. Or you wouldn’t have done it.”
“I thought you betrayed me. You set fire to my home. Fuck, Emmery, I still don’t know why you did it. If it was intentional.”
She flinched.
He couldn’t take back the words once he said them. They hung in the air between them, suspended in accusation. He knew she didn’t know either, but she couldn’t have done it on purpose … could she?
Hurt twisted her mouth as her voice shattered. “How could you say that?”
His ribcage split down the middle and bared his heart, so vulnerable it ached.
He didn’t know how to close the gap between them, to pull her back to him.
At the inn, she’d looked at him like nothing had changed, and he would do anything to get that back.
But the space between them seemed to grow by the second.
She swiped angrily at her eyes. Gods, he hated it when she cried. It was one of the most heart-wrenching things to watch, and he was the source of her tears. Again.
He’d never seen her like this, not even before they crossed the gate. She was shattered, like the mirrors surrounding them.
Helplessly, he studied her. The pain in his hand was forgotten, the agony now centered in his chest. “I know you don’t remember,” he said, softly. “You don’t remember who you were, or what we were. But I do. I remember it all.”