CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN #2
“Are you truly so surprised? After permanently embedding your fingers into my headboard, you must like me at least a little.” Then he gave her one of his sunshine smiles. She melted. Her cheeks burned as he took her face in his hands and said gently, “It’s too early. Come back to bed.”
Emmery groaned, feeling weak. So, so weak. “I don’t think … that’s—”
“Come back to bed with me, angel.” He kissed her, slowly, deeply, soulfully, as if his desires stretched for hers. His thumb swept over her birthmark, touching that messy bit of her she loathed and making it into something beautiful. “Or do I need to persuade you?”
She nipped at his bottom lip. “I always need persuading.”
He picked her up by her backside and carried her to the bed. Her legs wrapped around him as she giggled against his lips, knowing this was entirely wrong, but unable to stop herself.
Emmery woke hours later, now noon from the sun’s point in the sky. Evidently, her brush with death had made her impossibly tired. She gazed out the window and cuddled Aera who’d joined her once more.
She couldn’t get used to this: waking up in Destonne’s bed, the view out his window, his silken sheets, and his knee-weakening kisses.
But when she spotted the note on his pillow, her face split into a grin.
And atop it sat his crystal. Gingerly, she stretched, plucked the neatly folded paper from his pillow, and slung the crystal around her neck. She fiddled with it as she read.
Emmery read the note. Read it again. And again.
Memorized the curve and shape and sound of every letter.
And each time, her chest wound tighter and she couldn’t fucking breathe. She tried to convince herself this was a coincidence but as she studied the note, and the unmistakable writing, her heart rose in her throat.
She snatched The Nameless Book from the nightstand and wrenched it open, then shot to her feet, her legs too antsy to remain still.
With the note clutched in one hand and the book in the other, all the air expelled from her lungs.
The D’s were looped through, and the O’s spliced through the middle.
Even the T’s had a distinct lilt as if his accent bled onto the page.
And she’d never seen handwriting that similar before, unless maybe they were taught that way in the north, but—
Holy gods.
She sank to the floor and stared down at the note alongside the book. Because this could mean a few things. If it was a coincidence, which it very well could be, it meant nothing, but if it wasn’t—
This could be everything. It would mean she hadn’t fallen off her path and listening to her heart had paid off. Her hands shook as she flipped through it.
Zyphira said this book had to do with her implexus, not that he wrote it. She’d only assumed that. Surely Dez would have recognized his own handwriting. Or had he known it was his all along? And if so, why had he kept it from her?
Her stomach sank, that heavy, blackened pit widened within her, and she descended into dark thoughts that decimated any shred of happiness.
To find the truth, there was one sure way.
Emmery snapped the book shut, stalked over to the bed, and dug the vial out from where she stashed it. Then she ran to her bedroom. Aera sprinted after her and tried to trip her on the way.
When she got to her bedroom, she threw open her wardrobe. Her hands shook as she pried up the loose board and retrieved the vial of water from the Whispering Spring Talia had given her.
Numbly, Emmery rose and sat on her bed. Her breaths stalled. How would she feel if it glowed? Or if it remained black?
Her desires rang clear, and if the test produced the opposite result, she might crumble to pieces.
Followed by a drop of Destonne’s blood, she pricked her finger and bled into the bottle, then whispered the word engraved on the side, though it fell ominously off her tongue, like a curse inflicted upon herself.
As she waited, an ache bloomed in her chest. Darkness consumed her, and she sank into the abyss.
Because nothing happened.
With a trembling hand, she set the bottle on the floor. If Dez had written the book, he had explaining to do, and she feared she wouldn’t like his answers.
Maybe they had been playing different games all along. If he was the lion waiting with open jaws, she was his naive gazelle desperate to be tasted. He’d observed her loneliness, whispered some pretty words, and she had made it so pathetically easy for him to get under her skin.
Emmery swiped at her stinging eyes and tucked the vial and Talia’s gift back in her wardrobe. Then she steeled her expression, and left her room. She didn’t know where to go, what to do, and she wandered the halls. Dez wouldn’t be back for a few days, which left her plenty of time to spiral.
Lost in thought, she nearly ran smack into Fionn and Cyrilla.
To her surprise, Cyrilla’s eyes were red, as if she hadn’t slept or possibly, had been, of all things, crying.
“What happened?” Emmery choked out. Fear settled into her heart as she imagined the worst. “Did something—”
Fionn snatched her into a hug and said, “We didn’t want to worry you after all you went through. But there are things you need to know.”
“What are you talking about?” She wrestled out of his hold.
Fionn sighed and crossed his arms. He looked good, his bronze eyes bright, healthy weight on his thin frame, and colour to his cheeks. But his weary expression twisted her gut. “You should sit down,” he said.
Emmery pressed her palms into her blurry eyes.
Cyrilla snatched Emmery’s hand, not the one with the rose pactum, but with the red carved flesh. Her first instinct was to wrench away, but Cyrilla studied it with such intensity Emmery froze, her blood icy.
And then, the ground gave out beneath her as Cyrilla hissed, “Deimos desist, what has he done?”