Chapter Thirteen - Evie #2
Hope surged again, and I pressed harder. The gold thickened, and for one sharp second, the marble thinned beneath my hand, not fully translucent, just enough that I thought I saw depth behind it instead of stone, a sliver of dark, the hint of the hidden space I’d just walked through.
Then warmth hit my back. And I froze. Because it wasn’t my power. It was Him.
It spilled into the room all at once, warm and honeyed, gilded and soft in that way that made me recoil. It came from beyond the veil this time, close enough that every nerve in my body locked before my mind had fully formed the thought.
“He’s here.” I breathed.
And the seam dimmed instantly. The gold snapped out across my hand and vanished.
I jerked my palm away from the wall and turned toward the veil. My heart slammed once, hard enough to hurt.
“Evie?” Mara whispered, alarmed now.
I barely heard her as the veil at the mouth of my alcove stirred.
I stumbled backward from the wall, wiping my hand against the side of my dress like that could somehow erase whatever had just happened.
I looked back at the wall one time, and it looked normal again.
Perfect and intact. Only my breathing was wrong.
It was too fast and too thin, and I could feel the charged aftertaste of the power still fizzing in my fingertips like a secret trying not to be caught.
I quickly put my hands behind my back as the veil breathed open, and I had exactly one second to decide what kind of helpless I was going to look like when He walked in.
He stepped inside with the same soft golden stillness He always wore, like the room belonged to Him so completely it adjusted itself before He even crossed the threshold. That golden warmth came with Him, blooming through the air until it coated the back of my throat.
I hated that I knew His presence by texture now.
His gaze found me immediately and He stood there for a moment, saying nothing. His eyes moved over my face, my posture, the room itself, the way a predator listens for a heartbeat trying to hide.
My pulse hammered.
Don’t look at the wall. Don’t look at your hands. Don’t look guilty.
I forced my shoulders to loosen even though every muscle in me had already coiled for a fight.
“Evie,” He said.
My name sounded wrong in His mouth. I couldn’t remember Him ever saying it so softly, or with that kind of intimacy.
I swallowed once. “Yes?”
His head tilted a fraction, studying me with that patient, unbearable attention that always felt less like affection and more like dissection.
“You are pale.”
No shit. I gave a weak little shrug and let my gaze drift toward the bathroom, not too obvious, just enough. “I got sick.”
Concern touched His features so smoothly it took effort not to roll my eyes. He crossed the room without hurry. I stayed exactly where I was, dropping my hands to my side, but every part of me wanted to step back and keep stepping until I hit a wall or fell through one.
“You are trembling,” He murmured.
You noticed, I wanted to say. Gold star.
Instead, I made myself laugh, thin and humorless. “Maybe being kept in a gilded cage isn’t great for the nervous system.”
His mouth curved. Not enough to be called a smile.
“Still sharp,” He said.
My fingers twitched at my side. I curled them into my palm before my body could betray me, and His gaze dropped.
For one horrible second, I thought He’d seen it, the faint tension still living in my hand, the way I was holding it too carefully.
But His eyes only lingered there, thoughtful, then lifted back to my face.
“Something is different,” He said.
The words slid cold through me.
I looked at Him blankly. “You mean besides the vomiting?”
But He didn’t answer right away. Instead, He took another step closer.
The room seemed to close the distance between us. I could feel the pull of His Light now, the same way you could feel static before a storm, gathering at the edge of your skin, lifting every tiny hair on my arms.
His hand rose, and I froze. He stopped just short of touching me, fingers hovering near my cheek, near enough that the warmth of Him pressed against my skin without landing.
“You have changed since I was last here,” He said softly.
My stomach dropped. Fuck.
I raised my chin but forced my expression to stay flat and confused if anything. “You mean when You tried to violate something that wasn’t Yours?”
A flicker crossed His eyes. I wasn’t sure if it was annoyance or maybe it was interest.
“Such possessive language,” He said.
My mouth went dry.
His gaze drifted, not to the wall, thank god, but through the room as if He were looking for something… evidence, maybe. But then He tilted his head as if He was listening to something just below the level of sound.
Then, I thought I saw it, a crease in His composure, faint and ugly. I could have sworn He looked uncertain. But it was a flicker and then gone. When He looked at me again, the softness in His face felt intentional.
“I only wanted to understand what tied you to him so completely,” He said.
It took everything I had not to laugh in His face. “No,” I said quietly. “You wanted to take it.”
His expression didn’t change. “Would that have been so terrible?”
The question was so calm, so sincere in its own monstrous way, that for a second I couldn’t answer at all.
Yes, I thought. Yes, You sick, fuck, it would have been. But if I said that, if I let myself answer honestly and said something too raw and too real, I wasn’t sure which I feared more, what it might unleash in me, or He might finally drop the soft golden act and show me what He really was.
So I met His gaze and said, “You tell me. You’re the one who had to reach into someone else’s chest to find out what real love feels like.”
I knew that landed when His eyes held mine for a long moment.
And then, I saw it again, that pulse of something beneath the gold ring etched around His irises.
There was rage, barely contained. But there was something thinner than that, more embarrassing.
The ache of being known in a place He did not want touched. That was… interesting.
He lowered His hand. “You are braver tonight,” He said.
My pulse gave a hard kick. Because that wasn’t a compliment. It was an observation.
I made myself shrug again. “Maybe I’m just running out of reasons to be polite.”
His gaze moved over me once more, slower now, lingering at my mouth, my throat, my hands, as if some part of Him was still trying to find the source of whatever had shifted. Then, at last, He stepped back, and the room seemed to exhale.
“You should rest,” He said.
I stared at Him. That was it? He was just going to leave?
No, not leave. Withdraw. There was a difference. He was pulling back not because He was done, but because He was thinking. And honestly, that scared me more.
At the curtain, He paused and looked over His shoulder. “If you feel unwell again,” He said, “tell the Votaries.”
I nearly smiled. “I’d rather die.”
His eyes warmed in a way that made my skin crawl. “No,” He said softly. “You wouldn’t.”
Then He left, and the veil fell shut behind Him as His light disappeared.
I stood there for exactly three seconds before my knees almost gave out. I grabbed the edge of the bed and sucked in a breath through my nose, then another, forcing the panic back down where it belonged.
On the other side of the wall, Mara whispered, “Evie?”
I pressed a shaking hand to my mouth and stared at the opening.
“He knows something,” I whispered back.