Chapter 4 #3
Jesstin shifted his hand higher on his face when one of the Virtues slowed and furrowed her brows at him.
“Interested in her? When have you ever known me to be interested in anyone?” He’d never slept with a woman, hadn’t even entertained a relationship with one.
Once, Gennady had understood the reasons, even been sympathetic.
Now he used Jesstin’s weak points as weapons.
“You may be damaged goods, but you’re still a man.”
“It’s Considine you need to be concerned about.”
Gennady’s hard expression turned placid. “She’s here.”
He disappeared in a flash, leaving Jesstin feeling like he’d just been slapped with no chance to retaliate.
She’s here, he heard again in his head and conducted a frantic survey, skipping over groups of ordinary women and men, of Virtues flirting their way through the tables.
He couldn’t find her anywhere and had decided Gennady was messing with him when he spotted a lean figure buried under a man’s cloak hovering near the arched passage between the entrance and the main floor.
The hood fell back. Soft waves, messy from the long ride but combed out this time, pooled around her rosy face. She’d seemed cool and confident the night before, despite the circumstances of her return, but standing in a house of questionable esteem, she immediately stood out in her uncertainty.
Maybe Gennady was right, and Jesstin did have a thing for her, but it wasn’t a problem, for either of them. He wouldn’t marry, wouldn’t have children. Any fancy he had for her was toothless, a problem for his left hand on long nights.
Jesstin started to stand and signal her, but she noticed him first. Her insecurity evaporated as she headed his way.
“You came,” he said as he gestured for her to sit. Too late, he realized he should have pulled her chair for her.
“You seem surprised.”
“And your shadow? He didn’t seem pleased with my suggestion.” Which was precisely why he’d given it.
Elloven smirked with a glance at the door. “I left when he wasn’t home.”
“Snuck out, did you?” Jesstin’s eyes widened in mock surprise.
She giggled. It was not a sound he’d expected, and it was delightful. “Like a deviant child.” Her mirth disappeared. “I needed air. One thing about Whitechurch, I could always wander. Never for long, but sometimes it was long enough.”
“You can’t wander at Nightwood?”
“And be murdered by forest nymphs?” It was her turn to play shocked.
Jesstin laughed, already more relaxed than he’d been all night. In a while, actually. “Now that you’re home, you can toss his ass out.”
“My mother would never allow it.” Elloven signaled the barmaid and ordered an ale. She looked at Jesstin to see if he wanted a refresh, but he shook his head and fingered his untouched mug. “So you come to Mythgarde a lot then?”
“Most nights.” He almost took a sip of the now-warm drink to uphold the act, but something about her made the deception feel unnecessary. Instead he pushed it to the side. Emboldened, he told her the truth. “I own an establishment on the Row. The Azure Haunt.”
Elloven’s mouth fell open in amusement. “You’re a proprietor?”
Jesstin nodded once.
“What an intrigue you are.” She was still watching him when she took her first drink. “So why are you here, at...”
“The Ivory Rogue? This end of the Row is where most newcomers begin their nights.”
She grinned from the corner of her mouth. “You were waiting for me?”
Jesstin shrugged, neither willing to commit to it nor refute it.
“How did you know I’d come?”
“I didn’t.”
“I see.” Elloven’s mouth furrowed. “So, am I the only one who’s curious about these young women drifting around in white gowns?”
“They’re all curious about the Virtues, but they read the rules when they entered.”
“What rules?”
“Tell me you’re joking.”
“Not much for rules.”
Jesstin chuckled. Everything she said added another layer of novelty, offering not only a window into who she was but also a door.
“They’re meant to represent ‘purity’ and are forbidden to touch.
You can speak to them, flirt with them, but a misplaced hand could land you on the gallows.
Most just pretend they don’t exist. You might say they’re a test for newcomers.
Can they handle the rules of the Row, or have they lapped too deep at the well of society’s expectations? ”
Elloven absorbed this for a moment. Her eyes never left his, which was as disconcerting as it was alluring. Most women would look away. She wasn’t raised to be artless, so it was a choice. “Would it be a fair guess that you have no such representations of purity at the Azure?”
He snorted, shaking his head. “We maintain no illusions at the other end of this road.”
“Illusions are just pretty lies.” She took another drink. “I want to go there.”
Jesstin cocked his head. “Now?”
Her shoulders lifted. “Why not?”
“No reason, just ah...” Why was he hedging? He’d invited her with the hope she’d show up, and she had. “Why did you come, Lady Elloven?”
Her face screwed tight in disgust. “Just Elloven.” She dropped his gaze finally, turning her eyes on her hands, wrapped around her mug. “You invited me, Jesstin.”
“I suggested—”
“You invited me,” she asserted and turned her piercing eyes back on him. “Can we not be direct with one another? Be real? It seemed we could in the carriage.”
Trust me, Elloven, you do not want me to be real with you. “Yeah. Of course.”
“I don’t plan on staying in Riverchapel long. My people—my mother’s people—have something I need. Information. About myself.”
“The mountain witches?” Did Elloven know the connection between the Seven Sisters and Mythgarde? Was that why she’d come?
She didn’t laugh. “Mother’s been elusive about who and what they are my whole life. But they know who I am. What I am. Until I know what they know, there’s nothing here for me.”
“Not even the amorous Considine?”
“Don’t be cute.”
Jesstin grinned. After a moment, so did she.
“If you want to understand your magic better,” he replied, “it’s only a short ride to the Sepulchre.”
Elloven shot him a bracing look. “There’s nothing the Sepulchre can tell me about this magic.”
He’d heard plenty about the mysterious men and women of the Seven Sisters in the Westerlands.
Mythgarde had been built by those same people, but most of it seemed like folklore.
Clearly she believed there was more to it, but that surfaced the question he’d had since the moment he’d slipped into the carriage across from her. “You wanted to be real, yeah?”
She nodded.
“You’re acting awfully calm for someone who just annihilated four men.”
“Five.”
His brows fused.
“It was five. Let’s at least be accurate when speaking glibly of the dead.” She suddenly tilted her head and smiled at a passing Virtue. “Is it really true they’d kill someone for touching them?”
“You gonna try it, test it out?”
“Just wondering.”
“Happens a few times a year. Enough to be a deterrent, not enough for drunken imbeciles to rein it all the way in,” Jesstin replied, shifting. He still wanted her answer.
She nodded to herself, then turned back toward him. “You were looking for remorse in me.”
“Maybe not remorse, but... something.”
“I feel at peace actually.” She leaned back in her chair. The candles in the chandelier danced shadows over her pale face. It occurred to him he’d so far seen her as not quite tangible, an idea of someone rather than a whole person. “If they came for me, and I died tomorrow, I’d die in peace.”
Jesstin balked. “How morose.”
She lowered her gaze. “I don’t know why you asked why I came here tonight. You already know.”
“I—”
“No, you do, Jesstin, because it’s the same reason you’re here. Out there, we’re whoever they say we are. But in here? We’re whomever we choose to be, and we can choose differently hour to hour, day to day. I see the appeal. If I didn’t have more pressing needs, I might spend all my time here too.”
Jesstin did not at all endorse the flutter in his chest at the idea of seeing her every night, nor the pit that followed, knowing it would never happen.
He could see, almost taste, what it would be like to wake up next to her, the sun beaming across their bedspread.
.. to join her in the kitchen as they pretended they knew a thing about cooking, feeding one another bites of food that barely passed muster, and laughing together at the silliest things only the two of them could understand. Fuck everyone else.
It was better that she was leaving. Even if.
.. even if she was as enchanted by him as he was with her, there was nothing he could offer her, and the most important thing he knew about Elloven Hawthorne was that the last man she needed was the one who had killed her brother—even if he had been a predator. She deserved so much better.
She was right. She’d never find what she was looking for in Riverchapel.
Stay here, with me. We’ll figure it out together rested right upon the tip of his tongue, but the words were poison and could never be said.
He shouldn’t have been thinking them either.
“I belong here,” he said, the closest he could come to the full truth.
“I’ve accepted that. My sister, on the other hand. ..”
Elloven smiled, a soft, warm gesture that made him even more conflicted. “I remember Rhiain. She was impetuous but always kind. Asterin is a good man. You’re fortunate to have them in your life, regardless of all the rest.”
All the rest. He almost laughed. “I am. But they could never understand.”
“No, no one could, right?”
His mouth hitched. “Do you actually want to see the Azure?”
Elloven’s hands swept down her face. “Is there anything about the way I’m looking at you that would suggest I’m not serious?”
He laughed. “I have to warn you—”
She gestured for him to stop. “I wish you wouldn’t. I like surprises, if they’re good.”
Jesstin smirked. “Depends on your definition of ‘good.’”