Chapter Thirty-Seven #3
He frowned, his forehead creasing. “I’m…
I’m not sure,” he replied uncertainly. “Somewhere secure, if not even Clio Lavoie has been able to locate it…” His words drifted off.
For a moment, his demeanor seemed to shift, as if struck by a thought—but the idea, whatever it was, passed as rapidly as it had appeared.
Sharply, he turned to me. “It doesn’t matter,” he said more firmly. “Open it.”
I didn’t wait to be asked again. Reaching out, I took the knocker in hand and—with all the force I could muster—tugged.
Nothing. The door refused to budge, the lock holding firm. All too aware of Eliot watching me carefully in my periphery, I shook my head and pulled again.
After a minute, he spoke. “Lovett, open the door.”
I lowered my arm as, next to me, Eliot shifted impatiently.
“I…I can’t,” I said.
A noise of disbelief emitted from his throat. “What do you mean, you can’t?”
“I mean I can’t,” I replied, turning to face him…. In proof, I tried a third time, then stepped back as, despite my efforts, the door remained stubbornly closed.
“I can’t do it,” I murmured, and reluctantly glanced at Eliot. “We need the key.”
He met my eyes. “The key that Sybil apparently stole,” he clarified flatly. “Which Bastian Alaire himself has thus far failed to recover.”
His expression was inscrutable. Holding his stare, I nodded.
There was a beat of tension in which I wondered, sincerely, whether he was angry with me—if, for all his talk about Weavers and silkwitches, now, when he needed my Wit, he would force me to keep pressing, regardless of my claims. His gaze hardened; then he was stepping back.
He let out a great breath. “Well…” Passing a hand over his head, he tugged at his curls. “It’s fine,” he finished a minute later. “We’ll look for it tomorrow. Perhaps Sybil hid it in her room, as my sister did her things—someplace private where Bastian wouldn’t have noticed.”
Turning, he strode toward the bridge, evidently expecting me to follow—yet rather than do so, I paused. The moonless door lingered in the corner of my vision, its gilded knocker winking tauntingly. Guilt pitted my stomach as I regarded it, made worse by Eliot’s kindness. I was letting him down.
Sensing my hesitancy, Eliot looked over his shoulder at me, his expression softening. “It’s fine, Lovett,” he repeated, his tone gentle. “The competition isn’t over yet.”
Entreatingly, he held his hand out in invitation—and, giving in, I went to him. I allowed him to help me onto the bridge without meeting his gaze, then dropped his hand once we were both steady.
As the door disappeared to our backs, I felt not disappointment but a deep fountain of self-loathing.
So this was what it meant to be truly powerless.
Eventually, we neared the far shore of the cavern again, the archway that marked our entry point rising in front of us. I rushed to keep up as Eliot hastened his steps, the bridge slippery with condensation beneath me.
“There we are.” Alighting onto the stone, Eliot angled himself back toward me, grinning. “Safe and—”
A violent splash interrupted him—loud and incredibly close. Above us, the tip of a stalactite had broken away, barreling into the water only a few feet to my left. I lurched around as it pierced the surface, startled by the noise.
The sudden movement was my undoing. Horrified, I felt my feet slide against the wet stone, unbalancing me and tipping me over—into the icy lake.
The water closed noiselessly over my head, viciously cold, as if I’d been thrust out into the nothing-space between the stars—that infinite, sunless black.
Instantly, my veins flooded with ice, my thoughts shattering like a saucer tossed to the floor.
My eyes had blown wide with shock, but they may as well have been closed for the way the ebony water rendered me sightless.
The lake consumed all sense of distance; I did not know anything beyond my own body, and even my grip on that was fading, my limbs losing feeling one by one, as if falling gradually to sleep…
Vaguely, I heard something break through the surface of the water above me—a far-off plunk like a lobbed stone. A hand wrapped around my wrist, gripping me tight and then jerking me harshly upward until at last, gasping, I took in air again.
Eliot’s arms wrapped around my waist, holding me securely as I pitched forward, coughing up water.
Silty moisture burned in my nose and eyes, stinging and acidic, the lake as hot as bile when it rose back up my throat.
I spat out as much of it as I could, only half aware of Eliot pulling me roughly back onto the rock shelf where the entry arch stood, collapsing heavily onto his knees as he followed after me.
He laid me down on the stone, pitching forward as he did, so that his elbows were braced on either side of my head, his face hovering directly over mine.
Through the chills that racked me, I noticed that he was shaking badly—his shoulders trembling, his chest heaving as he panted above me.
We remained that way for almost a minute, him gathering his strength, me lying useless and prone beneath him, wishing for a way to help, until, gritting his teeth, he managed, “Do you…have anything…to say?”
With some effort, he lifted his chin and glared at me, his green eyes narrowed and keen.
His curls were plastered to his skin, beads of moisture collecting at his temples and on the bridge of his nose, dripping onto me like sweat.
I did not move to wipe the droplets away, only stared up at him before gesturing weakly at the right sleeve of my stolen uniform.
It had caught on something in the water as he’d hauled me free—a jut of rock, invisible in the darkness—and bore a several-inches-long tear, like a scar along my forearm.
“You’ve ruined my outfit.”
He scowled reflexively, his knuckles plowing into the stone by my head—and then, just like in my room, we were both laughing, our breaths coming in shallow, shuddering gasps.
At once, the entire situation seemed ridiculously, hilariously absurd—me falling into the lake, him hauling me out like a rag doll—like a scene from a melodrama.
My amusement thawed me, melting the freeze that had taken hold of my muscles as I grinned, my cheeks sore, up at him.
Quieting, Eliot stroked my forehead, where a tendril of damp hair had fallen into my eyes. “You’ll survive, then?”
His tone was affectionate, his touch tender, and I resisted the urge to angle my chin and lean into it. “I’ll survive.”
He bit down on the corner of his mouth, shaking his head.
In the wake of our laughter, the space between us seemed to tighten, our position—him crouched over me, his fingers still knotted in my hair—taking on new implications, new meanings.
I should have sat up, should have at least looked away from him, but when I tried, I found that I desperately did not want him to move.
He blew an exhale through his nostrils, his breath washing gently over me.
I stiffened as, delicately, his thumb grazed my temple, the motion exploratory—testing.
“Lovett,” he said. There was a restraint to his speech that I hadn’t heard before, a trepidation, as if he were reaching for a resting bird, preparing for it to flutter away.
“The night of the ball—you said I never should have chosen you. Did you mean that?”
I swallowed, a flush warming my skin. “I assumed you would’ve tried your best to forget everything about that night.”
His finger stilled. “Is that what you’ve done? Forgotten it?”
The pad of his thumb pressed gently against my head, and somehow it was like the barrel of a gun, preventing me from lying. Even so, I surprised myself when I replied honestly.
“No,” I whispered. “I’ve tried, but…no.”
His shoulders dipped. “You haven’t answered my question.”
“Because it’s ridiculous, Eliot.” I shifted beneath him, suddenly defensive—eager to get out from under the magnifying lens of his inquiries.
“Of course we shouldn’t have been partners.
Just consider the past weeks—you and I have both betrayed each other several times over.
I should be the very last person you trust, and vice versa. ”
“And now?”
My lips had already parted in preparation for another verbal sparring match, but I closed them, glaring. “Excuse me?”
“If you were given another opportunity to do so,” Eliot asked, “would you betray me now?”
He’d removed his hand, laying it back on the rock so that we were no longer touching, yet still, I felt his gaze as if it were physical, holding all of me at once. A combustible anger sparked to life within me, rage catching swift and fast.
“I am…I hurt everyone,” I replied tersely, and once I’d begun, I found I was unable to stop.
“I stole from my own brother. And I wish to the Sisters that you would stop looking at me as though I am redeemable in some way. I…” I broke off, tears blurring my vision, the force of his stare abruptly too much.
“You cannot save me, Eliot,” I murmured.
“I am not a good person. If I had to choose between the two of us, I would choose myself, over and over again.”
Eliot regarded me without speaking, the echo of my answer resounding off the high bowl of the cavern ceiling like a chorus. Then, after a minute, he sat back.
I squeezed my eyes shut, beating down a surge of emotion. In just another second, I would hear him leaving; I knew this—had wanted this, I’d thought—and yet now that the moment had arrived, I couldn’t make myself bear witness to it.
“I think you’re wrong.”
I opened my eyes, startled. “What?”
Eliot was kneeling in front of me, his expression resolute. “I am just as selfish as you are,” he said. “And if the choice were given to me—between myself and you, as you put it—I know who I would choose.”
He stood, brushing the grit from his trousers.
“You are far too interesting to be good, Lovett.”
Without glancing back at me, he stomped off, toward the archway and the tunnel I knew lay behind it. “Come on. You’re soaked through—let’s get you to bed.”