Chapter Thirty-Eight #2
It was like with my Wit: a twist of the knob, a single sentence, and a new realm of possibility opened up.
I watched as, across from me, Eliot loosened, his elbows sliding forward as if all throughout his body, the hard cords of his muscles were unclenching.
When he raised his eyes to mine again, his features were stark with a hungry determination I recognized—I had seen it before, in the young village boys from my hometown who gathered at the cliffs near the river.
Preparing to leap.
“You know,” Eliot said, and the silky tenor of his voice was like a finger trailing down my spine. “I’ve been around silkwitches all my life. The gifts your kind are blessed with…They don’t really affect me much anymore. But you…”
He broke off, his speech catching.
“Looking at you sometimes, Lovett, it’s painful ,” he said.
“The worst bit is, I know Noé can see it. I’ve been so obvious, it’s like I’m thirteen years old again, and I don’t know what to do .
” With a rush of breath, he slouched forward, dropping his head into his hands.
“I just don’t know what to do about you, Lovett. ”
My heart had risen to my throat, and now it lingered there, lodged like a bit of bone. Only partially conscious of my movements, I leaned toward him, letting my fingers graze his knee. “Eliot…”
He lifted his chin, eyes sparking as his hand found mine, tentatively took it—
Abruptly, I was clutched by an overwhelming sense of consequence—the impression that if I allowed our contact to progress any further, all my control, my entire being, would unravel like a spool of yarn.
I was so close to becoming Noé’s bride—to a life of safety and riches.
I’d passed the Alaires’ tests; against all odds, I’d won him over.
Did I truly wish to throw everything away now, just because I thought myself in… ?
I refused to name the emotion. Instead, I jerked my arm back. “I’m sorry.”
He didn’t look surprised by my sudden rejection, a mild disappointment settling across his features.
Withdrawing his own hand, he ran it through his curls, his attention on me all the while.
“Why do you insist on denying yourself?” he asked.
The firelight played off his face as he spoke, bathing him in its uneven glow.
“I have never met someone so determined to keep themselves from achieving even a modicum of pleasure.”
I didn’t glance away, though his scrutiny was like a razor. “What I deny cannot deny me.”
His expression softened. “Lovett,” he said in a hushed, almost sympathetic tone. “You are a fool if you believe I am capable of withholding from you anything you may ask of me.”
I stiffened as he let out another sigh, this one more like a groan.
“Tell me what you need me to say, please,” he said, and I was startled to realize how frayed his demeanor had become, as if someone had chipped away all his neat edges. “I cannot—I cannot go on like this. It is torture.”
One more trial. I tried to fixate on it—on the cloister-free future I’d worked so hard for, which now hung as near as an apple from a bough—but it slipped away from me as if snatched by a current. “Tell me how long,” I heard myself ask.
I didn’t clarify my meaning, but he understood.
He always did. “How long?” he repeated, straightening.
“Since the first day—the day my friend told me of your theft, and I wondered what kind of girl would be cunning enough and cruel enough to devise such a scheme.” When my brow furrowed skeptically, he smirked.
“It’s true,” he insisted. “You’re so terrifyingly smart, Lovett.
I speak with you, and I know that you could kill me if you wanted—there’ve been times in the past weeks that I wondered if you would—and I can hardly bring myself to care.
My self-preservation…It seems to vanish as soon as you appear. ”
Eliot shifted closer, further into the hot liquid glow of the firelight. Though the distance between us had barely shrunk by an inch, the change felt notable, dramatic. A boundary, disrupted.
“Turn me away if you wish,” he murmured. “But I beg you, tell me now if you desire me to go. I…I am not like Noé, Lovett. I have always lacked a certain gentleman’s restraint, especially in regard to those things I love. And I can no longer pretend that I do not love you.”
A curious buzzing had filled my ears as he’d been speaking, and now, at his admission, it rose to deafening levels.
I felt sick, not with his words but with the truth they forced me to confront: that I loved him, too, hopelessly and desperately, and I could not admit it, and so I kissed him instead.
It was different from our first kiss. Then, we had been driven solely by our anger; now, there was only relief.
He pulled me eagerly into his lap, a slight tremble in his fingers as they roved over my back.
His breath was shaky as it gusted over me, ragged with disbelief, and it threatened to undo me completely, like a hard yank on my corset strings.
I melted into him, one arm thrown round his neck, my other hand laid flat on his chest, his heart thudding erratically against my palm.
Only the thin fabric of my nightgown and his shift separated us; I could feel his skin, could feel the quiver of his muscles as they shuddered beneath me.
When his thumb brushed over the end of my braid, he paused, rearing back to look at me.
“You left your hair down.”
His eyes were hooded, his irises dark. I watched as he wrapped the tip of my plait around his finger, then leaned forward, bringing his mouth back to mine. “I could not make myself put it up.”
He laughed, a breathy, low chuckle against my lips as he drew me more firmly toward him. “To be honest,” he said, “I have always preferred it this way.”
And then my eyelids were fluttering closed again, and his hands were on me, and then—
I forgot all else.
—
I woke later, cradled against his chest, the fire burned down to its embers and dawn blushing through the window.
Blinking the weariness from my eyes, I tilted my chin back and looked up at him.
His head was lolling against the back of the armchair, his lips slightly parted in slumber.
My stomach twinged dully as I took in his peaceful expression, his face unlined with worry, his arms wrapped loosely around me as he slept.
When he was in repose, I could see the sorcerer in him even more clearly; his beauty was striking and apparent, the rising sun outlining him with a honeyed glaze.
Carefully, I wriggled out of his hold, moving slowly so as not to wake him. One sleeve of my nightgown had slipped from my shoulder during the night; I adjusted it as I stood, crossing quietly to the door. When I reached it, I took a breath before placing my hand on the doorknob.
It was cowardly, leaving him in this manner. Already, I felt a tendril of self-loathing curling at the bottom of my stomach. And yet I knew I could not stay.
If I remained, if I saw him grinning at me in the daylight, he would break me. I would be his completely, unable to tear myself away. And he…He had already admitted, he would never claim me. Would never take me as his wife.
He loved me, but he would still send me to the cloisters. A place I refused to go.
“Lovett.”
I paused halfway across the threshold at the sound of his voice. Glancing back over my shoulder, I faced him. His clothes were rumpled, his hair mussed with sleep, but his eyes were alert.
“Will you marry him, if he asks?” Eliot said simply. “Will you be his bride?”
His expression was inscrutable; he watched me blankly, the two of us locked in a familiar standoff. Yesterday, under the obscuring blanket of night, I had given in to him.
Today, I would not.
I held his gaze for a moment longer, unspeaking, then turned and slipped silently out the door.