Chapter 22 #2
It does little to hide the heat of his lips either.
The dress pushes against my mouth as he presses from the other side, not a kiss in the truest sense, but the closest we’ll come.
I tense, terror gripping me. I didn’t stop him in time.
I didn’t stop him and – his mouth is still moving.
A light brush against my upper lip. A firmer one on my lower.
Nothing bad is happening. I pull him closer, my mouth parting intuitively.
My tongue flicks out, but all I can taste is silk and a trace of perfume.
Astin grunts in frustration, palming my breast as the glide of his mouth turns more forceful, bruising in its intensity, and I whine against him, hating the barrier between us, needing it gone, needing –
The dress is ripped away. Astin mutters something about a stupid fucking thing. He tosses it to the floor, dipping his head low, no barrier between us now, just warm skin and mingled breaths and his lips parting above mine –
‘Stop!’ I push him off and scramble to the far wall, a shroud of horror descending over me.
Astin’s eyes widen. ‘Sorry. I wasn’t thinking. But we don’t have to stop, we can –’
‘Yes, we do!’ I might have controlled the Souleater side of me tonight, but I’ll never control my hex.
There’s no getting away from it. Wiping tears from my eyes, I thrust the black x on my arm towards him and let out what I suspect is a fairly unattractive half sob, half gargle.
‘We can’t do this. I could have killed you. ’
‘Of course we can,’ Astin insists. ‘Remember what I said when we were dancing? There are lots of things we can do that don’t involve kissing.’
The heat in his eyes has parts of me turning to liquid – as if they weren’t already – but I’ve spent the last two years ignoring those parts and the ensuing drought has yet to kill me. This. Cannot. Happen. That near-miss was the wake-up call I needed.
I shake my head. ‘Say I manage to avoid it tonight. Do you think I wouldn’t have an accident someday?
That I wouldn’t be so consumed by how much I l— like you, one day my body wouldn’t move on instinct, that the rush I feel when we’re close wouldn’t make me surge towards you and shower you in affection?
I don’t know the rules; I don’t know if kissing you on the cheek would kill you, and I’m terrified to find out.
I can’t risk it. I can’t lose someone else.
I can’t be the reason I lose someone else.
And I don’t want some half-life where I don’t get to experience every part of being with someone. I want all or nothing.’
He flinches, frowning. I suspect he’s going to argue I can control it, and I don’t want to hear it, don’t want him to try to convince me to risk his life, so I force a smile and say, ‘But it’s okay.
I resigned myself to this a long time ago.
We’ll . . . go back to being friends, and forget we .
. . It’ll be fine.’ My voice is growing squeaky. ‘It’ll be fine.’
His frown hasn’t diminished. That wasn’t my most convincing this is fine speech, so I try to smile wider, although my chin wobbles in protest.
Astin sighs. ‘You’re right. This was a mistake. I’m sorry, I – I let myself lose control. It won’t happen again.’
Oh. His lack of argument is a shard of glass slicing through my chest. The one time he decides to agree with me, and it’s the one time I wish he wouldn’t.
He could, at the very least, pretend to be upset.
I’m witnessing his shields go up in real-time, one after the other, until his expression is guarded and the fire in his eyes has frozen to ice, turning him into the Astin who barely speaks to me.
‘Well. Good.’ I fold my arms.
‘I’m sorry.’ He tugs my arms apart, before pulling at the hem of the blanket.
I waver, my heart warring with my brain.
My brain wins. I slide out of reach, and he sighs again, raking his hand through his hair before saying, ‘What you said just now? About . . . wanting it all. You deserve that. And you deserve someone who can feel those things too. It would never be like that between us.’
I cock my head. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean . . . I can’t give you what you want.’
None of what he’s saying is making any sense. I am fully aware he can’t cure me of my hex or fix my Souleater ways.
You deserve someone who can feel those things too.
My temple pounds. My vision blurs. What do I want, more than anything?
‘I want to be in love,’ I say. ‘I want someone to love me.’
A pause. ‘Exactly.’
The shard of glass pierces deeper until a part of me cracks open. I clutch the blanket like it’ll protect me from the barrage of words he’s throwing at me – except it’s one word, over and over, repeating in my mind, matter-of-fact and logical, exactly, and he sounds so sure it’ll never happen and –
‘But . . . you said . . .’ He said I’m beautiful. That he’s attracted to me. But wanting me isn’t the same as loving me. My breaths are rapid and sharp.
I leap from the bed, leaving him exposed, but somehow I’m the one torn in two. ‘You can’t go around telling me that I confuse you and make you feel things and touch me the way you did, only to tell me you don’t . . . that you’ll never . . .’
Will anyone, ever?
‘It isn’t like that,’ he huffs. ‘You’re not the only one who’s hexed, remember?’
This makes me pause. ‘What does that have to do with anything? What is your hex?’
Currently, I’m wondering if it’s an inability to think before he speaks.
I’d already told him this couldn’t happen, and yet he poured salt in the wound anyway.
Once again, I try to remember Eira’s riddle about his hex, and come up short.
Something about empty places, but what that’s got to do with him rejecting me, I fear I’ll never know.
He grinds his teeth, and his silence is answer enough. His hex is irrelevant. I’m the problem.
‘It’s because I’m a Souleater, isn’t it? You can close your eyes and pretend I’m not, but –’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ he says. It’s the firmest I’ve heard him. ‘If you still want to take the cure for yourself, fine, but it’ll change nothing between us. I told you, I don’t look at you and see a Souleater. I just see you.’
‘So why –’
‘Because of me. I’m the problem. I’m broken, Daisy; I can’t . . . I can’t love anyone.’
It’s his turn to wipe his face. He blinks, studying the wet droplet on his hand like he doesn’t recognise what it is, and he doesn’t smell spicy any more but – well, he’s a jumble again. Spice and citrus and salt and rose petals.
He really is confused. But confused doesn’t mean broken, or incapable of falling in love.
If I could just . . . there’s so much goodness in the way he smells.
My fingers twitch. I think of the way I brought that girl’s fear to the surface in the maze and imagine what I could bring to the surface in him.
Where she was sharp and bitter, he’d be soft and sweet.
I’m sure of it. I swallow an onslaught of saliva and take a step towards him. Another.
His shoulders rise and fall to the rhythm of my heart; quick, rapid bursts that only seem to intensify as I get closer.
I dig my nails into my palms, trying to hold my breath, but his scent is unavoidable now and all I can think is that I’m hungry, and he’d be so very, very lovely.
Nobody who was truly broken would ever smell this lovely.
I wish there was a way to make him see that, for him to share in the way he tastes.
My next step has more purpose now, my arm rising, fingers reaching out –
The sound of a throat clearing jerks my focus.
I jolt. Blink. Shake my head.
Astin is shifting, lying back on the bed, draping one arm over his eyes. ‘We should get some rest.’
I don’t move. Hexes, if he knew what I’d been thinking . . . well, he wouldn’t be confused any more. I’d be proving him right.
I scrunch my hands into the tightest fists they can make, reprimanding myself for nearly losing control, for ever thinking of Astin like that, before retrieving my nightdress from the floor.
But after slipping it over my head, my gaze falls on my cloak. One pocket bulges with the package containing Ozias’s golden potion, and when I breathe in Astin’s scent again, I can’t help but wonder what kind of magic there’d be in emotions that smell like his.