Chapter 52 #2
Familiar floral perfume overwhelmed my senses, dragging me out of the intoxicating fog of Emmerick’s fresh scent of rosemary.
Leonna pressed a kiss to my cheek before she slid in beside me, hip to hip.
“That is so you can get into the house later,” she said. “I’ve missed our little talks.”
I flipped the skeleton key between my fingers and glanced over at the brunette. She wore a flattering red gown and struck me with the warmest, most welcoming deep-brown stare. Full lips. I certainly had a type.
She was exquisite—but not who I wanted.
“I have too,” I said. It wasn’t quite a lie.
Yet so much had changed since the days I’d frequented her establishment.
We’d been friendly on and off for a century. Though my visits had become less frequent and then altogether stopped after I’d found a mirror in a musty old ruin.
A coincidence. I swallowed hard.
We wrote each other every so often. They’d restaffed after the “incident.” I never knew what had happened. There was a reason—she’d been paid off by the crown to remodel and keep quiet.
Despite our recent distance, Leonna might know me as well as Krait. Maybe better. Certain truths were easier spoken in the darkness of a pleasure hall chamber to a woman who had little to gain from listening to me.
“You know I can always use a distraction,” I mused quietly.
I slipped the key into the bosom of my dress. When I glanced back out toward the dance floor, Emmerick was watching us. His expression turned steely, and his muscles tensed. She followed my gaze, and a knowing smile etched across her pretty lips.
“Interesting. It’s been a long time—don’t be a stranger,” she said. “Though if you are a stranger, he looks like a worthy reason.”
Leonna wandered back toward the women at the punch bowl.
Two worlds were colliding.
On one side, my old life, brimming with debauchery, wine, and physical acts to numb whatever troubled me.
The other, calm nights with Emmerick and the steadying warmth of being in his arms.
I wanted nothing more than to drag him away from those doting women and tell him he meant the world to me. I could pursue him.
Would it really be so terrible of me?
“What exactly did I just witness?” Sybilla crept up beside me.
She wore a blue velvet dress and a twisted silver crown of acorns and thorns.
“Because it looked like my dearest friend was undressing my former lover with her eyes until she got distracted by a pretty courtesan who definitely was not on the guest list.”
“I wasn’t undressing him…” The denial died on my tongue. “Actually. What if I were?”
Sybilla had moved on, started a family. Everyone else had their person. Should I not be looking for the same companionship, for someone to come home to each night?
The way Em’s words melted me, the way I could think of nothing but him when he left a room—it all had to be real. I could be what he needed. Couldn’t I?
Sybilla burst out with an incredulous laugh.
I frowned, and she realized her error.
“Oh. You are serious. It’s just...”
It wasn’t every day that I watched Sybilla stumble to scrape words together. My bruised pride and feelings prevented me from finding the humor in it.
She continued, “I’m sorry. I know you and Em both well. He likes a certain amount of predictability. I don’t see you together in that way. You would eat his heart out.”
My frown deepened, and she straightened.
How should one react to their greatest fears being spoken aloud by someone they loved?
“You know what? This really isn’t my business,” Sybilla concluded.
“When has that ever stopped you?” I snapped back. “You are, of course, free to meddle in my business when it pertains to traversing the realms with your daughter, or assigning me a new advisory role, or assuming I am too flighty to want to settle in one place or with one person.”
It all spewed from me too harshly. My anger with my own flippant actions had manifested against her. She hadn’t forced any of those things on me. Not really.
Sybilla stiffened and discarded her glass of wine on a nearby pedestal that housed a potted plant. She placed her hands on my sleeved shoulders.
“El... I didn’t mean to hurt you, truly. I never knew that you felt this way,” she said and held me there so I couldn’t flee.
“What way?” I lashed out, unable to shake the desire to strike at her even knowing she wasn’t the reason for my high walls—I was.
She swallowed hard, meeting my gaze. I’d never seen her shy away from a fight. Say something cutting, please, I internally begged.
Motherhood had softened my friend some, but not much. Yet her jaw hung slack.
“Just say it,” I pressed. “Say that you don’t feel he could ever love someone like me. Say that I am too unpredictable, or wild, to be cared for by a man like him.”
The whites of her eyes showed for a moment. “Oh, fuck... That’s not what I meant at all.”
Emmerick was across the room, taking the hand of a very sweet, agreeable florist for a dance.
I should be happy for him, because that was the life he deserved. Quiet, uncomplicated.
“I know precisely what you meant, Sybilla. And that is why he should stay away from me. You need to find him another advisor. Immediately.”
My friend squeezed my shoulders and shook her head. The lines below her cheekbones grew deeper. Eliciting an apology out of her remained an impossible feat, but she appeared remorseful.
“I should not have poked jokes at you, Elsedora. You told me once that you were waiting for a love that felt as inevitable as your parents’. And I’ll repeat what I said to you then: You deserve nothing short of a fairy tale. Is it him?”
Her surprise still coated my tongue with venom.
I shrugged. “What does it matter?”
Her initial laughter had confirmed my fears were valid. I hated that she was right.
Sybilla’s glance flitted across the room to where Emmerick kissed the top of the florist’s hand. The wine in my stomach soured.
“Sources, your jealousy is boiling over,” she said, giving my shoulders a little shake. “Now, what are you going to do about this?”
Groaning, I pulled out of her grasp. “I suppose you’re going to order me about.”
If Em would take the pretty florist to his room, then my nerves might settle. It would be decided for me.
“Well, at least promise me you don’t intend to use that key you stuffed down your dress,” Sybilla pried. “Otherwise, this is up to you, Elsedora. What will you do?”
I picked up her discarded wineglass and chugged the remaining liquid. She placed her hands on her hips and leveled me with a hard glare.
I answered, “I’m going to drink, and see where the night leads me.”
Just like old times.