“But youwouldbe mine, honey, and since I can basically read your mind, I’m not gonna make you say it.” With a wink, Lycoris was flicking her hand, and the shadows at the mouth of the cavern dispersed. Dozens of waiting bodies flooded back in, retrieving their glasses and striking up their instruments again, but Damien remained at the opening, looking especially pale, like he’d been enchanted and hadn’t moved since the wall had gone up.
Lycoris stood from behind her, taking her goblet and bumping Amma with her hips, knocking her off balance and back into her senses fully. “I’ll let you break the news to the demon spawn however you’d like.” Her frigid form was gone, leaving Amma to stand before the throne that had been a casket and was now a planter for a new, undead tree.
Damien finally crossed the cavern. Amma had her hands clasped into fists, and she quickly opened her palms to show they held nothing. He released a breath, chest crumpling in. She couldn’t tell if it were disappointment or relief.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “The talisman, it’s not—”
“You’re the same, yes?” Damien swept a hand over her shoulder, pushing her hair away from her skin.
“Yes, I think,” she squeaked as he brought his face close to inspect the other side of her neck. His fingers roved over her throat, tipping her head back. He was so close his breath warmed her skin as he explored every inch of skin from her ear to her collar.
She stood still under his long inspection, the gazes of more than a few lingering on them. “Uh, Damien,” she whispered, “I think you’re offending the vampires.”
He righted himself, and they stood in awkward silence for a few moments, him not pressing her to tell him more, and her not offering it. It didn’t feel particularly good to not blurt out the entirety of the truth, that she turned down the ability to help him, that she was choosing to keep the talisman inside her after he had promised not to kill her and to bring her home. She struggled with the right words, another apology playing on her tongue, but how to word it?
“I’m sorry,” he said suddenly, biting his lip and looking down at the ground. If her own confusion and fear at what to say hadn’t rendered her mute, what she was seeing and hearing—Damien, fidgeting and apologizing just like how she always did—absolutely would have. “Do you want to go? We can leave right now, if you want. I just need to quickly do one thing, and then—”
“Damien, it’s okay,” she touched his arm lightly then pulled back. “I mean, I think it’s nighttime outside of the caves anyway, but everything’s fine. We can stay until morning.”
“You’re sure?” He hesitated. “You won’t consider it any longer, correct?”
She tipped her head. He had to mean Lycoris’s offer. “I…no?”
“Because there are other ways,” he said quickly. “Magic and spells and arcana…”
“Aren’t those all the same?”
He nodded, screwing up his face. “I do need to speak to Lycoris, and we can spend the night here if you are still amenable, but if you give the word, we will leave, all right?”
“Yeah, all right,” she said carefully.
Damien nodded once, succinct though there felt like so much more left to say, and he refused to look right at her, but he did point over her shoulder. “Is that…did you do that?”
Amma whipped her head back to see the undead tree attached to the quartz.
“That? Oh, no, no, no…” Amma stretched her arms out, trying to block his view as she forced out a yawn. “If we’re leaving soon, we should really sleep, huh?”
He moved her elbow out of the way. “Amma, there aren’tanyplants like that down this deep, and you know I did see this, tree-less, just a moment ago.”
“Hmm? Oh, you mean did I dothe tree?” She grabbed his arm and pulled him away from the sapling in question. “I guess that was me. I thought you meant making it all black and pretty. That was Lycoris. Neat, huh? She did it with her blood. Anyway, I’m exhausted.”
Damien frowned then slipped his arm from her grasp. “Wait here a moment, and then I’ll walk you back to your chamber.”
Amma watched Damien cross the cavern, surpassing Lycoris where she was holding court and laughing with a band of vampires. He reached Rapture and they began conversing. She responded with a grin, sultry, though she seemed incapable of smiling any other way.
A freezing touch brushed against Amma’s arm, and Ivory appeared beside her. “You’re nervous again,” she said, wiggling fingers into her cleavage and flashing her the tip of the vial she kept there.
Amma looked about for Asphodel, but she must have been off in the shadows, nowhere to be seen. “What is that?”
“A boost of confidence.” Ivory pulled it out fully, and when it caught the brazier’s light, a shimmer of blue glinted from within.
Amma’s eyes flicked to Damien, nodding back to Rapture, and then stuck her hand out, receiving the freezing vial and stuffing it down her own cleavage where the shock of cold made her breath catch.
“Use it wisely,” said Ivory, tugging on Amma’s earlobe before flitting off into the crowd.
CHAPTER 16
IN WHICH EXPECTATIONS ARE HOPEFULLY MET
