Reeve’s worried brow turned indignant as his gaze slid up to her neck. He touched there too, and again it ached just where Syphon had grabbed her. “Who did this? Are they here?” He didn’t release her, but he swept his gaze over the room, a hand going to the sword on the ground.
“No one,” she croaked. “It was me.”
His eyes snapped back to her, and they had that look, the one that told her he knew she was lying. “How did this actually happen, Celeste?”
All she could offer him was silence.
“Did it happen, or did someone do it to you?” When she didn’t respond, his brow furrowed deeply. “Who, Celeste? Who did this?”
“It happened in a dream,” she blurted out, and then the words just kept coming, pathetic sounding as the world dissolved around her into nonsense, “I don’t know, I’m sorry, please don’t be angry with me, I didn’t mean it.”
Reeve pulled her toward him, and just like when she was panicking in the lake, she was wrenched from that hollow and confusing place in her mind and brought back into the chamber, safe but only because he was there.
“It was a dream,” she whispered into his shoulder, his arms encircling her. “But it was real too. I wish I could explain, but I—oh, gods, no.”
Celeste sucked in a breath and tried to pull herself from Reeve’s hold when she saw the shattered pieces of ceramic scattered on the floor of her chamber.
“Reeve,” she cried, pushing at him, “It’s broken! The apotrope!”
“I know,” he said, placing hands on the sides of her face so she wouldn’t look at the shards. “But it was an accident.”
“I did it?” she gasped.
“It doesn’t matter.” The stillness in his eyes brought her out of her panic before it could worsen. Her breathing slowed to match his, and her shoulders relaxed. “I’m the one who should be ashamed. I broke my vow to you,” he murmured, touching her face. “I allowed you to be hurt.”
She shook her head. “It’s my fault. All of it…my fault.”
His jaw went tight with irritation. “Is this where you always sleep?”
That made Celeste stiffen if only for its oddness. She nodded.
“Why? It’s even smaller than my chamber in Bendcrest.”
Celeste was unsure what to say. “This is where I’ve always been.”
He shifted beside her and the whole cot groaned. “This bed is awful. You should be in the chamber upstairs.”
“I don’t need that much space. I don’t deserve it.” She turned her face out of his touch, and he let her go, but his hands hovered protectively at her sides. “I belong down here.”
“No, you don’t, and there isn’t enough room for both of us in here anyway.” He stood and gathered his sword from the floor than took her hand. She wasn’t sure her legs would work or even if she should let them, but Reeve’s hold was so gentle as it guided her that she didn’t want to pull away, and then they were both leaving the horrid chamber behind.
CHAPTER 24
STOPPING TO THINK AND FORGETTING TO START UP AGAIN
Celeste woke to blue and yellow light dappled across a room that smelled of flowers and warm herbs. She was gripping a soft linen under her chin, and an even softer pillow cradled her head. As the bleariness left her eyes, she focused on the bedside table and the badly damaged spine of a book, the Key on it made illegible. Beside that was a set of copper cups and the kettle normally kept over the hearth, steam curling from its spout.
Two cups, someone else’s bed, and none of the murkiness of her normal chamber. Despite how awful the night had been, it was the second-best time she’d had waking up.
Beside the all too big bed sat Reeve on the floor, hunched over with his back to her. She thought at first he was praying, missing the dawn yet again but holding vigil for his god beneath the temple’s ceiling instead, but he had neither the posture nor the serenity of his morning rumination.
Celeste pressed up to peer silently over his shoulder. Before him was a piece of parchment that had once been a book’s page, its edges torn from the spine, and atop the writing was a symbol drawn with charcoal. Reeve wrapped one hand around the hilt of the Obsidian Widow Maker laid out on the ground beside him, and he spread his other palm, covered in black soot, over the page. With a murmur, divine arcana emanated under his hand and into the parchment, the symbol lighting up. When the glow dimmed, he placed the page atop a stack of others and then ripped another from a slowly shrinking book.
“Reeve? What are you doing?”
The knight turned, eyes wide but rimmed blue with sleeplessness. “Making wards, or trying to. Are you feeling better?”
She sat up and nodded but winced, touching her neck. It was less painful than the night before, but her skin stung under her fingers. “Did you rest at all?”
