He grunted.
“Alchemists like secrets,” she said.
He winked.Then he deposited her on the mattress and stood, pulling back the blankets.“Get in.”
She did, sneaking her feet beneath the sheets and sinking her head onto a pillow.Now he would come to her as a husband.Now there was nothing between them.She felt light enough to lift off the mattress.
“Good God, what are you doing?Are you floating?”
“Oh!”She banished the accidental glamour.“Apologies.I’ve mostly learned to control it, but sometimes…”
“You didn’t know how?”He sat on the edge of the mattress.
She shook her head.“No idea.It was beyond my understanding.It was one of the many, many reasons I had for not wanting to marry Apollo.I was scared he’d find out.And want to kill me.Of course he found out and tried to kill me anyway.”
Temple’s hands became hammers, fisted hard atop the blankets.
“I had no control at all until you told me that some alchemists believe that the talent for illusions exists not in the blood but in the air, in the light.I can… it’s hard to describe.But I can… grab it.Bend it.Shape it.”
“Damn me.We’ve been right all this time.”Said more to himself than to her, but then his gaze was on her, sharp and inquisitive.“No one told you that’s how it worked?”
She shook her head.“Men do not talk about that sort of stuff.At least not with women.”
“Of course they don’t.If they did, the world would know there’s nothing special about them at all.Chosen ones my arse.Divine right.Ha.”
She lifted a brow.“I thought you said I was a marvel.”
The corner of his lips twitched.“Youare.Your fellow transcendents…” He shrugged, and far from being a careless type of motion, it seemed to suggest he would toss the lot of her kind over a cliff if he could.
“It seems alchemists are not the only ones with secrets.”He was no longer looking at her.His gaze had gone hazy and hard, his lips pressed into a thin line.
She placed a hand on his fist.“Temple… tonight?—”
He kissed her forehead.“Sleep.You’re exhausted.”
She twisted the edge of the blanket in both hands, pulling it closer to her chin.She felt like a child, tucked in and patted on the head.Good night, sweet, sleep well and see you in the morning.
She’d been treated like a child all her life.
No more.
She sat upright.“Do you no longer want me?”
He blinked.“Where did you get that idea?”
“Your cowardly retreat.”
He shot to his feet.“Cowardly?Retreat?You’ve had a shock.I’m being a gentleman and giving you time to… to heal from it.I’m not going to add another shock to it.”
Her life had been a child’s game.Hide-and-seek, but no one had ever come to find her.Except for Apollo, and he wanted to kill her.She would hide away no more.
She pulled her legs underneath her and sat on her heels, her shift pooling around her knees.
“I think you are the one in need of time to recuperate.Your nerves are frazzled.My nerves have been tested since the day my grandfather died.I have hidden away, terrified I would be caught.I have been caught and terrified I would die.I have lived in isolation, praying for rescue, and there were a solid few minutes of my life during which I thought my husband about to kill me.”
“I’m insulted.”
“Me, too, Temple Grant.Insulted you think me so weak.”Insulted she’d thought herself so weak.Worse yet, that she’d acted so weak for so long.
Then she lifted the hem of her shift, and she threw the damn thing off.
She stood before Temple as she’d stood before no one else in her entire life—bare, every inch of herself revealed and vulnerable.Every inch truly herself.
“I do not need a gentleman to coddle me, Temple.I need an alchemist to forge me anew.”
The ring on her hand glowed hot, and a bolt of lust rocked her.Notherlust.
His.
