But then I glimpsed a second, broken bottle in the shadow of a slender black tree. Only a few green drops clung to its shards.
He wasextremelydrunk.
Concern rippled through me. I crossed to where he sprawled and dropped to the ground beside him.
“What’s all this?”
“Just a little something,” he drawled, “to numb the pain.”
Drunk, and excruciatingly honest. “Oleander said you wouldn’t wear your half of the costume?”
“One of these days my sister will learn my primary purpose isn’t as her fashion accessory.”
I looked at his black wolf breeches, his black boots smudging the pristine tile, his pale shirt rolled to the elbow and open at the throat. “Then what is your costume?”
Sunder’s smile was like the end of the world. “Pleasure.”
I swallowed bile. “Looks a little more like hedonism.”
“Is there a difference?”
I didn’t think the chill climbing my spine was from the eddy of snowflakes bursting against my neck. “Did you take one of Oleander’s poisoned drinks?”
“Yes. Although I should warn you, I’m mostly immune to my sister’s gifts.”
“Really? How?”
“Practice.”
“Does that mean you’re not telling me the truth right now?”
“Does it matter?” Sunder’s head lolled back on his shoulder. He gave a ragged laugh. His eyes lifted to mine, but instead of being glazed with alcohol, they were feverish—pupils blown wide around glittering irises. “You seem to prefer when I lie to you, demoiselle.”
“Sunder.” I caught his hands in my own, twining them together and brushing my lips against our joined fingers. I couldn’t ignore the burst of agony lancing through my skull. “I’m so sorry.”
He tore his hand from mine and pressed it hard against his side. The gesture had become achingly familiar.
“As am I,” he groaned. “I would die a thousand deaths to keep you from my pain.”
“And yet,” I whispered, “I have already become a part of it.”
I would not be his pain.
“Do you want to know a secret?”
I bit my lip. “You’re very drunk.”
“Yes.” He slumped back against the tree. “Sometimes I feel so used up, Mirage. Severine used me to hunt and torture and kill. Oleander uses me to soothe her conscience, ease her pain, complement her fashion choices. You use me to hide all the things you don’t want to look at. But most of all, this magic living inside meusesme. Everything—everyone—I hurt chips away at my sense of self and transforms me into a man Ihate. My loathing feeds upon itself and turns into more pain. And I don’t know whether I asked for this, in some impossible way. But it’s nothing but a burden.”
“It’s your legacy,” I whispered, clinging to all the fading ideals I’d brought with me out of the dusk. “It makes you who you are.”
“It makes me the worst of myself.”
“It makes you strong.”
“It makes me a monster. And I would give anything to have it go away.”
For a long moment, we sat in silence. His words rang like a curse in my ears, and I couldn’t help but think of Severine’s diary—I would take his burden away forever, if I could. But I cannot. So I will bear it for him.
