After a stretch of silence, the bench shifts, followed by footsteps and the pad of paws. My two companions exit the compartment, leaving me alone with my cruel nemesis.
21
THORNE
Ihadn’t planned on telling her about her parents’ plans for the catacombs. It was the truth, but an unnecessary one, for it serves to lessen my guilt over what I did to her. I don’t deserve a lessening of guilt, for I could have found a thousand other ways to stop her family. A thousand other ways to initiate the sleeping spell. Stones, I could have done it without setting foot inside Nocturnus Palace. I could have done it the morning I met her in the glade.
But I chose my scheme.
My motives may have been somewhat honorable, but I followed the path of vengeance my mother set out for me from birth in a way that would hurt the Briars the most. I wanted to see the terror on their faces when they realized they’d lost. I wanted to hurt them in the sharpest possible way, to make their last waking moments a living hell.
And I used Briony to do that.
I study her now, the way she slumps against the backrest of her seat, the way she stares out the window but sees nothing. The single tear that trails down her cheek.
My heart squeezes at the sight.
I shift uncomfortably on the cushioned bench, half tempted to say something to spark her ire. She’s an inferno when she’s angry, equal parts aggravating and beautiful. It was almost painful to watch that light go out. To witness her shock turn to hurt. Then to apathy.
I could apologize, but I won’t.
Though if she kept me here instead of ordering me out with her servants, I suppose she intends to finish our conversation. I open my mouth to say as much, when I find myself transported to a rooftop balcony beneath a night sky. Unlike in the alley, which was an impressively subtle shift from reality to dreamscape, the startling change of scenery makes it obvious I’ve been pulled into a daydream. The illusion is a familiar one, a canopy of black streaked with falling stars in every shade of color. Briony sits beside the rooftop’s balustrade, her posture the same as it was on the train, the bright hues of the meteor shower reflecting off her face.
I glance back up at the sky. “One of your favorites,” I say before I can think better of it.
She cuts me a glare so sharp it pierces my chest. It relays what she doesn’t say: I have no right to act so familiar with her. No right to reveal that I know she created this daydream to soothe her mood—something she does when she’s upset. I shouldn’t know that about her either.
But I do.
Regardless, I have no right to show it.
I lost that right when I hurt her. Now, our days of dancing beneath this dreamscape belong to the past. To an earlier time when we were both innocent. Unwitting.
The loss of that innocence is palpable. I almost miss the days when I thought my dreams of the pretty fae girl were nothing but imaginings. What would it be like if I never learned the truth?
If Monty Phillips hadn’t bemoaned his unfortunate engagement to Princess Rosaline…
If I hadn’t used my friend’s disdain for the marriage to scheme my way into acting as an intermediary between the Phillipses and the Briars…
If the Briars hadn’t been so desperate to hide their unsavory past from Monty that they decided to trust me, a man they thought was simply a harmless upstanding human citizen…
If they hadn’t sent me to retrieve her from the convent…
Where would we be if I never solved the riddle behind my name and understood the power it yielded?
There’s no use asking. It was almost like the curse wanted to be carried out. It wanted to bring us together.
Curses are a lot like fate.
I shift to the side and prop myself upon the balustrade. The contact between my backside and the rail lacks the pressure it should have if this setting—or my body—were real. But it isn’t. This body is just my dream form and this dreamscape is an illusion.
Briony’s gaze dips down to my stomach, then quickly away. “I’m not responsible for that.”
It takes me a few moments to realize what she’s referring to. Then I discover I’m shirtless. Not only that, but I’m in my unseelie form, my wings draped on either side of me. All it takes is a slight turn of my head to feel the weight of my horns. My spectacles are gone too. Now that she’s seen my unseelie form—and remembers it—I suppose she can dream of me this way. Still, since she can’t lie, I must trust she didn’t choose for me to show up shirtless.
“Your eyesight,” she says, staring at the meteor shower again. “Is it because of…of what happened when you were a child?”
“Yes. Being half fae allowed me to heal from it, but not fully. Had my eyes been completely severed from their sockets, they wouldn’t have grown back at all.”
