“I know what it feels like to have the world you thought you knew upended. I didn’t want that for you.”
I drop my eyes and shake my head miserably. “My world doesn’t matter. I understand why you didn’t trust me, but I’m sorry you felt you had to keep it to yourself.”
“Shaw,” she says quietly. I don’t look at her. My world has ended and begun so many times I should be used to the reverberations. I should be the stoic and unaffected assassin my father trained me to be. I should know that it has never mattered how many times the sky rearranges itself, the monster I am will always remain. I am the Darkness, and the Darkness can never be anything else. Even when the moon shines, the Darkness endures.
“Anrai,”
My heart seizes at my name in her mouth. Instantly, I’m reattached to what I am, what I once was, what I still hope to be.
I finally raise my eyes to hers. She meets the fire with a strength of her own—I mistook it when we first met for being a twin flame, but now I recognize it for what it is. It’s the strength of the ocean and the calm of a cliff pond. And though its power matches what rages through me, it is entirely her own.
“You deserve the truth,” she says so fiercely it doesn’t occur to me to argue. “I know I’m not the one who hurt you, but I couldn’t bear to lend you anymore pain. It wasn’t my choice to make and I’m sorry. I’m sorry I demanded you not hide any part of yourself, while being cowardly myself.”
I watch her carefully and try to remember the last time anyone apologized to me. It isn’t just my world that is upended by Denver’s identity. Instead of spiraling into selfish destruction, instead of directing her hurt outward so that others would feel it too, Mirren tried to contain the fallout. To keep the pain for herself and spare me.
I don’t deserve her. I don’t deserve to be cared for so meticulously. So selflessly.
“Well. I guess this makes finding him easier,” I offer up listlessly.
Her eyes flicker, a wave reminiscent of her power the night before cresting within them. “We’re going to save him, Shaw. Together. We’ll sort out the rest later.”
Tomorrow I will remember that she is not mine.
Today, I reach for her. I run my hands over her skin and wonder at her velvet curves. How is that with every clash of the world, I am made sharper, but somehow, she is made softer?
Tomorrow, I will tell myself to let her go. But today, I hold fast to the only thing in the world that feels true.
ChapterThirty
Mirren
The old woman is mad.
When I finally forced myself from the warm cocoon of Shaw’s arms, I was determined to find Aggie and discuss my powers. But opening the bedroom door felt like tempting fate; like the room and everything that happened inside it would cease to exist the moment I stepped into the hallway. Like I would step over the threshold and fall headfirst into a black hole of reality.
But it was necessary. The People’s Council and half of Nadjaa is demanding Shaw’s blood and he needed to go assuage them if we’re ever to make it out of the city and to Yen Girene. And I needed to find the one person who might have answers about my magic and my ability to heal Easton.
Now that I’ve found her, I can’t help feeling my time would have been better spent in bed.
Aggie is both barefooted and bare chested. Her long silver hair hangs over her shoulders covering most of her sensitive areas, but as she sways and coils her body, it’s an alarming sight, nonetheless.
Calloway, who has just finished tying up our horses, throws his hands over his eyes with a loud curse. “Gods, Aggie,” he huffs, his freckles disappearing under a deep shade of crimson, “what in Darkness’ name are you doing?”
She doesn’t turn toward us. Instead, she moves her body languidly over the grass, her bare skin pressed against the ground as she stretches forward like a snake. “Greeting the moon, Calloway,” she replies, as if this is obvious. “Why should she keep shining if no one thanks her for her light?”
Mad.She’s entirely mad.
“Maybe this was a mistake,” I hiss. Cal looks inclined to agree as he stares at Aggie with abject horror while she brings her naked chest against her knees and spreads her arms across the grass, sinking into a deep bow.
“I’d like to remind you that this was entirely your idea,” he mutters through the corner of his mouth.
I shoot him a glare and straighten my shoulders. Mad or not, I need answers and Aggie is the only person who may possess them. “Aggie,” I begin tentatively.
She cuts me off with a quick wave of a gnarled hand. “I know why you’ve come, little bird.” She climbs nimbly to her feet.
Cal moves closer behind me as Aggie finally sets her milky eyes on us. Shaw asked him to accompany me and though their conversation was conducted in terse whispers, I gathered it was under the stipulation that Cal act as a sort of bodyguard. Why either of them feel I need protection from a crotchety old woman, I’ve yet to determine.
“It’s why the elements have seen fit to bring you to Nadjaa.” Her gaze is uncomfortably invasive.
