“Who, the goblins? The centaur queen? Any other kinks I should know about?”
“There’s nothing about me you should know. Do you really think you’re the only woman who’s ever caught my fancy? I?—”
A crack. A shake. Roane turns around, eyes widening before he schools his expression.
“And that’s another thing,” I grumble. “What’s going on with the temple? Is it falling apart?”
He shakes his head and returns to fixing the fire. “It’s an old temple.”
“And what’s going on with you? Why?—?”
“Let’s end this useless conversation here and now,” he grinds out. “Being with you was a mistake. Stop humiliating yourself. Or are you going to crawl and beg?”
“Like you did?”
“I never beg.”
No, he didn’t beg, did he? I turn away from him, trying to control my temper and rising despair. He’s baiting me, putting this on me and I… I want back the caring, gentle Roane, the Roane who wanted me.
Another pang of nostalgia for home hits me. There, things were sometimes uncertain but also simple and easy. My adoptive family loves me and I love them. No games. No doubts.
“I was reading more of your journal,” I say.
He snarls. “Didn’t I tell you to leave it be?”
“You keep forgetting that it’s a librarian’s log, not a personal journal. It’s property of the crown, as per the contract you signed to come here. You can’t stop me from reading it. Sometimes I think you’re hiding something, Roane.” I take a deep breath and force a smile on my lips as I turn back toward him. A mask to his mask. “I think I know why your magic failed. You opened the Book of Areon. That’s what changed everything.”
“I didn’t open it,” he says slowly. “It was already open.”
“That’s not what you said in your journal. It was closed, but you were about to give in and open it.”
He shrugs. “I can’t recall.”
I stare at him in disbelief. His face is pale, high cheekbones cut from white marble. His attention isn’t entirely on me, I realize. He’s gazing into the temple, in the direction of the crack we heard earlier.
“Well, if I’m boring you yet again,” I say on an exhale, “then I’ll just have to find a way to get out of your hair, won’t I? You’ll be glad to see my back. The passage about your cousin’s visit touched my heart, but you obviously don’t want human or fae company anymore.”
“I don’t have a cousin,” he mutters.
My hands curl into fists. “It’s right there in your journal. And what was the incident with Merhill?”
“I don’t know anyone by that name.”
“Gods, Roane, enough lies!” I struggle with tears. “You’re sick. In your diary, you wrote how your cousin visited you, and then left again. You spoke of the incident with Merhill. It’s all in there.” I jab a finger at the nest where I left the journal. “If there’s a way out of this place, by the Gods, I’ll find it so I won’t have to see your face ever again.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
A MYSTERY
ADELINE
“Are you all right?” Roane’s voice startles me out of my doze. I’m back in the nest, curled up, trying to shut out the world, but he won’t let me. “Aline.”
I gaze at his tall form, that achingly handsome face, those lips I kissed, and a deep sorrow settles in my bones. A sort of mourning ache.
“I’m thinking… that it’s time I read the journals of the other guardians,” I say and make myself climb out of the nest. “Don’t you agree?”
He grunts and rubs his brow as if I’m giving him a headache. “You never give up, do you?”
