Death had shadowed my every step since the night of the attack. Since I’d known my mother was gone.
It was death that had propelled me—the water—the Huntswoman and her horse. The promise of it, the terror. The willingness to do anything to cast off its pall.
Death made me a blade.
I let out a breath and turned away, toward the rest of his book-lined study. Dorian’s refuge; I could see it in the careful tuck of eachtome on its shelf. Could see it in the wear on the armchair in the corner.
“Why you?” I asked. “Why did she send you?”
Silence. Long, longer. I was rubbing up against that history, the one I’d seen all over his face. I could feel it in the air like a physical thing.
I had already decided he could keep his secret, whatever it was. But I needed to know how badly he wanted it. How much friction he was willing to endure to keep it from me.
In the silence that followed, I had my answer:
Enough. He was willing to endure enough to let this silence wrap around us and hold tight.
Fine. I had never lived without secrets—even and especially from the ones I loved best. Though, as I knew now, nothing I’d ever thought was a secret was invisible to my mother.
I kept secrets and I loved her. She kept secrets and loved me.
For fae and humans, it seemed, both things could be true.
I glanced at him without fully turning, just enough to glimpse him over my shoulder. “You called Carys the Courtbreaker.”
His voice came low, harsh. “Yes.”
“Why?”
“She became capable of wielding the magic of two courts at once. She only did so once.” Dorian stood, chair shifting loudly over the wood floor. “And it didn’t just break the courts.”
I went still as he stepped around his desk, as he approached. My heart sped until it was audible in my ears. I didn’t know why I was nervous, what I anticipated or feared. Not until he came close. Not close enough to touch, but enough that I felt the heat off him.
I wanted to turn toward him. Felt the pull like a tug.
“It broke her, too. Irrevocably.” His breath on my ear. His warmth near my side. “Memento mori.”
Goosebumps rose on my arms. I was done learning about history. Tonight, at least, I only wanted to know the present.
I turned toward him. His attention was full on me, pupils large, breath raising his chest like he’d just walked fast and far.
I wanted to kiss him. I couldn’t break the spell of our apartness. Now I knew the truth, knew what I was, I couldn’t decide if I felt a kinship or estrangement. Was I more or less like her, Eurydice?
And yet my body thrummed. It knew what it wanted.
“Dorian…”
His breath caught. He set a hand lightly on my shoulder as he stepped past me. “What am I thinking? You’ve slept with the worms for three days. I’ll fill the bath.”
I don’t want a bath. I want?—
But he’d already disappeared into the washroom.
I stared after him, my insides moving in strange ways. I wanted to stay. I wanted to follow.
My feet moved toward the soft light.
I stoodbefore the stone tub and set my fingers into the water. It was gloriously hot, the steam rising like a spell cast just for me. And Iwanted.I wanted what I wanted, and I didn’t know when else I might be allowed to simply want.
