It was tender and beautiful.
“In the Shadows we trust,” I whispered at the entry. The heavy doors creaked open, and multicolored tiles greeted me, along with a cool breeze from the windows.
After sneaking up to my cousin’s bedchamber, I knocked three times, waited, and then added a fourth—a secret code we’d created.
Shuffling behind the door alerted me that he was home. Hurley appeared, wearing his tunic backwards. There was movement on the balcony. I’d interrupted something.
Had he tossed his latest tryst out to scale the trellis? Surely that was unnecessary.
“What’s wrong?” he asked in a hushed tone, motioning for me to come inside. I followed him in, but lingered at the entry—the best position to be if I needed to flee.
“Nothing is wrong...”
This was terribly awkward.
Thinking about going to Aunt El or Wyeth seemed worse.
“I...” Biting my lower lip, I scanned his chamber and avoided his waiting gaze.
He’d always lived minimally—no paintings on the stucco walls, no trinkets or extraneous decor. The bedsheets were askew, but otherwise it would appear no one lived here.
“Lark. Spit it out,” he urged. “Are you hurt?”
I shook my head. My entire face burned. “No, I’m perfectly fine. Better than. Tonight I… was with a man. In aphysicalmanner for the first time. And I don’t know what to do now. I hoped you could help me.”
His hands scraped down his cheeks, and his brow furrowed. “Did he force you?” His tone turned lethal.
“No!” I snapped back. “Not at all. It was my choice. But the curse...”
Caym’s curse on Desidero’s bloodline meant that if I, as a Shadow Origin, bore a child, I lost my immortality. I couldn’t risk that happening before I faced the Death Origin.
Hurley looked like he’d rather be anywhere else. I knew he struggled to see me as more than the little girl who he’d humored playing marbles and jumping stones with.
Better than anyone, he knew what growing up with my family had been like—the pressures and anxieties we faced.
He stayed silent. Was he really going to make me spell it out for him?
“I can’t be with child. Not yet. If I bear an heir, then we’ve broken Isolde’s prophecy. I can’t risk it—what do the ladies you bed do?”
His palms drew circles over his closed eyelids now. “Go to my vanity—top drawer on the left. Yellow vials,” he groaned out.
I crossed the room and found the tonics. “How much do I drink?”
“Half the bottle. And... just take all of them with you.” He seemed eager for the topic to be dropped. I’d happily oblige. There were six dust-covered vials in the drawer.
“Do they expire?” I wrinkled my nose.
“Nope,” he said. When I glanced at him, he was stiff as a board and still too shocked to react. Maybe it had been unfair to ambush him this way, but he’d been the only one I trusted. “If you need more, for the love of Sources, please go to Wyeth. Or any other healer. I won’t be stocking any more here.”
My brow furrowed as I wondered why not. I held no high ground to interrogate him.
Pocketing the vials, I stepped over to him and threw my arms around his middle. “Thank you, cousin. Please, please don’t tell Papa.”
He huffed a long sigh and reluctantly hugged me back. “You’re going to be the death of me, Lark,” he answered. “I hope this man knows how many people will kill him if he so much as harms a hair on your head.”
I exited quietly, thinking about just that.
For the first time, I understood why Dritan hesitated to reveal his identity.
