37
I kept my eyes down as the doors closed behind us and the glow of the mirror leaves spilled across the room.
I climbed onto the bed and lay back slowly, curling toward the center. Blake followed without a word, settling behind me, wrapping his arms around my waist. His heartbeat was steady against my back, his warmth surrounding me like a shield. I held on to his forearm, fingers tightening.
“I saw her.” My voice cracked. “My mother. I think. In the tree. In the mirrors.”
He didn’t speak, just pressed a kiss to my shoulder. I breathed in through my nose and went on.
“She was holding me. Singing, maybe. There was so much love…I could feel it. I didn’t even know how much I missed her until she disappeared again. It was like losing her all over. And then the Annihilation—” I broke off, my throat tight.
His arms stayed firm, grounding me.
“I wasn’t running like everyone else. I was pushing throughthe crowd. Clawing. Fighting to go back.” My breath hitched. “I guess I was trying to get back to her, but I don’t know who else I’ve lost.”
Sobs shuddered out of me now, and I didn’t even try to hide them. “Blake, I don’t know who I am. I don’t belong anywhere. There is so little that anchors me, and I’m so afraid of losing that, too.”
Blake didn’t say anything right away. His hand curled protectively around the back of my head, fingers sliding into my hair. He whispered, “You won’t lose me.”
I turned toward him slowly, burying my face in his chest. His breathing was steady and strong. I tried to match my own breath to it, to believe him as I calmed. To believe in the warmth of his body, in the safety of his arms.
I flinched when I heard a rustling of leaves above us. I didn’t look up. I couldn’t.
Blake nodded against my temple. “You don’t have to sleep here tonight. Come to my rooms,” he said. “There are no mirrors there.”
I hesitated. The idea of seeing whatever the gods had revealed about his soul, like they had done with mine, made me shiver. That he would trust me so much.
“Are you sure?” I asked, my voice barely audible.
He kissed the corner of my mouth, then my cheek.
“You need rest, Rubi. And I prefer you in my bed anyway.”
My cheek burned, the kiss he left there searing like a brand.
“But I—”
He tilted his mouth to my ear. “Don’t lie to yourself or to me. You want to be in my bed just as badly, hm?”
It was a taunt, that same teasing voice that had helped me out of my own head, my too-heavy emotions, in Yvonne’s kitchen. The dare in his wicked voice set me alight.
I couldn’t resist the call of him. I didn’t want to.
—
His bedroom wasn’t messy.
It was darker than mine. The bed dominated the space, large and heavy, made of black steel with a carved ironwood frame. The posts were shaped into flowing figures of tygers, each one different: one sleeping with its head on its paws; one crouched, teeth bared; one lying broken, its body only half sculpted.
It didn’t feel like decoration.
It felt like memory.
Above the bed, where a canopy might be, a sphere of dark metal hovered in the air. Its surface was forged from thin strands of iron that curled and wound in on itself. Inside, faint points of starlight glowed and shifted. The light moved slowly, forming shapes that flickered in and out of view. I saw tygers pacing. I saw swords. I saw a man curled around something I couldn’t see, locked in place. The whole thing moved gently, opening a little, then closing again like it was breathing.
A living sculpture, shaped into a cage.
Another taunt, this time at Blake: a prison of his own making. His magic, and his mind. The pieces of himself he rarely let out. The stars inside didn’t feel like hope. They felt like something lost.
