Page 51 of She Who Was Once the Sea

His brow furrowed. "What?"

I struggled to put the feeling into words. "When people fight for things."

Across the room, Lucas leaned closer.

I shook my head, frustrated. That wasn't quite right either. People fought constantly.

Petra didn't care about every drunken brawl or jealous husband. No. It was something else, something beneath the fighting.

"Power?" Garrett asked.

But, again, I shook my head. Power was what she gained, not what she hungered for.

I glared back down at the book, rubbing my temple. I felt the strings of a solution hovering just out of reach.

Another book appeared in my line of sight. And when I looked up, Garrett was standing before me, holding it open, a serious expression on his face.

The page was open to an illustration of Rossaia during one of the worst droughts on record. People crowded around a well, hands outstretched. The drawing showed men fighting near the front while everyone behind them pushed forward.

I studied the picture.

There was more than thirst painted across their faces. They were gaunt. Pale. Even in the picture, they looked cracked and hollow.

Desperation. That’s what was depicted. They were desperate.

The thought hovered for a moment before slipping away.

"There’s something here," I said.

Garrett, still standing above me, nodded once, holding my gaze for longer than was probably necessary.

"Desperation," he said after a long beat, echoing my exact thoughts. "It’s not drought. It’s what it breeds. It’s the need."

I swallowed. Nodded. And looked away.

Petra sought to manufacture need. Suddenly, the terms of our bargain made much more sense.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t share that fact with either of them.

But as we sat in that room, discussing ways to move forward, I felt my heart beating rapidly in my chest.

Petra was smart. She’d found a way to feed off of me with compounding interest.

My desperation to save my family.

The need to make Garrett fall in love with me.

And now, more than I cared to admit, the need to protect him from her machinations.

Chapter 23 - Garrett

It was dark by the time we left the study. Lucas escorted Marella and me from the building, trying to keep up the ruse that she was his niece. He walked with us around the corner, none of us speaking, until we were far enough from home to slip into the crowd.

All the while, I felt her presence beside me like the wind. She was there, so close that her arm sometimes brushed against the sleeve of my Fratelli robe, but we never really touched.

And I was suddenly very aware of how badly I wanted to touch her. Maybe it was the knowledge that this desperation was explicitly feeding the monster responsible for her—and now my—curse. Maybe it was just… her.

But the longer we walked, the more I wanted to ask Lucas to simply… fuck off.