She blew across the surface, her nose wrinkling in discomfited anticipation, when a gust of wind rustled past the terrace doors. It whistled across the mantle, dislodging a painting and sending something heavy clattering to the floor. Alora grumbled in annoyance—she didn’t know if she could gather the courage to sip the tea a second time—and abandoned her cup to see what it was.
Sunk into the floorboards in front of the fireplace, wobbled a knife. Alora bent, her fingers enclosing around the hilt, its blade thin and sharp and glinting in the soft lamplight.
She remembered the sting of it. A phantom throb in her ear reminded her more succinctly, and she straightened from her crouch, reaching up to the small scar before her hand covered her mouth, her eyes pressed tight. If it’d been only lust she had felt, she didn’t think she should still be so affected.
The dreadful William had been correct in his accusation. There were true feelings there. How long would they stay, muddying her emotions?
She’d come to trust him. Bash. The Urchin captain. Not in that he wouldn’t hurt anyone, but in that he wouldn’t hurt her. Did that make her a bad person? That she might have turned a blind eye to his past and present? But what if his future had looked the same?
Hypotheticals, really. It didn’t matter now. Yanking free the blade, she strode to the terrace doors with purpose. She didn’t need the wind reminding her of what she’d lost. She grabbed ahold of the handles, but when she would have muscled them shut against the elements, she froze instead.
Because there should have been light outside.
Not lights on the terrace because she’d never bothered with any, but light beyond it. Streetlights. Starlight. She could feel the moon above her, but directly ahead there was nothing. Only darkness. And it was absolute.
Goosebumps littered Alora’s skin. She held the knife in front of her like a warning. What the devil was this conjuring? Was her mind finally on the verge of collapse?
But the darkness didn’t waver. Nor did it make any move against her. As the seconds stretched, she began to feel less threatened and more wary. Confused.
“Are you smoke?” she asked of it, moving nearer. “A shadow?”
The dark didn’t shift with the wind, and there was nothing to cast a shadow. Alora held the knife out farther and steppedcloser, until only the smallest fraction of movement would push it through. “It can’t be,” she murmured to herself.
She shoved the knife inside.
She couldn’t see the blade, nor her arm, as it was swallowed, and she pressed farther, sure that any moment, she’d feel the point scrape against the terrace’s stone edge. When it did meet resistance, however, it was more forgiving, and from somewhere she couldn’t see, came a noise.
Like a hissed intake of breath.
“I can tell by the grip alone you’ve not listened to me and learned to use it.”
She jolted, faltering, and when the feel of a gloved hand enclosed her wrist, she allowed the blade to clatter to the stones.
“Bash?”
In the next heartbeat Alora found herself tugged inside the dark.
Both her wrists were captured. In the pitch black, it was all she could sense. She squirmed against her constraints, the broken light leaving her disoriented and overwhelmed. Or maybe that was the feel of her hands now, pressed against a leather-clad chest. A familiar current traveled all through her, warm and electrifying, and her breath shuddered with ragged gasps. She felt like she’d run for miles.
“Bash, is it?”
His teasing was gentle, but still Alora hesitated. “Am I dreaming? I’m not sure I like it if I am.” His voice was a perfect, rasping replica of what it was in life.Heaven help me if this is a dream.
“No, this isn’t a dream. Though now I’m interested to know what youdodream of.”
Which was exactly something she thought a dream would say. With her free hand, she reached up, feeling her way, along the fabric of his shirt and the leather of his coat, up to his neck. Shereached beneath his hood. She could feel the hitch in his breath against her chest as her fingertips brushed across the raised row of scars.
Then her hand crept higher.
She found the edge of his mask and soon discovered the clasp at the back of his head. It loosened with one quick movement, and Alora tugged it the remainder of the way until it hung around his neck. “I thought you’ddied,” she whispered, full of relief and pain and, mortifyingly, something a lot likelonging.
“You told me not to,” he said, and it washisvoice. Bash’s voice. The rough, low pitch remained. The rasp was gone.
She pressed her forehead to his chest then, a sob breaking free from her lips. And only once he pulled his coat aside, wrapping her up against the thin shirt beneath, did she realize he smelled of something she knew. Had grown to crave. Of vetiver. She breathed that scent in now like it was her only air. She felt him curve around her, and her fingers stayed tangled in the folds of his shirt. Some wary part of her thought he might not yet be real.
“You’ve kept so many secrets,” she said, an edge creeping into her voice.
“I know.”
