When she ripped her wrists from him this time, he allowed it. Her eyes welled, which infuriated her further. “Then why do I feel like my chest is carved open?”
“I’m—”
“Stop. I thought I could look away from it, your past, even your present, leaning into how much I’ve come to care, but I can’t. You have hurt the people of Enver and beyond time and time again, and if you didn’t do it directly, you commanded it done. Maybe they haven’t all been innocent, maybe you’ve saved a few, but it isn’t enough to condone every other evil.Bash,” His name broke her last thread of control. She felt the warm wet of tears on her cheeks. “You went from a child who hurt another to a man who leads a vindictive mob. Do you even understand what you’ve become?”
His eyes were wide and pleading as he closed her in. His hands came to rest on either side of her hips, his face level with her own. “Yes, Alora. I knowexactlywhat I’ve become. Believe me when I say I am not proud of it. That I wish to changeit.” His forehead pressed to hers, and Alora couldn’t help but close her eyes at the feel of him. She shivered.
“Please,” he murmured, and his voice broke. “You are my tormented dream.”
This isn’t fair.Her breaths mingled with his, tortuous. She whispered, “I need to be free. From it all.”
The pressure abandoned her as Bash pulled away. Alora opened her eyes to his, in time to see the veins of black as they returned, snaking across his irises, blatant anguish in his expression. “I told you I’d see it done. If you believe nothing else of me, believe that.”
“Do it then. Desire me out of this.”
“Of entrancement?”
“Yes, why not? You brought back my memories when I’d lost them. I’m bespelled; desire me free.”
She avoided focusing too much on the hope blooming inside her. Or on Bash’s hands, coming away from the vanity to rest against her thighs. But his touch was a sweet agony; she could never ignore it in a hundred years.
“I desire for the entrancement upon you to end.”
Alora held still with bated breath, but seconds passed, and no feeling of opening returned. Her mind remained shut away, dark and contained. She couldn’t access it. Her shoulders slumped.
“It didn’t work?”
“No. My contract… There’s a portion in there. It must prevent it.” Apparently, to drag her from entrancement was to harm her. At least in Marshall Merridon’s eyes. She swiped at her cheeks, where the tears had begun to dry, pulling at her skin. “I’ll have to think of some other way.”
“Maybe if it was against your own will. What if I bound you? Tied you to Necros and kidnapped you from the grounds?”
The imagery bombarded her. At once, a sharp pain twisted inside her abdomen. Alora gasped, hunching over. In some faraway distance, she could feel Bash’s hand on her bare upperback, the robe having slipped farther. Felt him drop to a knee in front of her.
“Alora! What’s happened?”
She righted herself, albeit slowly and shaking. She sniffed as the pain ebbed. “No. I think it would kill me.”
“That goddamnedbastard,” he seethed. “We’ll think of something else.”
He adjusted the robe on her shoulders, and Alora, despite everything, relished the feel of his touch. Though it didn’t stop her from shrugging it off. His nearness distracted her still, but not enough to prevent a seed of an idea from beginning to grow.
Maybe it could work.
More than maybe, even.
Her eyes found his, determined and sure. “I’m allowed to move through the grounds with an Opulence escort. Escort me then, and right now. I need to find Lennox Flowers.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Poor Lennox looked as if she’d either seen a ghost or passed away herself. Her darted glances between Alora and the Urchin captain might have been comical under different circumstances, with the cigarillo having fallen from her lips to smoke between her bare feet. Meanwhile, Alora couldn’t be more thrilled that she stood at her friend’s front door. The fire performer’s cottage was technically on the way to the mansion; she’d not broken any contract rules. Yet.
“Can we come in?” she asked.
“Oh! Yes!” Lennox backed from the doorway to allow them room, closing it quickly behind her when they filled the small space. The bolt slid through. When she turned back around, it was only to stare at them in a daze once more. Until she scooped up her burning cigarillo and said in a stage whisper, “You’re with the captain, Alora. You’re not wearing your invisibility coat.”
“I know. I don’t have it with me,” said Alora. “I—” She faltered. She didn’t even know where to begin. Or how to work around the entrancement. But Lennox continued to stare at her, open andwaiting, and so she finally said, “I’m the performer behind the Room of Desire.” At Lennox’s cry of surprise, she hurriedly tried to say, “But not by—”
Except, once again, her disobedient tongue adhered itself to the roof of her mouth. Alora scowled as she attempted to dislodge it.
