She’d believe it. Worse, she’d congratulate herself, as if it were some rare talent.
I hated how easily I could read her.
Sliding an arm beneath her knees and the other around her back, I lifted her effortlessly. As long as our skins didn’t touch, I wouldn’t worsen her curse. She was lighter than I expected, not that I had any real reference to compare. Her head lolled weakly against my chest, her warm breath brushing the fabric of my coat. A faint, irregular beat echoed against my rib cage.
My jaw clenched. I shouldn’t have noticed it. I shouldn’t have cared. Yet, I counted the pulses, just like I noticed her skin seemed less crystallized. More human. Her curse was alive. It was responding. The beams above groaned. Red eyes glared at me from a crack in the ceiling.
“You’re there,” I said.
The cowardly Spirit fled at once. But its voice hissed through the pipes.“You’ll hurt her. She doesn’t belong here.”
I slammed the kitchen door shut, smothering the whisper like a flame snuffed out with a backhand. Then I climbed the stairs and walked down the corridor to her chamber, failing miserably to keep my gaze from lingering on the fragile human in my arms.
Reckless. Stubborn. Foolish.
Somewhere—without me knowing when or how—she had become something I still wanted to protect. Though I couldn’t trust my own feelings. If I had any left at all. They weren’t mine. They belonged to the bond between confectioner and sorcerer.
Yet Lempicka had become my fool to protect. And perhaps, just perhaps, the kind of fool this world needed.
“You have horns,” murmured the fool in question, eyes half-lidded.
“They always grow back, even if I cut them each time,” I said, knowing full well how monstrous, how abnormal it was, that with every transformation, I had to rip them off. “Go back to sleep. You’re having a nightmare.”
“Oh, all right… but they’re so pretty.” She lifted her hand toward me, fingers wavering, cheeks flushed. “You’ll let me touch them one day?”
My chest tightened. So did my grip on her.
Two heartbeats thundered inside me.
“Out of the question.”
I froze. Pain struck like a sprung trap. Needles. Thousands, burrowing beneath my skull. With a snap of my fingers, I summoned the broom.
“Take her,” I ordered.
It lifted her, still curled in her sleep, carrying her to her room.
It was starting again. The voices.
You are unworthy.
Arawn, you belong to me.
Monster.
Kill them.
You will become what you always fought.
You cannot escape me. Do you hear?
You are only a weapon.
You deserve NOTHING.
My knee hit the floor. The manor rumbled in echo, as if it wanted to scream in my place. I hadn’t heard the voices in an eternity. I thought I’d silenced them. Zelda didn’t need to knock on the door—she walked straight into my skull.
All it had taken was a damned beat of my human heart.
