The words simply hung in the air between them, heavy and important, and not quite enough.
Shade’s expression did not harden.It did not retreat.He did not challenge her the way she had expected him to, the way some part of her had wanted him to, because a challenge would have been a fight, and a fight was something she knew how to win.
He nodded once.“I know.”
That should have made this easier.It did not.
“If you know,” she said, frustration rising because nothing in this conversation was behaving the way it was supposed to, “then why are you doing this?”
He lifted one shoulder, dropping it slowly.“Because it doesn’t stop being true just because it’s inconvenient.”
Her breath caught at the base of her throat.“That’s not how this works.”
“Isn’t it?”
“No,” she said, firm and even.“It isn’t.”
He studied her for a long moment, unhurried, and she felt the weight of his attention settle along her skin the way the book’s attention had, only worse, because Shade had known her longer than the Nushtonia ever would.
“You’re trying very hard to convince yourself of that,” he said, gently.
Her chest tightened around the truth of it.She refused to give him the satisfaction of seeing it.“I don’t have to convince myself of anything.”
“No?”
“No.”
The silence between them stretched.She felt it in her ribs, a slow, expanding pressure.
“Say it again,” he said.
Her eyes flashed up to his.“What?”
“That it doesn’t matter.”His voice was low and unbearably even.“Say it again.”
She opened her mouth.
The words were already there, waiting, simple and obvious and well-rehearsed.She had spoken some version of them aloud and to herself a hundred times across the last several centuries, and they had always come easily.Anytime his name popped into her head, the words had been there to banish him.
They did not come now.
Because this time, she understood what he was actually doing.He was not asking her to repeat the words.He was asking her if she believed them.He was asking the version of her standing in this book, in this air, an inch closer to him than she should have been, whether the line she had drawn could still hold its own weight.
That was a much more dangerous question.
The Nushtonia shifted around them.Pages turned somewhere just out of sight, a soft, papery rustle that crawled along the back of her neck.Waiting.Watching.Patient in the same way Shade was patient, and she did not appreciate the comparison even though her own mind had made it.
She swallowed.
For the first time since she had stepped into the Nushtonia, she could not say with certainty which answer was the truth.
The book continued to shift again, and then there was another Shade again.This one was older than the other versions; in fact, he didn’t look too far from his current age.His attention finally left her and focused on the new oath that was apparently coming.
From the shadows beyond the other Shade, Thadrick stepped.Myanin’s breath caught as she stared at the two men who’d both held different parts of her heart.
“Umm, what the hell?”Myanin muttered.
Shade attempted to step in front of her, as if he wanted to keep her from seeing this.Fat chance.He got to see her mess, then she got to see his.
