They left too much room for thought.
She leaned back against one of the shelves, deciding Shade was right, though she loathed to admit it.The book didn’t want them dead.At least not yet.She tipped her head toward the parchment ceiling.“You know what’s irritating?”
“I suspect I’m about to.”
She lowered her head to look at him.“You being a real person.”
Shade blinked slowly.“That may be the strangest insult you’ve thrown at me so far.”
“I’m serious.”She waved vaguely in his direction.“It was easier when you were just arrogant and annoying.”
“I’m still arrogant and annoying.”
“Yes, but now unfortunately you’ve added emotional depth.”She frowned at him.“It’s deeply inconsiderate.”
Something softer flickered briefly through his expression.Not amusement this time but something quieter.
“You’re one to talk,” he murmured.
The words felt like a sucker punch to the solar plexus.Myanin looked away first.And immediately hated herself for it.Because the movement reminded her of someone else.A different room.A different silence.A fire crackling low against stone walls while snow hammered the windows outside.Gerick sitting in a chair across from her pretending not to notice she hadn’t slept in three days.
She’d awakened from another nightmare with blood on her hands that wasn’t there anymore and panic clawing at her throat so hard that she’d nearly shifted into violence before realizing where she was.
Gerick had looked up from the book in his lap.Not startled, or demanding.Just aware.
“You don’t have to explain it,” he’d told her quietly.
And when she’d snapped at him afterward, angry at being seen, angry at herself for needing comfort she didn’t know how to accept, he hadn’t retaliated.
He’d simply risen, crossed the room, and draped his cloak over her shoulders because she was shaking hard enough her teeth had started chattering.
Then he’d sat back down beside the fire and kept reading.Staying, remaining present because he knew that’s what she needed.He continually had been what she needed.And what had she given him in return?Not intimacy, that’s for sure.Thatwas one area that she hadn’t been able to touch with any poles of any length.But he never pressed, not her Gerick.The warlock with a kind touch he reserved for her.The male with the patience of a saint.She was so unworthy of his love.
The memory hit with painful gentleness.Myanin swallowed hard.
Shade’s voice cut carefully through the silence.“Where’d you go?”
Her eyes snapped toward him.“Nowhere.Everywhere.”She didn’t know what else to say and yet she needed to get some words out.She needed something, and the more she realized what it was, the more her heart felt like it was going to shatter.Her mind’s eye turned back to a warlock general with patient eyes and steady hands who had loved her without asking her to become easier to hold.
Guilt twisted sharply beneath her ribs.Myanin wrapped her arms around her middle, an attempt to hold herself together because she was sure she was in serious danger of falling apart.Because Gerick was out there somewhere carrying the weight of her absence while she stood trapped in a living nightmare slowly becoming emotionally compromised by the worst possible male.
Great.
Fantastic.
Really solid life choices all around.
Myanin pushed away from the shelf abruptly.“I need to walk.”
Shade watched her carefully now.Too carefully.
“You only do that when something gets too close to the truth.”
The words were like a blade slipped carefully between armor, hitting the soft tissue of flesh, cleaning between bone and tendons.
Her chin lifted instantly.“Excuse you?”
“And she’s back,” he said softly.“I was wondering when the claws would come back out.”
