The gold light brightened until it gilded his cheekbone beneath her palm.
Myanin froze, fingers still resting against his skin.“Oh, for the love of all things mildly tolerable,” she muttered, glancing at the ceiling as if she could lecture it.“Can we not have one moment without the murder book making it weird?”
Shade’s eyes did not leave hers.“It reacts to truth.”
“That is deeply problematic, because I am currently trying very hard not to have any.”
His expression softened.Not much.Just enough to be dangerous.“Myanin.”
“No.”She dropped her hand and stepped back, the heel of her boot catching briefly on the uneven parchment floor before she steadied herself.The space she put between them felt like nowhere near enough.“Do not say my name like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you know me.”
The silence that followed was immediate and awful.
That was the problem.Not that Shade wanted her.Not that she wanted him, because apparently her survival instincts had packed a bag and left without a forwarding address.The problem was that Shade knew exactly where to find the parts of her she had buried, and then, infuriatingly, stood there as though he was willing to guard the grave.
His voice came quieter now, low enough that she felt it more than heard it.“I do know you.”
Her throat tightened.“You knew who I was.”
“No.”He took a step toward her, slow enough that she could have retreated if she wanted to.
She did not.Idiot.
“I knew who you pretended to be when pretending was the only thing keeping you upright.”His gaze moved over her face with a steadiness that made her want to snarl, to swing, to do anything that would make him look somewhere else.“I knew the sharp edges.The rage.The pride.The way you would rather bleed out than admit something hurt.”
“Wow,” she said, forcing dryness into her voice because the alternative was panic.She crossed her arms over her chest, fingers digging into her own elbows.“This is a very touching list of my least attractive qualities.”
“Those qualities were never unattractive on you.”
The words were spoken softly, and that made them worse.Myanin looked away, jaw tight, and the corridor shifted instantly.
Not violently this time.Not with fire or fog or some corpse wearing a memory like a costume.The parchment walls peeled back quietly, layer by layer, sheets folding inward like flower petals deciding to bloom in reverse.Stone bled outward from where paper had been.Heat replaced the cold draft against her cheek.A chair built itself piece by piece near a hearth that had not existed a breath ago, low flames already crackling inside it as though they had been burning for hours.
A warlock chamber.Stone walls.Low fire.A chair near the hearth.
Gerick sat in it.
Myanin’s breath caught before she could stop it.Her hand drifted halfway to her chest before she forced it back to her side.
Not the real Gerick.A memory.A soft one, the kind she had tucked away because it hurt too much to hold and too much to discard.
He was reading.Of course he was.One ankle crossed over the opposite knee, a leather-bound book balanced against his thigh, the firelight catching in the silver at his temples.
She stood at the edge of the memory, just past the threshold of a doorway that had appeared without her noticing.Her other self stood ahead of her, shoulders drawn tight, hands fisted at her sides to hide the tremor in her fingers.She remembered this night now.She remembered waking from nightmares she had refused to name.Remembered coming to this room because the silence in her own had been too loud.She had so many nightmares, they weren’t all the same, and he never asked her to explain them.It was awful of her that she had been thankful that she didn’t have to tell him.
Gerick had looked up.
Not with pity.Never pity.Just steady awareness, the same way he watched a fire to make sure it kept burning.
“Would you like to sit?”memory-Gerick asked.
The words cracked something in her chest all over again.
In the memory, she snapped at him.Something cruel.Something about not needing a keeper.Something about warlock males being entirely too fond of their own usefulness.Her voice cut through the room like a blade thrown poorly, and Gerick had only set his book aside, stood, and crossed to her in unhurried strides.He’d lifted the cloak from the back of his chair and settled it around her shoulders without a word, his hands withdrawing the moment the weight was secure.
