Then he had returned to his chair, picked up his book, and kept reading as though sitting with her through the dark was the easiest thing in the world.
The scene held for several seconds, every line of him perfectly etched.Then it faded, stone softening back into parchment, fire shrinking until only a memory of warmth remained against her skin.
Myanin stared at the empty space where he had been.
Shade said nothing.For once, blessedly, he said nothing.She felt him standing just at her shoulder, close enough to feel his presence, far enough that she had room to fall apart if she chose.
Her voice came rougher than she intended.“He was good to me.”
“Yes.”
She glanced at him sharply, ready to snap at the first hint of edge in his tone.There was none.No sarcasm in his face.No jealousy darkening his eyes.No dismissive arrogance pulling at his mouth.Only truth, and that made something inside her ache harder.
“He still is,” Shade added.
Myanin swallowed.The Nushtonia rustled around them, pages turning in slow, layered waves along both walls, as though satisfied with the wound it had pressed.
“I hate this place,” she whispered.
“I know,” his voice came, low and gentle.
She pressed her fingers to her temples and squeezed her eyes tightly closed.“I hate that it keeps showing me pieces of myself that I want to forget instead of letting me stay angry.”
“I know that, too.”
Her eyes burned, which was absurd and unacceptable and probably punishable by some obscure djinn law.She blinked hard, fixed her gaze on a point just past Shade’s shoulder, and forced her voice flat.
“Gerick loves me.”
“Yes.”
“He fought for me when no one else would.”
Shade’s jaw tightened.She watched the small flex of muscle just beneath his ear.But his voice remained quiet.“Yes.”
“He never asked me to be softer than I was.”
“No,” Shade said.“He didn’t.”
She turned on him fully now, anger rising because anger was always better than grief and infinitely safer than longing.Her boots scraped against the parchment as she pivoted, and the floor pulsed once beneath her in answer.
“Then why are you standing there looking at me like you understand something I don’t?”
He gave a soft shrug.“Because I do.”
“Arrogant ass,” she snapped.
“Yes.”
That should not have made her want to laugh.It did.A small, broken sound slipped out of her before she could swallow it back down, and Shade’s expression changed as though that tiny fractured laugh had done more damage than any blade could have.
“I’m not trying to take you from him,” he said.
The words were so quiet she almost missed them beneath the rustle of the walls.
Myanin went still.
Shade looked away first this time, his gaze dropping to the floor between their boots, and that alone felt like the floor shifting beneath her.
