“Did Feodora upset you?”
“Does it matter?” I muttered.
“Yes.”
That made me look up.
“No,” I answered honestly. “She was kind. A lot less doom and gloom than I expected of Fate.” I swallowed, looking at the ripple of water reaching for me from where his hand disturbed it. “I’ve just realized you were right.”
He watched me with a stern expression.
“About me,” I added, tucking a wet loose curl behind my ear. “My insufferable existence.” I tried to mimic his tone when he first called me that—distant and clinical, but it came out brittle.
Something flickered across his expression at that. Not pride. Not triumph.Sorrow.
Letting out a sigh, I stood in the tub, wringing out the hem of my soaked dress. The water slapped gently against the porcelain. Grim reached for me without hesitation, taking my hand and helping me out. Then wrapping me in the thick towel, he crushed me to his chest.
“I should never have said that,” he murmured against my hair.
“You’ve only ever been honest with me,” I replied. “I used to think I was the hero. But I’m starting to think… maybe I’ve always been the villain.”
nineteen
Grim
“Idon’t think my brain is fully developed,” she said, half asleep.
Astoria lounged on the couch in her suite’s sitting room, now dry and in clean clothes. It had been a struggle getting her drunk, half-dressed self out of her soaked dress and into something more comfortable. And her mood hadn’t improved after her confession.
“Why would you say that?” I sat down beside her, pulling her legs into my lap. She looked exhausted, mascara smeared under her eyes from the bath, but it didn’t matter. Astoria was infuriatingly beautiful even in this state.
She groaned, tugging the blanket I’d retrieved for her higher, as if it could shield her from the weight of her thoughts. “If the curse set in when I turned twenty-two, and I haven’t aged, or changed at all for that matter…” Her voice trailed off as she distractedly tugged a strand of her messy hair in front of her face. “Don’t you think my brain is stuck, frozen, too?”
I chuckled, rubbing her foot absently. Then I froze, realizing what I’d started doing. I pulled my hand back, but Astoria let out a soft, appreciative moan. Damn it. My fingers resumed their motion almost instinctively.
“Your brain is not frozen, Star,” I said softly, trying to rein in the warmth creeping up my spine.
She shot me a side-eye, muttering with a huff, “Scientists say the brain isn’t fully developed until the age of twenty-five. I had three more years to go.”
I thought about that for a minute. It was true, the human brain wasn’t fully developed until then. But who could be sure howhercurse worked? There were a lot of unknowns about Astoria’s situation. What kind of twisted rules governed her immortality?
I kept my voice neutral. “It’s possible, but no one has studied anything like this. You’re different.”
She looked at me, her green eyes swimming with exhaustion. I could see the flicker of something else there, though. Something darker. A vulnerability she rarely let anyone see.
Reaching out to brush a stray curl off her forehead, I said, “You’re still you, Astoria.”
She sighed, letting her head sink into the cushion. “Do you think that’s why he did it?”
The question hit me harder than I expected.
Astoria had always been a force of nature. She didn’t dwell. She didn’t go back to old wounds. She wasn’t the type to dissect the past, especially not when there was so much of it. But now, she wasn’t looking forward or dismissing the past. She was trying to understand it, maybe for the first time.
Looking over at her, my heart stirred. Astoria rested her head back against the frame of the couch, eyes closed, as she drew each breath slow and steady. The soft rhythm of her inhale and exhale was familiar now, one I’d come to recognize as a habitthat soothed her, the way she breathed in patterns of three. In for a long count, out for a long count, and in again.
“Who did what?” I asked, my voice quieter than I’d intended.
She opened her eyes, staring at the ceiling as she spoke in a low, soft tone. “Had an affair… he was always so…disappointed with me.”
