And here it was anyway.
She reached out with one hand because the room had begun, strangely, to tilt. She tried to breathe and the breath would not go down. It stopped somewhere near the top of her chest, the way it had been stopping for days, only worse now, far worse. It caught against something and would not pass it, and the harder she reached for it the higher it climbed, until she was pulling and pulling at air that would not fill her.
And her heart was doing something wrong, beating too fast and too highand too hard, a frantic stuttering thing, and she could feel it in her neck, in her ears, and her hands had begun to tingle, a strange, prickling numbness in her fingers, her lips?—
“Kazrian, I can’t—” The words shredded on the way out. She tried again, a half sob, half gasp. “I can’t—I can’tbreathe?—”
She heard his footsteps cross the room. She heard him say her name. Her hands were at her neck, reaching for the chain, the lumyrite ring—but there was nothing there.
“Lucie.”
He said her name a little louder now, and then his hands were pressing something into hers, but it was dark, and she was dizzy, and she could not breathe, and?—
It was a ring. Not hers. Heavier, broader, the metal warm from his hand.
“It is different, I know.” Kazrian’s voice reached her through the sound of her ragged, shallow gulps of air. “There is no stone set into it. But it has a flat face raised into a shape. Can you count the edges?”
Shaking hands and tingling fingers, and her chest had gone as tight as a fist. But her thumb pressed hard against the ring’s edge and it was … square. Four edges. One … two … three … four …
“Good,” he murmured. “Listen …” He was doing something else, something at the front of his waistcoat. “Can you hear this?” He reached for her other hand, gently uncurled her fingers, and set something into her palm. Round, heavy, the metal casing cool against her skin, a fine chain pooling after it. “Can you hear the ticking?”
It was his pocket watch.Focus on the ticking, Lucie. Focus on the ticking.
Tick … tick … tick … tick …
The unbearably tight band around her chest eased a fraction.
“Can you hear the rain?”
Her attention moved toward the window, the ceiling, the constant shushing patter.
The tightness began to loosen in small, grudging increments, as though her lungs had to be convinced one breath at a time that they were still capable of the task. Tears began to fall, hot as they spilled down her cheeks.
“Can you try to breathe with me?”
In the dim light from the window, she could make out the shape of him. The rise of his shoulders as he drew breath, the stillness as he held it, theslow fall as he let it go. She could not match him. She was nowhere close, her own breathing still hitching and shuddering and catching on sobs that came from somewhere she could not reach to stop.
But he kept going. Slowly in, then holding, then slowly out. Her thumb pressed against the square edges of the signet ring. Her other hand closed around the steady weight of the pocket watch. And she watched his shoulders rise and fall, rise and fall, and tried, and failed, and tried again, and slowly—so slowly—her breaths began to lengthen. Still uneven. Still hitching. Tears still tracking warm and silent down her cheeks. But air, real air, finally reaching the bottom of her lungs.
She blinked through the blur and found the only stretch of wall not lined with shelving. She crossed to it on unsteady legs and lowered herself to the floor, her back sliding against the wall until she was sitting with her knees drawn up and her head tilted back. Everything in her had gone quiet and spent, wrung out, as though the panic had taken every last reserve of energy with it when it left.
She heard footsteps and opened her eyes to see the shadowy shape of Kazrian sitting on the floor across from her, a careful distance between the two of them.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“I think I have … ruined everything.”
He was quiet for a moment. “Do you mean for the launch?”
She shook her head slowly. “There was a gossip bird at the window. When the door locked us in. It saw us alone in here together. It will …” She lifted one hand and wiped the tears from her cheeks. “You know what will happen now.”
He heaved a breath. “All right. Yes. I can see how that would be concerning. Well.” He appeared to think about this for another few moments. “The Whispermists and Thornharts dined with us this evening. They will account for my presence at Rowanwood House for the duration of the night. Both families carry considerable influence, and if any rumor surfaces, their word will be more than sufficient to put an end to it before it takes root.”
Lucie blinked and wiped her cheeks and thought about this for a moment. “They did not see you leave with the half-drowned cat that came racing through your house?”
A quiet breath of laughter, barely more than an exhale. “They did not. They left just before that.”
