Page 45 of Spring Guardians & Songbirds

Her expression was numb as if she’d expected my move. As if it was exactly what she’d wanted me to do. “Then what about Atlas?” There was no look on her face but blankness when her mouth rose to a grin. “You didn’t count your ducks, did you?”

Of course. But when you’re a man wearing my crown, you have to already make peace with losses. For her…I counted them all. “What about him?”

“I’ll do that very bad thing that rhymes with mill, spill and thrill.”

“You do that, my love.”

She stood, trailing a finger over my furniture. “No, Cai will when I don’t return before the sun is up in the skies.”

There was something I didn’t understand. Though she never let her guards down, or would admit to any sort of defeat, there was expectation in her stare. The way she studied me—as if she was waiting for answers. “You wanted this. You wanted me to do something like this.”

She sighed all disappointment, leaning a hip on my desk and picking at her nails, almost bored. “I just wanted to see, really. What could trigger you, how to trigger you. How could I bring the Obscur Asteri out. How could he come out. For whom and when.”

The sip of the drink I took tasted less flavorful than water. “Careful, love, your demons might start to like playing with mine.”

Her eyes gleamed as she swayed her way to me and braced both hands on the armchair rest, caging me in. Her scent was otherworldly. The way her mind worked was otherworldly, too. She was entirely the most fascinating being I’d come in contact with. “I think your demons quite like taunting mine.” She tilted her head to the side, studying me curiously and intently. “Will you really let me kill him?” She hissed, her face scrunching up when the seal flashed in warning—feeling the oath being broken.

I dropped my head back and sipped my drink. “Thinking about it.”

Her attention dropped to my neck, and to make the situation torturous she dragged her soft bottom lip between her teeth. “Would you have let me…do that very bad word to Driada or Mal or Larg and his stepchildren?”

“Is it a yes or a no question?”

Her eyes flashed and a little smirk twitched on her mouth. With no warning, blood began gushing out of her nose, spilling down her face and staining my shirt that she was wearing, and I shot to my feet, holding her head down and putting a handkerchief to her face. What in the hells? “Fuck. Look at me, love.”

“Do you know,” she asked, her words slow and dragged out as she looked up at me. “What poison I’ve never been able to take?”

The air froze with stillness and grave silence. I noted her paleness, the dilated pupils, the little twitch on her lids and the greyed tips of her fingers.

She pulled down the handkerchief and flashed me a bloodied smile. “The only one I couldn’t sip at all because I was deathly allergic to it.” She touched her fingers to her nose. “Didn’t work as quickly as I thought it would.”

Calmness slipped through my fingers and my chest rose like thunder. “Who has the antidote?”

She looked at me in a trance. “So you’re sick, too,” she whispered to herself.

I grabbed her face. “Answer me!”

Her pupils paced quickly, searching for answers in mine as more blood gushed out. She frowned, the more she looked at me. Confusion marred every part of her features, her body, too, as she backed away from me. “Am I in your cage or are you in mine?” she asked, coughing, blood now dripping from her mouth.

She was not going to do this to me again. She wasn’t going to let me lose her again for a game, a plan, for one of her schemes.

I lifted my hand toward the window, tugging on strands of magic tethered to me and the darkness around till it disappeared to reveal the bright, blue day skies and Hemera blazing ahead.

“Go,” I said, dropping my hands, surrendering, and stepping back away from her. “Go, please. Take the antidote.”

A knock rasped at our door, and Cai came in, looking beyond amused. He threw her a small vial and then turned to me. “The little priest is napping on his bed.”

My nerves made the air sizzle with pure death. “You let her do this?”

He surveyed the black flames fluttering around my fists. “You made her do this.” His grin grew cocky when he faced his friend. “Didn’t I tell you? He won’t let you be harmed or die. Those murderous wiles really did the trick.”

She had left around noon after giving Larg a very…quirky apology. The oddest part was that the man had forgiven her as had Merle. She’d laughed and made my godfather laugh himself to tears and then gone back to her kingdom humming a cheery tune. Like that, she’d come into my world like a hurricane but left like a spring breeze.

The day had passed in a flash between Highwall and the temple search. And before I knew what time it was, she strutted in the room all legs and barely any nightgown. A little more rested than other days and chirpier, too. Had she gotten the reassurance that I wouldn't hurt her? The fact that she had thought I’d hurt her in the first place had weighed me like a ton of iron bricks.

“No more tricks for me?” Though she did play the ultimate one.

“No. You? I’m getting bored as well.” Lifting herself on my table, she picked up the apple I’d been eating and took a bite. “How is the temple search going? Must be tiring considering you have one for every lice on a toddler’s hair.”