Page 76 of Autumn Queens & Shadows

He reached to my ear and snorted like a proper and true pig. “Tell. I’m getting numb and your hand is sweatier than a bull's arse in hell.”

“I can’t control it anymore,” I confessed. My mind. I’d lost control of it at some point again.

“That much I guessed. Where do you go?”

I bit my lip until I felt a gush of blood explode in my mouth. “Places.” Sometimes memories. Sometimes nowhere at all. It was as if I’d lost my way inside my head, too.

He tilted his head back to look at me, his eyes dropping to my mouth. Reaching his other hand forward, he swiped a thumb over my lower lip. “What places, Thora?”

“Your turn.”

He sent me a cold, disapproving look. “What do you want to know?”

“Since you know the truth about what you are, has it gotten better?”

“No. But things make sense now, and I think of less whys. Your turn.”

“I go back in time.”

“How far?”

“Your turn. Why didn’t you tell me what my sister had asked you to do?”

“Because I gave her my word. It is not the first secret of hers I’ve not told you. Mine you can have. But hers, she’ll have to give them to you. How far back in time?”

“Three years ago.”

“What happened?”

I took our hands in my lap, watching our linked fingers. “It is not a story I’m ready to tell,” I said, trailing a finger down his hand, over the thorny vines tattooed on his skin, “but it’s something that reminded me how helpless I am.”

I froze when a familiar colour flashed from under his sleeve. Before he could pull away, I tugged the sleeve down to reveal a ribbon wrapped around his wrist like a bracelet. It wasn’t just any ribbon. It had my initials on it and a little rose embroidered. An awful embroidery that Driada had tried hard to teach me how to do for weeks. I’d stopped embroidering them after she’d died, and I no longer wore ribbons in my hair, so this was an old one. A very old one.

“You can’t have it back,” he said absently, letting go of my hand and pulling down the sleeve. “Your turn.”

“Why do you have that?”

“Because it reminded me of a pretty pink princess.”

I’m sure my cheeks were burning just like my ears were. “Why did you want to be reminded of me?”

“Your turn, little bird. Did you run in Neo’s arms after that night to spite me?”

“Yes,” I sort of lied.

“You didn’t mind him touching you?”

“There are ways around it, Malik.” Ways he can never know about. I lifted my palm to him. “Give me the ribbon.”

His head snapped to me, hurt written all over the man who was supposed to show none of it. I’d never understood how no one could read what he felt when his eyes told everything. “Rora.”

I bit into my lip so hard I winced just so I wouldn’t smile. “I’ll give you a new one that hasn’t gone almost white.”

That silly grin returned to his face. “Did you miss me?” he asked all of a sudden. “Say you missed me.” Groaning, he buried his face on my lap. “Forgive me already, this is stressing me out too much.”

That drew out a giggle out of me, and he looked up, his head resting on my thigh.

“I didn’t miss you at all,” I said, trailing a finger down the scar on his eye.