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“And why should I believe that?”
“You believed me earlier, didn’t you?” I still wasn’t sure I did, but the grief that was a constant presence in my body muddied my emotions, my decisions. Maybe he’d kill me. Maybe that would be easier for my mother to understand than suicide. All I knew was that I felt reckless enough to entertain the thought. He reached out to me with a calloused palm, evidence of time swinging a sword. Soldier’s hands.
Honest hands.
I glared at him as I stepped forward and took his hand. “Are you going to kill me?” I asked, eyes narrowed.
His face drew in shock. “Is that what you think of me?”
“I don’t know what I think of you.”
“Why don’t you find out?” With that, he guided me to stand in front of him and step out onto the path. “You walk in front and I’ll make sure you don’t fall.”
“Sounds like something one might say before pushing another off a cliff.”
He chuckled, the sound somehow gruff and soft at the same time. A muscled arm became a barrier between me and the sharp rocks that waited in the harbor below. The inside of his arm brushed my shoulder with every step I took, trying to keep my focus on the path ahead. “It’s not too far.”
“And how did you find this mystery location?” I asked incredulously, my gaze forward.
He gave a short, deep laugh, his breath tickling the back of my neck. I could have sworn I heard a bit of melancholy in his chuckle. “My brother and I stumbled upon it as children.” The smile in his voice was sad. “We’d trek out here and spend the day climbing the cliffs and playing with wooden swords in the caverns.”
“The caverns?”
“In due time, Miss Petra.”
“And where is your brother now? Is he out harassing Inkwellian women with cryptic answers on their search for the truth?”
“He fell from the cliffs when he was twelve years old.”
I stopped in my tracks, his steps pausing behind me. I pivoted to face him, staring up into his eyes. I recognized the pain on his face, had seen it on my own a million times. The world ceased around me, the sea and the cliff and the dangerously narrow strip of rock we stood upon just a wisp in the wind. “How old were you?”
“I was fourteen.”
“Is he buried in the Backwoods?”
“He wasn’t buried. We never…no one ever found him. Swept out to sea.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, my words clear and intentional. “No one in this world should have to lose a sibling so young.” He gave a curt nod and nudged me forward, but I placed my hands on his broad chest. It was solid beneath my palms, a sure, steady presence that was most welcome. “I mean it, Calomyr.” His eyes hit mine once again. “I am so, so sorry.”
Something about the way his face softened, the way his shoulders loosened caused my stomach to flip. In that moment, we weren’t strangers that had somehow found ourselves standing on the side of a cliff. I wasn’t searching for answers and he wasn’t withholding them. I wasn’t a stupid, stupid girl blindly trusting a man whom I had no reason to trust. We were simply two souls that had broken in a way that not many souls broke, the fault lines jagged and sharp enough to tear up every other part of us.
I turned back to the path and began walking, Calomyr close behind.
???
The cave was no more than a chunk of rock gouged from the cliff face. Enough light reflected from the harbor, barely illuminating the small space, the only sound the lapping waves forty feet below. It was dank, the smell of stale water clinging to my nostrils. Every surface dripped from condensation.
I raised an eyebrow at him. “I’m assuming youdidbring me here to kill me, then.” I was only half kidding.
A rich, sensual laugh broke from his lips, his cheeks dipping into dimples I hadn’t noticed before. “I brought you here because I know what you’ve lost, and that you could use something to remind you of the here and now.” He stepped toward me, his gaze intense.
“A damp hole in a cliff was your idea?” My words were sharper than I had intended them to be. “The same cliff my father fell from?”
He recoiled. “That’s not what–”
“It’s fine,” I muttered. “Though I do question your judgment on that one.”
Another laugh escaped his lips and I couldn’t help but watch as his cheeks rose, crinkling his eyes with a kind of boyish joy. “I brought you here because soon, the sun is going to hit the harbor just right.Thenyou’ll see.” He lowered himself to sit on a wet rock, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a hunk of crusty bread. “Join me?”
