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I take a step toward her, clove in hand, and blow the smoke deliberately at her. She doesn’t move, but her expression goes from indignant to worried.
“Live a little,” I tell her, just to watch her get mad.
I highly fucking doubt there are smoke alarms in here or anywhere on this floor. The Capulets are Order members, and that means lots of candles. Etta seems to know this, because she doesn’t even glance up as I approach her. A normal person would be worried about ruining the books with a fire alarm. Etta is worried about…I have to assume,me.
“That,” she nods at my clove. “Is not living. It’s literally dying. You’re slowly killing yourself.”
I grin. “Okay, good girl.”
I expect her to get indignant again, but she doesn’t. Her brow wrinkles, like something is bothering her. “I’m not,” she says.
“Not what?” I ask.
Fucking hell, I’m trembling with curiosity, like if she doesn’t answer me fast enough I’ll start to shake from withdrawal.
Everything about her is bewitching. Fucking enthralling. And when nothing and no one has been remotely interesting in months, I want to hold on to her and suck every last drop of excitement and color andlifeout of her. To listen to her explain nothing and everything to me, and try to find meaning in it.
“I’m not good,” she says.
Ecstasy.Just talking to her, the sheer antithesis of ennui. Speak again, bright angel. My little muse—afflatus cocaine.
“What does that mean, anyway?” I cock my head to the side, and take another drag of my clove. She doesn’t scold me this time. “What is agood girl?”
“Not someone who would be in this library right now talking to you.”
Why? Why does she think that? Is it because she thinks I’m inherently bad? Is it because our families hate each other, and she knows she would get in trouble? Or, is it because she’s almost engaged…
“So, tell me why you’re here, hiding, if you’re not supposed to be talking to me. What are you hiding from?”
“It doesn’t matter.” Her frustration bleeds through. “I’ll have to go back downstairs eventually.”
“Dane?” I guess. “Not the best way to start off a marriage.
“What would you know about it?”
I smirk at her. “About marriage? Nothing. About women? Enough to know that if they’re hiding from you it’s not a good sign.”
She scowls. “I shouldn’t be talking to you about this.”
No, she shouldn’t, but it doesn’t matter. I’ve already gleaned enough from what little she has said and more from what she won’t say.
She doesn’t want anything to do with this wedding anymore than I want to marry Rosaline. More than likely her parents want her pledged to the Order and bound to Dane to secure alliances so Delphine will be elected the next head of the Council. My father is right, the Capulets are playing the same game he is, and it doesn’t matter what Etta wants anymore than it matters what I want.
“Say no,” I blurt out.
She looks up at me, and her expression is tumultuous. Again, I wonder if she knew. If she knows now. If I’m not alone in this. But then, her eyes shutter and her face goes as blank as I’ve trained mine to.
“Even if I wanted to do that, I couldn’t.”
“Why?”
She takes a step away from me, further into the shadows of the tiny library. I follow, taking careful steps, as if it might all dissolve around me. I’m afraid to make noise. To disturb anything. The room has a silent, untouched magic. Like walking through a cemetery.
Or a church.
And it is, I suppose. A place of worship. The worship of knowledge, and of those who pursue it.
So I look around her library—around her church—and pray for mercy. To be delivered from temptation. Even as I’m ready to sell my soul for a chance to kneel at her feet and declare my undying devotion. To disavow all other gods. To devour her mind and worship at the altar of her cunt.
