Page 149 of A Heart of Bluestone

I didn’t know if this moment would come, but I prepared for the maybe. I was ready for the possibility.

I play stupid. “That was you?”

His lashes flutter.

He blinks, once, twice, but he doesn’t look away. His gaze holds, steady, and I feel the stare piercingintome, as though he searches my eyes, my mind, for the deceit.

But all that he finds is ice in his voice, “You don’t remember?”

I shrug a shoulder. The gesture brushes his hand away from my face, and he releases my hair. “I don’t remember much from that night. Just being lost in the maze… And a game, I think.”

My lie is simple and lame, but it’s effective.

He’s buying it, or at least doubting the accusations that clench his jaw, doubting his rising reaction enough that he doesn’t act on it.

For a long moment, he considers me. Jaw tense, he runs his eyes over my face, every inch of it, before his hand finds my face again, this time not to clean away eel flesh.

He runs the pad of his thumb under my chin. His hand pauses a beat before he pushes his thumb into me.

The gesture lifts my chin and angles my face with his.

“No memory of the night,” he says, darkly, “so it must have been a shock to wake up on the couch—with me.”

Liar.

That’s the accusation in his eyes. It burns with the icy urge to form his grip on my jaw and snap my neck.

“Yeah, no shit.” I push my mouth out into something that I hope resembles a disgusted pout. “Not one of your funnier pranks.”

“Prank,” he echoes, soft.

“I didn’t get it.” I scoff. “But I never do.”

His hand forms, firm, around the underside of my chin.

He holds me in place.

“I’m sure that it’s much more than pranks you do not understand. It appears that so much goes over your head,Little Life.”

A silent snarl curls his lips, just once, then his face is stone. He jerks my chin out of his grip.

My neck is quick to spring with hot pain.

I swallow back a gulp.

The gesture moves my lips, only slightly, but enough to lure in his gaze. And that’s what it does.

He lingers his stare over my mouth for a mere heartbeat, then he turns for the cauldron.

It’s black.

He gestures me over.

I spit once.

He spits.

Then me, again.

---