Page 40 of What Is Dark Within Me

“Punished by the gods for stealing fire and gifting it to humans,” Nicolas confirmed. She couldn’t help but notice his hair was tousled and his feet bare, as if he too had been unable to sleep and decided to roam the halls. Even now, he seemed to belong among these sculptures; everything from his jawline to his charcoal-stained hands to the elegant curve of his feet was jarringly perfect.

“You’re back,” she said.

“Yes. I’ve sent Garm to do some searching for us—see if he can sniff out our doctor. We’ll leave as soon as he returns with news. Have you been working on your magic?” he asked.

“Sure,” she lied. It wasn’t as if she hadn’twantedto, but wielding fire still frightened her. Only with Liam had she briefly understood what might stand between herself and Violet.

“Good,” Nicolas said. “Couldn’t sleep?”

“No. Bad dreams. I needed some air,” she said, saving herself the embarrassment of admitting she was lost.

A frown tugged at the edge of Nicolas’s mouth. He shifted, revealing the top few buttons of his shirt were undone. A mottled scar was visible for a moment before he straightened. Aleja wondered if she had once pressed her hands against the wound, desperate to keep his blood from leaving his body.

Nicolas tucked the book he’d been sketching into under his arm. “I’m heading back to my office. If you intend on returning to your room, you can follow me,” he said. Aleja could have sighed with relief.

She nodded, trying for one last look at the gallery; this palace would have made human historians weep. Centuries’—no, millennia’s—worth of extraordinary art, in halls with a mind of their own. She could spend a lifetime here and never see it all.

“Do you have a favorite?”

She blinked, not having expected him to address her again. “Excuse me?”

“A favorite piece of art. Your apartment had a lot of books on the subject, and you spotted the Botticelli right away,” he said. He glanced at her from over his shoulder, and she almost cringed, remembering the way his eyes had burned with desire in her dream.

And how she had wanted him in return.

“I can’t pick just one. Maybe if you narrowed it down by region or era, I could—” She felt herself rambling and swallowed.

Please, for once, give a normal-person answer, said the voice.

“The Birth of Venus. I guess it’s cliché, but it’s not only that it’s important historically; something about it feels like the beginning of a story. You could argue the Renaissance truly started when Venus arrived at the shore on her half-shell.”

It might have been the shadows of the nighttime palace, but she could have sworn the smile he gave her was almost sad. “Another Botticelli. I should have guessed. Would you like to see mine? It would only be a quick detour.”

She froze. The word ‘no’ nearly shot from her mouth automatically. Every part of her brain that’d grown up terrified of the Knowing One screamed to get back to her room and lock the door. But she realized the instinct to be afraid of him was perhaps just that: aninstinct. One she needed to put aside for long enough to find Violet.

“This way,” he said.

Unlike most of the galleries, the room was home to only a single work of art. With a wave of his hand, the lanterns flared, their light dancing across an ornate frame around the large painting at the room’s opposite end.

The painting was perhaps late Renaissance, Italian, but she couldn’t have named the artist. It depicted a man and a woman, emerging from the dappled shadows of a cave filled with ruined columns. The woman trailed behind her companion, walking over bones that were strewn across the ground. There was a pained expression on her face as the man looked back over his shoulder and their eyes met. The curious hope in his gaze meeting the panicked realization in hers was sorrow personified.

“Orpheus and Eurydice. Do you know the story?” Nicolas asked.

“Orpheus went to the underworld and made a deal with the god of death. He could guide his deceased wife, Eurydice, back to the world of the living if he did so without ever looking back at her. But a few feet away from the entrance, he broke and turned, and she was trapped among the dead forever.”

“It’s a story about a man who risked everything to save the woman he loved. And in the end, he failed after all,” Nicolas said. “The artist is unknown.”

“It’s a masterpiece,” Aleja whispered, stepping closer to examine the rich blue shadows of the underworld, which gave way to the soft dawn light of a forest. She felt like she could reach out and pluck the lyre in Orpheus’s hands—make a vibrating note that would cause all the forest birds to cry out in mourning.

“Poor Eurydice,” she muttered. “All that, and she was trapped in the underworld forever because of her husband’s moment of weakness.”

She turned back, wanting to ask Nicolas where he’d found the painting, but the words died in her throat. Because Nicolas looked pained, and this time, the expression lingered for so long she knew she hadn’t imagined it. He blinked, eyes still distant, and though he gave her one of his bored smiles, it couldn’t hide whatever emotion bubbled beneath it.

“You must be tired. Sorry for keeping you. Take her back,” he said, the last sentence addressing the palace. “And no messing around this time. She needs to rest. Just follow the lanterns. I’ll find you as soon as Garm returns.”

Any protest would have been given to an empty room. Nicolas turned before she could answer, shadows enveloping him like two great wings, until all left as evidence of his presence was a trail of lanterns to guide her back to bed.

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