Page 110 of Sanctifier

His finger drew a pattern along her back. “Why not?”

“Because it might be…”

“One of our last nights together?”

She sat up. “Don’t say it like that.”

His expression was gentle. “How else should I say it?”

She flicked his stomach with a finger, where dark hair met his navel, and he winced. “I’m serious. If you want to say… if you want to express affection, I need to know that it’s not just some attempt to cheer me up. Or out of obligation. Or… a goodbye.”

“Fine,” he said, his grey gaze clear and soft. “You, Ru, are all I want. Or haven’t you guessed it yet? You, in any lifetime. With or without the hand of fate. I draw breath because of you. I wake up in the morning for you and you alone. It will always be you, Ru. It always has been.”

She licked her lip and tasted the remnant of his blood. The tang of it made her ache again, made her want to taste every part of him. “But what if we’ve just been pawns in a game? Moved across a board by hands we can’t see, all this time?”

He sat up slightly, bracing himself with an elbow, and regarded her tenderly. “You’ve been manipulated. Controlled. The artifact has compelled you again and again. But you’ve come to recognize when it’s happening. You know when you’re acting with free will.”

“Yes,” she said, hesitant.

His knuckle brushed her jaw, her mouth. “Then you know it’s the same for me. I’ve betrayed you. I’ve hurt you. I don’t deserve you. But I’ve never lied about the way I feel. I love you.”

Ru valiantly fought the urge to cry with relief. She had thought, wondered, but…love. She was overflowing with emotion, almost too much to bear. “Oh.”

“Oh,” he echoed, pulling her down to him, kissing her slow and deep. And in the quiet between the night and the dawn, she was Taryel’s. And he was hers.

CHAPTER 41

On the morning of the Winter Solstice, Ru slid from under the covers and padded across her room, leaving Taryel asleep in bed, softly snoring. She pulled on her warmest dressing gown and a pair of fur-lined slippers. The sun had not yet risen, though it was not fully dark outside. Snow and heavy clouds softened the world in hues of grey.

In the two days since the ball, Ru had been confined to her rooms. Only Taryel was allowed to see her, and there were always guards in the corridors, at the door. Always eyes watching. Ru had no desire to leave her rooms anyway. And no one had summoned her or demanded things of her. At first, it was a tiny comfort. But now, the Solstice looming heavier than ever on her mind, Ru found even the confines of her room to be more prison than refuge.

And so, when only a few hours remained until she would destroy the world or, by some miracle, save it, Ru woke before sunrise wondering where Hugon D’Luc had gone. It was a sudden thought, surprising her in its insistence. He hadn’t been at the ball. The last time she’d seen him was in the cavern, when he’d tried to save her.

That seemed like a lifetime ago, to Ru.

But the wondering wouldn’t subside — she couldn’t silence the nagging feeling that something had happened to Hugon. It shouldn’t matter. Itdidn’tmatter. But she remembered, so clearly, the way he’d looked at her in the snow: Like someone who, in another world, could have been a home.

Taryel would have stopped her, told her it was pointless to seek him out. She’d only see Gwyneth or Archie in the corridors, or someone else she knew, and plummet further into her well of darkness. If such a thing were possible.

But Taryel was asleep.

And Ru needed to know what had become of Hugon D’Luc.

She drifted through the palace with a veritable army of soulless guards in her shadow, none of them questioning her destination, the empty shape of Lyr among them. One led the way, a young woman who knew where Hugon’s room was located. None of them spoke, only responding when spoken to or when given orders. Ru was utterly alone.

She moved past gorgeous rooms and through quiet hallways. She saw Children here and there, early risers, ghostly under crystal chandeliers. Did they drift about by some guidance, she wondered, the unseen hand of Lady Bellenet controlling them, even from a distance?

After a while, Ru passed a painting of a fox hunt, its hunters lovingly rendered in white and red, the fox a restless orange, so free in its dash toward death. The painting was half again her height, and she paused, admiring the scene. Who had painted it, she wondered. Were they alive still, or had they long since passed into memory? She would never know.

Ru’s thoughts turned unhappily to the Cleansing. It would be at midday, when the sun was at its pale zenith, as if to defy the long darkness that Ru was destined to bring. The longest night of the year, and it would never end. Lady Bellenet had sent a note explaining it all: the ceremony, the sequence of events. Ru wouldbe escorted to the chapel, the artifact taken there as well. And Taryel…

“There,” said the guard who had led the way. She nodded toward a doorway down the hall. “Lord D’Luc’s room.”

As Ru approached, she saw that the door was ajar. Chill air caught at the hem of her dressing gown.

“Wait here,” she said, not bothering to glance back. The guards would stay as ordered. As long as she had no means of escape through that room, they would stay.

Heart in her throat, she pushed open the door.