Page 71 of The Devil In Blue
I nodded. “I have many demons. They’ve only ever shown themselves in the form of my lunacy. I thought you might be one of them. I thought perhaps you’d come to free me somehow.”
“Free you?”
“I’ve had fantasies since I can recall. Of escaping my prison. Not just Southminster. Myself. Most days, I feelIam a prison. One my soul has been aching to escape for many, many years. I am battered and bruised and yet I breathe. And while I still breathe, I am still trapped.”
Rune went quiet, leaning back in his chair with one elbow propped on the arm, his fingers stroking across his lips in thought. Anyone else would have been quick to tell me to stop those thoughts. To focus on other things, store them away, and feign stability. Not him. He allowed me to have them and part of me was thankful for that freedom.
“I wish so badly that I could bear the pain for you, but I can’t,” he whispered. “It is yours to experience. Father Eli took something from you. No apology could ever be deep enough to relieve that burn. He twisted your mind. He erased me from it.” He clenched his teeth and cleared his throat like he was giving himself a moment to breathe. “Through your blood, he used the life I gave you to chase away time. To live longer years. Healthy years at your expense. At the cost of your mind and body.” He stopped to take another breath. “And Lucien. Your blood saved him from death. From a disease that would have taken him otherwise.”
I swallowed, the information somehow unsurprising, but it still stung. The bloodletting was as much a lie as everything else. It was not to cure my insanity. It was to steal something magical from my blood. Something I didn’t know I had.
“I am not surprised to know they’ve stolen even more than I thought. My mind… It is a wasteland where I’m certain there were lush fields thriving with memories.”
Rune took a deep breath and slowly scooted his chair back to stand.
“A wasteland with plenty of space to create new memories,” he said, stepping around the table. He held out his hand in offering. “Dance with me, Briar. No mask this time.”
I wasn’t sure which was more frightening. His elk mask or the beautiful face looking down at me. Either way, something was pulling me to him and the chaotic danger he was beginning to represent. My pulse fluttered, eyes wandering the quiet dining room when a faint melody echoed across the walls out of thin air. Harps. Violine. The sounds harmonized and filled the room with music.
“How…”
“Does it matter?” Rune said.
It didn’t. Not in the least.
I reached up with my gloved hand and placed it in his, standing from my chair. Without the long table, the large dining hall was spacious and empty, leaving us plenty of room to move. This time, no one was around to crowd us. The stifling noise of a hundred feet was absent and there was only us.
He pulled me toward him until my front was pressed against his. His free hand slid around my waist and held me close, his eyes pinning me more securely than any chain or jacket ever could. But it felt good.
We began to move. There was no practiced choreography. There was only us swaying and spinning together in perfect unison. Every time his foot moved forward, mine moved back. Every time I felt the slightest tug, I spun with him. It was a strange partnership to make sure neither of our steps faltered and… I loved it.
“Eyes on me, little bird,” he whispered, never looking away.
“When I asked who you were at the masquerade, you said you were everything I needed. Everything I would ever want, hate, and love.”
“I remember.”
“Did you mean that?”
“Every word.”
“And… what do you think I feel now?”
He spun us around, pulling me harder against him. “I know you hated me. Maybe you still do.”
I shook my head, boldly meeting his gaze with my own. “I don’t think I ever did. I was—I am—afraid of what you do to my thoughts.”
“And what do I do to your thoughts?”
“You free them. You urge my emotions to the surface.” I thought of the way Petris urged me to be vulnerable. It contrasted the way Rune made me feel like I wanted—like Icould—lash out. Be violent. Bold. “And I don’t quite know how to navigate the world with so many free thoughts.” I paused a moment to recall the necklace he’d crushed so easily in his fist and bit my lip. “Perhaps I hated you for a night. When you crushed my necklace.”
He canted his head at me. “Why was it so important to you?”
I shrugged. “I’d never gotten a gift before that someone didn’t force on me or assume I wanted. People have always told me what I should like and what I should wear. I never said I wanted the necklace.”
“No. I saw you looking at it.”
“Yes. And when you gave it to me, it was more mine than any dress or hairpin Lucien gave me. I loved it.”
