Page 54 of Disillusioned
Waves crashed over her, the pounding of a lapping, greedy ocean.
Let me be one with the sea if blood cannot hold me.
Beyond the onyx waves, there were glimpses of…something else. A cathedral of shimmering turquoise. A ceiling that mirrored a star-speckled sky. Black and red velvets, silver candelabras, jewel embellished tablecloths, and a vast feast laid upon a table that seemed to stretch infinitely before a twirling crowd of dancers and their glimmering eyes. Firebreathers and jugglers roamed among them.
It seemed hunger still existed in the abyss, for her stomach burned, her throat aching against the bile. Before she could reach for the dishes lining the table, a pale hand appeared at her side, holding a single fig dripping with honey.
Lilac bit into it, a stranger unto herself—yet never more whole—tasting the salt of iron that was replaced with an unholy, unnamed sweetness.
She openedher eyes to Garin setting a chair down at her bedside. He propped her up on a pillow and spoon-fed her soup with soft vegetables and a strong taste of garlic. Thinking of something she’d read in her studies, she groggily asked him about an aversion to garlic, to which he only responded with a chuckle, shifted to the floor, and smiled at her with kind eyes the shade of rubies before kissing her forehead and murmuring apology after apology—some of which she understood, some of which made no sense at all.
“I’m sorry, Eleanor. I’m sorry for all that’s happened. I am sorry for what’s to come.”
With his nonsensical murmurings and terrifying eyes, there was nodoubt in her mind that she was still dreaming. So, Lilac placed a finger to his full lips to silence his apologies, and asked the question that had hung in the back of her mind for weeks.
“Are you sorry for wanting me?”
“Yes.” Garin shuddered through the answer, his gaze on the bed past her. “Yes, I am. I’m sorry for what it means for you to be wanted by someone like me.”
It was a good thing this was a dream. The worst thing it could turn into was a nightmare. “What about loving me?” Lilac asked. “Are you sorry for that?”
He looked up at her again, and as in most of her dreams, Lilac did not stay up long enough to know how it ended.
10
She was alone as she sat up among the mess of maroon sheets. Her clothes had been changed, and her hair had been brushed, falling in thick waves, brushing her shoulder blades; she wore one of the simple cream nightgowns she’d packed, nearly too comfortable with no undergarments beneath. As she stretched the kinks out of her upper body, there was a tug at her left hand; her last two fingers and knuckle were wrapped in some sort of gauze, though there was no pain when she flexed those fingers.
Curiously, she unwrapped the gauze. Whatever injury the arrow had left was gone, as was the shallow slice from her potato mishap in Lorietta’s kitchen.
The half empty bag the witch had given her was set at the foot of her bed, now filled with what looked to be several folded garments gifted from Garin.
She was at the Inn, in the room she’d rented on the first night she’d stumbled upon it, the darkness out the window evident despite the curtains being pulled. But there were no sounds of debauchery outside her door. No voices or clinking of glasses. None of the loud korikaned tunes she’d grown to miss. She rubbed her eyes and stood, prepared to gather her belongings and step out, when she noticed an absence. Her dagger wasn’ton her body. Lilac swept her hand into the bag beneath the linens and found the belt and leather sheath empty. Then she checked under the bag—nothing. Garin had no reason to hide it from her; wouldn’t he want her to have the only method of defense she owned?
Especially after the past day.
Yesterday. The last couple of days? The fogged memory she clung to, of her body pressed against the warmth of Garin’s, was replaced with panic. Her parents had been expecting her back, and when they ran into the merchants, it was already a day counted into her journey.
Had it happened? Had she dreamt it all? Her imagination wasn’t that vivid, she thought, turning back to the door, especially to conjure?—
She came face to face with her blade. Her hand flew up, fanning before her and knocking it from the hand that steadied her. She blinked against Garin’s sudden and overwhelming proximity.
“You. I was looking for that,” she said, breathless, as he crossed his arms and silently watched her retrieve the dagger from where it had landed beside the hearth. He said nothing as she approached the bed, lifting her leg to place the weapon against her bare thigh and remembering she didn’t have her garter or belt on. There was nothing to tuck it into under the loose nightgown that swirled just above her ankles.
He scoffed under his breath, and she narrowed her eyes. “Whoever dressed me couldn’t have given me my undergarments?”
“You did have them, but you removed them yourself. You were half conscious, but you insisted.”
She scowled, heat and humiliation climbing her face. “Did we…?”
“No.” Garin’s expression was stormy, unreadable. “Whenever necessary, I restrained you until the witches intervened. They kept you asleep most of the time with a draught in the soup we fed you, so you could rest and heal. But your wakefulness was reassuring. Albeit troublesome.”
“Kept me asleep? How many days has it been?”
He counted on his fingers and hummed. “This morning’s the fifth day. Bastion’s been watching the path from your castle, and no search party has been initiated yet. We’d planned to intervene if necessary, but there’s been no reason to so far.”
Five days.She suspected her parents were slow to dispatch the guardbecause she couldn’t afford another scandal, but this was the least of her worries.
Garin took her hand and helped her sit on the edge of the bed and, dizzily, she allowed it. He sat next to her upon the chair she remembered him reading to her from.
