Page 84 of Disillusioned
“Leave?” Garin chuckled, the ominous sound sending waves of nausea through her. “Now, why would I do that, when I have you here? All to myself. A glamored hire sent to lure me out.”
She shook her head vehemently. This was a misunderstanding he would not take lightly. “N-no, I am no hire. Myrddin transported me here to come get you.”
“You work here.” His lip curled away from his fangs in distrust. “You’re a product of that blasted warlock. He transmuted you. This is your glamor.” His gaze roved over her, lingering on every detail with sharp scrutiny. Her eyes. Her mask, the flowers on it. Her lips.
She fought back a violent shudder, realizing Garin’s implications. “It’sme.”
He reached toward her face.
“It won’t come off,” Lilac said when he tapped the corner of her mask. “Myrddin is here, downstairs, and he bewitched this blasted mask onto my—ow,” she said, slapping his hand away after he’d tried tugging it harder. It would rip her skin off. “He spelled it onto me, and it won’t come off until you leave this room.”
He gave a thundercrack of a laugh. “They don’t want me to leave this room. Not right now. Not tonight.”
“Ido, Garin.”
“Do not speak my name if you have been bewitched to not only convince me to leave, but that you are her,” he said, eyes darkening.
She didn’t fight him, knowing she was in no place to challenge him. Instead, she asked, “What’s stopping you? Why are you here?”
“I am here because I made a grave mistake. I cannot leave without revisiting a past I have put behind me, and not without undoing so much ofwhat you—whatLilac—is accomplishing this very second. At her castle. Far, far away from here. From me. As she should be.”
She couldn’t help herself, not with how his voice cracked with desperation. This was a Garin she had not yet seen. His forehead was slick with sweat. Lilac reached out for his knee, to place her hand there, but he shifted away—and she stopped at his warning glare. “Lorietta and Adelaide said you hadn’t been eating well.”
“Have they now?”
“It’s what they told me when I went to the inn in search of you.”
He exhaled through his nostrils, deliberating, probably trying to decide how much information he could divulge to whom he thought was a stranger.
Garin’s throat bobbed. He was eyeing her lips again. “I cannot talk to you. You should leave.”
He stood to get away, but her hand shot out to grab his. Fortunately he didn’t retaliate, only looked down at their hands in wonder.
“Even if it was true, what you believe—that I am not me, but one of the lovely courtesans who work here,” Lilac said, choosing her words carefully, “then someone compensated me for my time with you. You may use it as you wish.” Garin ran his tongue over his bottom lip, watching her intently, still as a statue. “You can talk to me, if you wish to do nothing else.”
Slowly, he neared and knelt before her once more. “I have been ill,” he said quietly, as if afraid someone would hear.
“Since the crash?” she urged, despite the menacing look he shot her. “Since you saved me?”
“I refused to take a donor at the inn because of my bloodlust. I haven’t felt myself since—” He stopped himself, speaking hurriedly when he continued, as if displeased by the memories. “Something told me if I took a donor, I’d end up breaking many of Lorietta’s feeding rules. So I drank myselfsickon cold blood. That backfired. I drained a lone traveler on the way here. I couldn’t help myself. I was blinded by it, not unlike the first thirst. By the time I arrived in Rennes, it felt like I had not had blood in weeks. It was then I discovered that something was very wrong, and yet I couldn’t bring myself to return to the inn, to my bedchamber, where I should be. If I turned back, I knew without a doubt I’d end up at her castle.”
The room had gone very quiet despite the noise downstairs. “What would you do, then?”
He flashed her a threatening scowl and decided not to answer her question. “When I got here, I stumbled into the nearest room and realized feeding makes mehungrier. The more I take, the more I want. It took everything in me not to drag the nearest bystander into the alleyway outside and bleed them dry as I’d walked up those steps and put myself in—in a brothel, of all places, where everyone’s inhibitions are already low. When it is already easy, easier than usual, to do as I please.Takeas I please.” He looked down at his hands; they were shaking slightly. He closed them into fists. “I've never known a hunger like this, one that keeps growing. And they dare dangle their little decoy before me, and…” He cleared his throat, his nostrils flaring, his tongue flitting out to the corners of his mouth. “Fuck. It wasSeaHollyin that mead, wasn’t it?”
Lilac sat absolutely still, a mouse between the paws of a cat. “Yes. I couldn’t remember the name at the time. I tried to tell you before you interrupted me.”
Garin cussed under his breath, anger flashing in his eyes.
She flushed and looked away as he shifted, not missing how he fluidly adjusted himself at the front of his trousers, so quickly she wouldn’t have noticed if she wasn’t already on the verge of looking there. Lilac scrambled for anything to distract herself from the urge to stroke him over his pants. “Is this the same hunger you felt at the end of Kestrel’s deal?”
This seemed to distract him. Garin regarded her warily. “They prepared you well, haven’t they? The feeling isn’t the same, but in a way it is worse. It isn’t a sensation of frenzy. It is a slow burning, steady hunger that strives to outlast me. That will wait me out until I have no choice but to give in.”
She tried not to look as dubious as she felt. “What will help it pass?”
His eyes darkened. “I will be fine,” was all he said.
He certainly did not look fine. Garin had never looked more like a vampire. Tonight he was more like the ones they described and illustrated in her books. A handsome ghoul, slightly gaunt, the shadows under his eyes prominent, his dark brows and lashes making the red of his eyes even more striking.
