Page 172 of Insolence
We’re as trapped in our bond and the never-ending push and pull of orbiting one another as we are in this shitty temple.
Stumbling again, I nearly fall head over heels to the cobblestones below. Dragging my hands and heels in the dirt, I catch myself, crouching and trying to regulate myself. I breathe in through my nose and out through my mouth, praying for the cacophony in my head to subside.
Somehow I make it down and back to my rooms in one piece.
The water in my washbasin turns cloudy as I rinse the dirt from my hands. Amber and cedar linger on my skin, refusing to scrub off completely. The sweet, aromatic fragrance brings more tears to my eyes.
The fact that the predator inside of me is spine-chillingly calm makes everything worse.
I am the predator. I study my own reflection in the murky water.The monster is me.
This is when I realize the voice I heard after the last time Sadrie and I slept together wasn’t Eisha at all.That was a memory, too.
Elodie’s voice groping through lost time and untold years to touch me again. There’s nothing else it could possibly be. And I am not at all what she said I was.
The disappointment has no right to be so crushing and bitter.
One hand pressed to my chest, I drop onto my bed, struggling to inhale and exhale without hyperventilating. The dark, peaceful place inside of me looms impossibly far away.
Our soul-tie pulses, rooted beneath my diaphragm and glowing like a banked ember. I wish I could cut the arcane connection out of me.
Feeling dangerously unmoored, I wander to my sitting room, my gaze landing on the desk beneath my window. Among other things, it holds a stack of blank paper and a fountain pen in a wooden case.
Something’s been nagging at the back of my mind since leaving the Observatory. Something that hasn’t made sense all this time, until now. I’ve remembered enough to know the truth about this place, and Lydia…she was running.
Not just that. She tried to warn me that day.Did the ritual not work on her, either?
She’s much too alert compared to the other girls. She’s being silenced deliberately and punished forsomething,and I must know what.
It’s too late now to go backward; I know too much and not nearly enough. I need to speak to her as soon as possible. I’m in this far too deep now to give a damn about the consequences. After the whirlwind of a night that I’ve had, part of me welcomes them.
Deirdre can go ahead and do her worst.
Peeling off my filthy clothes, I slip beneath the covers. My ass has long since healed from the punishment Elodie meted out, but the thought of it has me throbbing all over again. Memoriesfrom tonight and long ago blend together: our bodies tangling and moving so perfectly, our moans echoing into the night.
I can’t shut them out.
Shame douses me, twisted through with love and rage and a desperate, deep-rooted desire for Elodie that feels all-consuming. It comes alongside the awareness that, despite everything, I’ll always long for more.
When I report to the kitchens the next day, Kiera’s hands are full with a seriously sulking Ghisele. The latter appears to be doing her damndest to pluck chickens without actually touching them.
Catching the handmaiden’s attention, I motion for her to follow me up the spiral staircase. I turn to face her once we’re at the top. “I have a favor to ask.”
She glances skeptically around the aux kitchen and the empty refectory beyond. “Why are we whispering? We’re the only ones here.”
“Are you familiar with that betrothed girl, Lydia? Her mouth is sewn up.”
She gives me a strange look, her mass of ebony hair bobbing as she nods.
“This is going to sound strange, but I need you to do something for me. You can’t breathe a word of it to anybody else.”
Chapter 50
El
It’s chaos that compels a demun to do what she’s wired for. It’s the element that drives her to ingest another’s life-force. She’s born with it. Bornofit.
Chaos and magic are what she’s entirely composed of, although she’s physically identical to a natural human woman in every other way. Well. Until she isn’t.
