Page 110 of The Courting of Bristol Keats
“I was following a sound—I thought it was my sister singing. It led me to a portal.”
Tyghan remembered Daiedes’s account of what happened. The snake made no mention of a portal, only her wailing. He had claimed she was bewitched. “There is no portal in my study.”
“I guessed you didn’t know, especially after—” She tiptoed through her next words. “After seeing the abandoned state of the room, but yes, I can assure you there’s a portal. I talked to my sisters through it. At least therewasa portal until an hour ago. And that’s the good news—I was able to close it.” She repeated herself, as if to make sure he understood the significance of her confession. “Icloseda portal. It’s gone.”
Tyghan followed Bristol up the stairs to his study.Dammit, why didn’t I clean the room?It wasn’t the mess that bothered him. It was the madness. Eris liked to call him a god, but this,thishad made him powerless. The demon blade Kierus shoved between his ribs had reduced him to something base and brutish. Less than an animal. He couldn’t bear to see the study, much less clean it up, and he didn’t want anyone else seeing it either. But Bristol already had. And now to go inwithher? She reached back and grabbed his hand in the dark hallway so he couldn’t back out.
“I’ll get it,” he said when they reached the door, trying to pretend it didn’t bother him. He pressed the latch, throwing the door open, and was immediately hit with the familiar scent of dust and despair.
Bristol didn’t seem to notice and pushed past him. “It was over here.” She dropped to her knees and felt beneath the table, pressing her hand to the stone wall. “The portal was smaller than a dinner plate.” She explained the sounds that led her to it and how she made it disappear. As she spoke, he tried to concentrate only on her, but the room swam around him, the marks on the walls, the shadows shifting, waiting to come to life, the—
He leaned clumsily against the desk, his hand knocking books to the floor. “I think I—”
Bristol grabbed his arm and guided him toward the door. “We’ll talk downstairs.”
CHAPTER 75
They took the stairs slowly. Bristol held Tyghan’s arm securely, though if he were to tumble, she wasn’t sure she could keep him from falling. By the time they reached the last step, he seemed recovered. He wouldn’t admit that anything was wrong and tried to slough it off as simple fatigue, but the trickle of sweat at his temple was telling. He went to the basin in his bath chamber and splashed his face with water. “I didn’t get much sleep last night. Not that I’m complaining. It was more than worth it.”
When he pulled the towel from his face, Bristol stepped in front of him. “Please, Tyghan, share with me. What’s going on?”
He shook his head. “I told you, it’s only—”
“Stop. I know it’s hard for you to talk about. It was hard for me to tell you about keeping the tick. I was afraid you’d think I was letting everyone down. And it was even harder to admit that I lied to you. But I needed to take that chance. After last night . . . my god, Tyghan, we wereintimatewith each other.”
He smiled. “Many times, but who’s counting?”
“Tyghan, I’m serious. Can’t we be intimate about this, too? Can’t you trust me enough to tell me what happened in that room?”
His smile faded, and he tossed the towel onto the basin, but she saw the slight tremor in his hand. He quaked at a memory he couldn’t bring himself to share. The line of his jaw turned sharp, like he was bracing himself for a blow. His gaze grew distant, reaching for that safety net he returned to again and again.
“Please,” she whispered.
“It’s not—” His head tilted to the side like he was working out a knot in his neck, and his blue irises filled with cold resistance . . . but when he looked back at her, he swallowed and his eyes filled with surrender instead. He grabbed her hand and led her to his sitting room, motioning for her to sit on one of the sofas.
He didn’t join her. Instead, he grabbed a green apple from a bowl on the credenza and spun it in his hand, using it as a distraction as he paced.
She waited patiently as he gathered his thoughts. “Does it have to do with the scar on your side?” she prompted.
He swallowed and words finally broke loose, at first stilted, but they came.
“Yes. The steel . . . it was practically a myth. Rare. A blade forged by . . . a thousand demons. The restless dead had been banished to the Abyss for so long, no living fae had ever actually seen such a blade, much less been stabbed by one.”
He spoke like he was talking about someone else, like he was only relaying the stuff of legend, but then he slowed, his voice growing unsteady, the memories slicing too close. “When the dagger draws blood, it allows every demon who helped create the blade passage into its victim’s mind.”
“And you were its victim.”
She saw the despair in his eyes, and her stomach clutched.What has he been through?A long silence swallowed him up, like the shadowed world that tormented him had grabbed hold of him again. His free hand curled into a fist.
“The blade opens a thousand different doors for them to walk through,” he continued, “one at a time so they can draw the agony out. Each demon brought a new nightmare to torture me. They taunted, tempted—” He drew a deep breath. “They made their torments and depraved desires my own. That was the worst part. Their sick thoughts became mine. Their pain became mine. They crawled beneath my skin, through my belly. I felt them choking me, suffocating me, laughing at me. They sliced me wide open while they whispered their darkest plans for every inch of my flesh.”
A sheen of sweat lit his brow. He leaned on the credenza for support. “They slipped in when I slept, so I tried to stay awake. The books helped, but eventually I’d succumb to exhaustion. Some nights as many as four or five of them would come, one after the other, and I was powerless to stop them.”
He began pacing again, saying that Madame Chastain gave him every potion that she, Olivia, and Esmee could think of to help him, but they said there was no cure for the dark magic of demon steel. It had to run its course—if he survived it. They put a special collar on him to prevent him from using any kind of magic that he might accidentally conjure when battling the demons in his mind. His friends took turns sitting with him. “But one night, as I wrestled with a demon, I almost choked Quin to death. That was when I barricaded myself in my study. Every demon only got one shot at me. That was why I marked the walls, I guess as a way to keep my sanity, proof I had survived a hundred visitations and I could survive a hundred more.” He sat down opposite her and set his uneaten apple on the low table between them. A silent storm rolled through him, and she wondered what nightmares he wasn’t able to share. “Some nights, I didn’t want to survive at all. I wanted to give up, give in.”
“But you didn’t give up.”
He shook his head uncertainly.
