by Jessa Lucas
I frowned, body tensing uncertainly. My curiosity quickly got the better of me, and before I knew it I was moving towards the stairs as though pulled by some invisible thread. I needed—
“Don’t go down there, Saylora.”
My whole body jerked just as my toe brushed against the first step, orange leaping from the bowl and right onto my tunic. I turned slowly, already knowing who was behind me.
“Why are you following me, Gilles?”
“I’m not. My room is down the hall.”
I put my free hand on my hip. “And why can’t I go down here? Keeping something from me?”
“You won’t find him down there,” Gilles said, voice smooth and expression a perfect poker face. I raised my eyebrows and took another step down just to provoke him, chills flashing suddenly through my body. “You can do what you want, Princess, but if you have any ounce of sanity, you’ll trust me.”
Trust him?
I glowered at Gilles, and then down at that sapphire glow seeping onto my feet. Flecked with goosebumps and shaken by the cool from below as it spread across my skin, I finally took a step back up, not wanting to admit that my gut seemed to approve of Gilles’ advice.
He stared at me longer than necessary before finally speaking with some small measure of reluctance. Nodding back at the way I’d come, Gilles said, “Go right at the fork. Jude’s is the one at the end of the hall.”
I could feel the weight of a million unsaid things shifting between us like a pendulum. I wanted to thrust it back to his side with the impulse of insult, but my better judgement beseeched me to hold my tongue. Besides, I had to prove the guy wrong; provoking him wasn’t, like, my only mode of operation.
“Thank you,” I said sweetly, not liking the edgy glint I caught in his eyes when our gazes snagged as I brushed past.
I knocked softly before entering, but the door was unlocked when I nudged it open. Jude was sitting in front of the wide window, muscled back to me as he hunched over, staring out into the open night.
I stood there awkwardly in the beat of silence, hoping he’d turn. When he didn’t, I spoke.
“Hey.” My voice cracked a little.
“A storm is coming,” he murmured.
“You haven’t eaten, Jude.”
He turned slowly as if my words had pulled him from a dream, and looked at me absently for a moment. Then, as if finally registering that I was the one standing there, he looked me up and down like he was taking inventory of my wellbeing. I raised my eyebrows and gestured at the soup to prompt him.
“No,” Jude answered. “I was not hungry.”
“For days, though?” He was silent and I sighed, trying for some casual humor. “I’m sure seeing so much of my food come up the other night didn’t help.”
“Aye, it didn’t,” he offered a small smile.
I maneuvered the door shut with a foot and moved deeper into his room, taking it in as I went. It was similar to Sy’s; far less generous than mine in both space and decor, its earthy colors seemed both modest and passive. There were few things here to indicate that it’d been occupied for half a century— a desk of scattered drawings, a woven dreamcatcher above his bed.
My gaze wandered back to the man in black. “May I... may I sit?”
“Of course, Princess.”
I scrunched my nose at the formality. He didn’t notice, and I set the bowl down on the desk before joining him. “Don’t call me that. It reeks of Gilles.”
He chuckled to himself but didn’t meet my eyes. His were set on the dark storm clouds rolling towards us, a suspended silhouette edging forward in the sky.
“Anyway, I put some soup over there. Sorry it’s cold, I got a little lost trying to find you.”
“Thank you, that is very kind.” His expression shifted, tinged with the shadow of a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. I wanted to take his face into my hands, to turn him to me. Instead, I studied him apprehensively, a deep unease creeping over me.
“Jude,” I clenched my fingers against the armrest, fighting every instinct to reach out to him. “Why haven’t you been at dinner? What’s wrong?”
His Adam’s apple bobbed and his eyes finally detached from the night beyond the window, only to find his idle hands instead of me. “I’ve wronged you.”
“You— wait, what?”
He sighed, seeming rattled at having to explain. Finally, he said, “You told me you felt vulnerable, and I encouraged you to do something which caused you distress.”
“No.” My fingers’ grip grew tighter around the seat. God, I wanted to reach out and touch him so badly, as if my touch could reassure him. As if I had the touch of a healer instead of a killer.
I took a deep breath, trying to calm my riled nerves. “You don’t know what happened to me that night, do you?”
Jude frowned. “No. But I cannot imagine it was good.”
Relief washed over me. He hadn’t been gifted with any sort of murderous visions of me. I swallowed, the opportunity opening wide in front of me. Now or never, Saylor.
“Well, I came to tell you.”
Jude peered over at me with a sort of strained curiosity. It was my turn to look at my hands, the skin pulled taut and ghostly over my knuckles. “You made it into the ‘scape, Jude. Maybe it was the first loop, I’m not sure... but at some point, you interceded. My theory is that you interfered with the Grimms’ narrative, and helped me start to push at the boundaries of the dream. You’re probably why I was eventually able to wake up.”
His head had tilted as he watched me talk, eyes softening with each confession as I hauled them from myself, apprehension clinging to the tail of each word. A tawny curl fell over his dark brow, and my heart twinged.
“I felt it, when we touched,” I continued, “that being close to you activated something deep in me—” I choked on my breath and Jude moved quickly to cup my face, my vulnerability shaking him from his strange trance of apathy. “When I met you in the dream,” I whispered, “you were kind, persistent, full of integrity. You. So when you asked me to sing for you, I did. But—”
Say it, Saylor.
“I—”
Say it.
“I killed you,” I gasped. “I watched myself kill you, Jude. I never want to see myself like that again— someone who was so good to me—”
My hands trembled against the armrests, but when I peered up at him, his eyes weren’t filled with the horror of my truth. The slanted angle of his head had deepened and he was looking on at me with such a simple and astounding empathy that I nearly burst into tears.
“I’m right here,” Jude said, wrapping his hand over mine and pulling it up to rest against his chest, “and very much alive.”
A strange sob of relief and dismay escaped me. Fuck Jude and that stupid romanticism that made me his blind spot. Fuck him for being so good that it made my ugly truth that much worse.
“‘The tale is a lie, what it tells is the truth.’ Jude, your truth is that you are a kindhearted savior. Mine is that I have a killer inside.”
He frowned, lifting my chin with a finger. “That is not who you are, Saylora. You must forgive yourself for ever believing it could be.”
His gentle touch against my face sent an entirely different sort of tremble through me, and my whole body tensed in warning. I tried halfheartedly to pull my hand away from his chest, but he held it steady above his beating heart as if he wanted me to be intimately familiar with its tempo. With the very ins and outs of his breath.
Sing for me, Saylor—
I want you to kiss me, Jude—
No. I breathed, in two-three-four, out two-three-four, settling myself back into moment unfolding in front of me.
“If I don’t break this curse, Jude, you will actually be dead when we get stuck in the dream. Because of me.”
“Because of Valtronya.” His brown eyes were like a lance to my heart, his conviction piercing. “And we will win, Saylora.”
We. As if they could take on this enormo
us burden with me. As if they could force their hearts into submission. I cut the emotion off— reeled in the fear, the weight— withheld the floodgates of responsibility to give him the simple, painful truth: “You can’t help me, Jude.”
“Sing to me, Saylora.”
“What?” Something inside of me dropped, like my heart had fallen from my chest.
“I’ll prove to you that the part of the dream you fear most was not your truth.” He leaned in and I searched his brown eyes, so sincere under those full lashes. “I want to hear the sound of your voice. Share it with me.”
My stomach rolled over itself not at his request, which was nauseating enough, but at the thought of fulfilling it. At my gladness to indulge in a repeat of the nightmare. “Please don’t,” I said, shaking my head as he implored me with his eyes. I turned my head out of his touch.
“Sing, Saylora.”
I could feel it building, in my throat. The song. I swallowed it back like bile.
“Please,” I said, voice cracking, the dream emerging from my consciousness as his insistent request seemed to play itself out in reality. Dread woke in me.
“It’s been a long while since I heard your voice. I had forgotten until now how much I missed the sound.”
“Forgotten until I told you that this exact scenario killed you?” I asked skeptically.
He grinned and I couldn’t help my returning smile, feeble as it was. “Must I remind you again, Saylora, that I’m the one who sneaks away in the dead of night with you? I am not the careful man you think I am. I’ll readily flirt with danger for you to be who you need to.”
“Don’t tempt me.”
“It would only be fair, as you are so prone to tempting me.”
I slanted my eyes to him. “I’d rather try this out on Gilles.”
“And share such a gift and vulnerability with him instead? I’m offended.”
I searched Jude’s eyes, only finding a resilience in them to match my hesitance. “You are such a risk,” I whispered. I withdrew the knife I now always carried from my boot and offered it to him. “If anything happens, use it.”
“That’s absurd, Say—”
“No,” I interrupted, “it’s not. It’s very possible that I’ll try to hurt you, and if that happens you need to—”
“Kill you?” he balked. “I’m not taking that blade, Saylora. I am not harming you—”
“Even if I try to harm you? Look Jude,” I shook the hilt of the knife at him, urging him to take it. “If I go batshit and you have to do something... you may lose your only way out of here. Or maybe you gain it.” It was something that’d never occurred to me until now.
“I don’t care about getting out of Abduult if you are the cost.”
Taking his hand, I placed the hilt against his palm, folded his fingers down over it, and guided his hand to my throat. I inclined my head ever so slightly to him as I released his hand. The knife glinted, its edge flush against my throat. Jude’s eyes were hard behind the reach of his arm, but the blade stayed put.
Good.
I swallowed carefully in the uncomfortable silence, feeling reassured. Jude was the good one with knives.
“I don’t want to die,” I said, “but I need to know who I am, and I need you to be safe when I do, Jude.”
When I saw the argumentativeness recede from his eyes, his jaw working furiously with his disapproval, I took a deep breath. My eyes found the stars and my mind found the melody. Slowly my voice, crackled like parched earth, found the notes.
At first, I was afraid to look at him for two reasons. First, singing felt like remembering something intimate with a person you’re no longer with. The touch of a forgotten lover. Worse than being naked before others, it was being laid bare before yourself. Second, I couldn’t bear to look and see his desire, or his lack of it. Both terrified me equally.
Despite this, I couldn’t forget his presence there as the notes hung in the air. My eyes were so drawn to his reaction, so needy of it, that even the beauty of such stars did little in the way of keeping my eyes occupied.
So I looked. His brows had risen as he listened to me, my melody telling an affecting tale. His lips were idly tilted in satisfaction and reflection, but his gaze was intent on me. Steadied. The knife glistened against my throat in the moonlight as it shifted in his halfhearted grip.
I took a deep breath and continued, wondering when the siren would burst to life. I could feel her there, rocking underneath my skin, ready to quench her thirst. I could feel her, but I didn’t know if she was biding her time, or if she’d submitted to my human will.
I waited for the rage of Jude’s stillness to manifest, for the responding fear to roll into his eyes... but just as I was beginning to get my answer, the song broke off in my throat as Jude thrust himself into the space between us, his lips locking with mine.
I heard the vague clatter as the knife fell from his hand, his fingers curling into my hair, lips furious and insatiable as they wed with mine.
“It doesn’t count if you don’t resist me,” I murmured.
“Can’t help what I can’t help,” he said, nuzzling against my cheek.
To hell with tests. And curses. And fear. Jude was alive, and he was kissing me.
Conflict twisted in me as I warred with my wants and my better intentions. Every time I tried to pull away, he reeled me back in with a passionate look, an ardent readiness. I wrenched away from him with a hasty breath, backing towards the window. He pressed in against me, not letting me escape his grasp.
The wind swept in. The storm was coming. I glanced back, the window a mere ledge and a steep fall. Intoxicated by Jude’s touch, a keening siren in my ear, such a drop was an afterthought. I straddled the sill and Jude mimicked me, one leg dangling over the edge as he pushed my head against the reveal of the window.
“This is a new level of flirting with danger,” I noted, breath heavy as his hand pinned my hair to the surface behind me. Far off thunder cracked, and the dark clouds began to shed their rain. A light mist began to fall over us.
“With you, I never seem to have much of a choice,” Jude grinned.
He leaned in, lips working against mine, and I gasped for breath as he made his way down the line of my neck. His lips were soft against my throat as the rain picked up, a sheen of water sliding onto our skin. My body rioted under his wet touch; I wanted him in me, I wanted to forget the fear, wanted to hear my song ring through the open skies.
The tale is lie—
What it tells is the truth—
Jude pushed against me, the skirt of my damp dress now hanging high on my hips as he rocked against me. I met his rhythm, wanting nothing more than to shed our clothes and feel the fury and spell of his skin against mine.
Jude’s lips skimmed the shell of my ear and the breath of his whisper made me shudder against him. “Saylora... I...”
I didn’t know—
I didn’t know I was capable of any of this—
His voice trailed off in undeclared longing and my heart stammered in agony. Here, wedged between a window and a man, straddling the cleft between a prison and a dangerous freedom, a curse couldn’t have seemed less relevant to a heart that wanted love and didn’t deserve it.
I gasped for air, the blood shooting to my cheeks. If Jude said those three words, I couldn’t say them back. Not yet. There was too much blood on my hands to be handling Jude’s heart with such precarious intentions.
“Wait,” I said. I let a few seconds pass just so I could entertain the fleeting possibility of more, appreciating that feeling of him thick between my legs for a little longer. I pushed him back gently. “Don’t say anything else. It’s... it’s infatuation, Jude. This. Us. It’s limerence, that’s all.”
For what it was worth, I wanted it to be love. For me, for Jude, for all our sakes. The impossibility of it surged over me. How could I be capable of truly loving another when I was so reviled by the monster I might be?
“All I was going to say,�
�� Jude lifted my hand to his mouth and pecked the top of it gently, “was how very much I have missed you, Saylora.”
“Oh,” I smiled weakly. My heart both stuttered in relief and sank in defeat.
I wondered what fate these men would meet outside Abduult, if given the chance. If the Achilles’s heel of good men like Jude was proximity, and when a whole world opened wide before them, he and the others would be drawn away, enticed by less encumbered loyalties.
I looked at him intently, hoping our physical connection would translate to my unspoken words. The truth was, I cared too much for this man to seduce him to benefit my own ends.
Jude gazed back, and nodded. “Our attraction need not be a burden to you. I have made no vows to you other than to serve and protect you.” He raised his hand to cradle my cheek in his palm. “But vows or not, I never want to be the cause of your hurt.”
His touch slowly fell down my body, finger dragging from my cheek down the line of my neck, between my two breasts, over my core, and finally ending with a final flick between my legs.
I sucked in a quick breath, holding back the flinch of desire that, siren or not, wouldn’t have been easily contained had Jude let his hand linger there. A few moments passed, our breaths shared among the clattering of rain, and finally he kissed me on the forehead and stood, offering his hand to me.
My eyes caught against the flash of the knife as it glittered on the cold floor in the fluctuating shadow of the rain. I pulled myself up and watched as Jude shuttered the window, wishing for a world where I was worthy of the greater vow.
Chapter 17
Weapons of Choice
I pressed my palms up to my head, feeling emptied of all senses. I’d only barely made it out of there, and honest to god I had no idea how I’d managed to escape the powerful call of Jude’s super stellar body.
He’d been so ready for me. I’d felt it, and man it would’ve been good. The way he’d moved against me made me think he knew exactly how he’d move inside me. I blew out another hot breath of air, little effort given to avoiding the picture my imagination was forming of his—