I didn’t want to know about his hunger, in case what I discovered was too terrifying. And maybe because I did have a hunger of my own, for what I’d thought of as appetizers. For romance. And I didn’t want him to laugh at me. Because if Vehyn thought sex was too base and mortal, how would he feel about something as silly as kissing? But then, he had kissed me. He had given me roses. Maybe he was interested in romance in his own way, just as I was. And yet, he lacked something else that was bothering me, and it certainly wasn’t a desire for sex.
There was something missing in his eyes—within that empty, ageless darkness—that had told me he wasn’t human. Something missing in him that I didn’t want to think about too much.
If not broken, then at the very least I was something different. And maybe it was good to be different from Vehyn.
“Gods forbid you have to stoop to a mortal level like mine,” I said finally, attempting to cover my surprise, my wonder, with anger. I tried to pull away again. “I guess we’re not alike after all.”
He held on to me, giving me a little shake that was almost affectionate. “Kamai, Kamai, I don’t wish to antagonize you. I merely want to know you. To understand you. So I can give you what you want.”
What did I want? I flushed to my ears with embarrassment this time, and I couldn’t look him in the face for fear he would read my thoughts.
Vehyn’s liquid dark eyes were on me, waiting, calculating, and hungry at once. Predatory. “What are you thinking?”
“Nothing.” Which was a flagrant lie. A thought occurred to me, one I couldn’t halt: Was this, was I, somehow what he actually wanted? And could I give something to him in a way that might satisfy his hunger, whatever it was? My breathing increased in spite of myself, and a smile flickered across Vehyn’s face, as if he did know what I was thinking.
I mentally berated myself. How did I know he wasn’t lying about how he felt? And why in all three hells did I want to give him what he wanted?
“What do you want, Kamai?” he whispered, leaning closer to me, his breath a warm caress against my cheek.
It was hard to focus, but I managed. I had to know if he was only toying with me. And maybe that meant toying with him. I needed to ask for something small, almost inconsequential … but something I knew for sure he wouldn’t want to give, just to see what he would do. But first, to throw him off the scent … “I want you to tell me who killed my mother.”
“Not yet.”
Of course. It was the bait that kept me coming back to him. “Fine.” I took a deep breath. “Then I’ll settle for an apology.”
His eyes narrowed. “An apology?” He repeated it as if unfamiliar with the word.
“Yes. That’s what I want. Apologize for your cruelty in Jidras’s nehym. And for not telling me about what you could do with me.”
“I won’t say I’m sorry for the latter,” he said, cupping my face in his palms, “because you’ll know I don’t mean it. I will say this: take more care with yourself. I would hate to lose you.”
It took me a second to realize he hadn’t apologized for the first thing, either. Crafty bastard. “Then don’t drive me off by being cruel,” I murmured into his hands, trying to remind him of what I’d asked. His fingers were gravitating to my mouth. I didn’t mind him touching me, not at all. His hands felt like they were exploring, studying me, like my own fingers had traced over maps of Eopia to learn its geography. But I would have liked them even more if they came with an apology.
“My intention wasn’t cruelty,” he said gently, almost contritely. Almost. “I didn’t want your father to be able to hurt you anymore. It was a gift.”
I snorted, a very unladylike noise, but I didn’t care. “Some gift. You hurt me in the process, so why would you care if he does?”
Just apologize, I thought, so I can enjoy your hands.
“Because no one should be able to hurt you.” He brushed my cheek with his index finger, tracing the line of my jaw. His thumb caught my lower lip. My heart began to beat faster. “No one but me.”
My blood abruptly turned to ice, and my scalp prickled in warning. “You had me until that last bit.”
“You would do well to remember, now that you’re no longer a child,” he said softly, as if still speaking tender words, “I’m the only one who can hurt you, and so I’m the only one you need fear.”
I hadn’t known it was possible to fail a test so badly, but he had. “Apology not given, not accepted, but lesson learned.” I took a step back into the clearing, finally withdrawing from his touch. “I’m definitely afraid.”
The doorway hovered closer, bringing him with it, and prickles raced over my arms and legs. The trick wasn’t charming anymore. He’d let me go only to chase me, a predator toying with its prey. “But you don’t have to fear me, so long as you listen to me,” he said as he drew nearer. “Come here.”
I backed away. “No.”
“I said come here.”
“And I said no! I’m not a dog.” I breathed the words in nearly a gasp, but at least I said them. And I retreated farther into my bare, sad little clearing. At least he couldn’t leap right through the doorway.
“No, but you are mine.”
Mine. That was what Razim had said too. Apparently, I belonged to all sorts of people—men, or at least strange inhuman creatures that kind of looked like men—without even knowing it. The memory of the pattern that had burst all over my skin—his marks, his strength in my limbs, his voice in my head—didn’t help my temper. Anger flared again, making my voice ring clear. “I am not!”
He cocked his head at me. His next words almost seemed like a change in topic, but I knew better. “What do you think happened, when you opened this door?”
Oh, holy Heshara, what have I done? The question echoed in my mind, not for the first time and probably not the last. “You can’t get out.”
“Is that so? Are you forgetting this evening, how I affected you?”
“But you can’t get beyond … beyond me.” At least I hoped with every scrap of my being that he couldn’t.
“You opened the world to me, but the way is through you. You are my door, Kamai. It’s only that I haven’t fully opened it yet.”
Who are you? I wanted to ask. But I knew he wouldn’t tell me, and I knew where he was going with this. “That doesn’t make me yours.”
“But you gave yourself to me, Kamai. That means you are mine.”
My words only grew louder. “So why not just kill me, then? Kick me down like a door and be free in the world?”
“Because, as I’ve already told you, that wouldn’t please me.”
“What does please you?” I nearly shouted. “What do you want from me?”
He only smiled at me.
I took yet another step back.
His smile slipped and, surprisingly, he gave me a real answer. Or real enough. “For the immediate present, I want you to stop running from me, accept your fate, and … why, maybe even enjoy yourself in my company.”
I couldn’t help a strangled laugh. “You pretty much ruined any chance of that with the whole ‘Fear me, I own you’ part of your speech. You forgot to add ‘happy birthday.’”
“But I also protected you and gave you gifts of knowledge and strength. I take care of what’s mine.”
“There you go again, assuming you have what you don’t. You could really work on your courtship skills.” My voice should have blistered him with its sarcasm. “Have you been getting tips from Jidras?”
I mostly hoped he would scoff at the idea of courting me, but when he didn’t, my stomach clenched in a way that was both horribly good and bad. If this was courtship, I was in trouble.
“I would rather learn from you,” he said, entirely unperturbed. “So you tell me, what can I do to make you feel better?”
“Take it back. Say it isn’t true, that I’m not yours.” I paused. “And then godsdamned apologize.”
He only stared at me again. Yet this time he pursed his lips.
“But then I would be lying,” he said eventually.
“As if you don’t do that already!”
“I often withhold the truth from you, but I rarely speak falsehoods.”
“You’re lying now!” My voice rose to nearly a screech. I took a deep breath and said more steadily through gritted teeth, “I am mine, and mine alone.”
The slight smile returned, but it didn’t touch his eyes. “As you wish. You are yours, and I am sorry.”
Now he was lying. It was plain as his smirk. And he knew I would be able to tell.
“I hate you,” I spat.
“I know. But I also know that’s not all you feel for me. Besides, where is the fun in absolutes?”
I wanted to scream. Instead, I closed my eyes to wake up.
He didn’t try to stop me. Not because he couldn’t—he probably could—but because he was once again letting me go. And he knew I knew it, which only made me more furious.
I hesitated, reopened my eyes in the clearing, and slammed the black door in his face. Oddly, it stayed shut for the second I lingered to see if it would. But maybe that was also only because he allowed it. I kicked the door before I left, only bruising my toe, and I knew there was a lesson in there somewhere.
But none of those lessons mattered anymore, because I’d ignored the most important one of all: The first thing my mother had tried to teach me about the black door. Not to open it.
There was another lesson that mattered almost as much: Never fall in love.
I wasn’t too worried about that. I figured I could maintain a pretty strong hatred for Vehyn, if tonight had been any indication. Still, his sly, insinuating voice echoed in my mind even after I woke up stiff and sore and mildly damp. Not his actual voice, just the memory of it:
That’s not all you feel for me.
I spent the rest of the night tossing and turning and wondering if there was the possibility that he might be right. Which was probably the exact effect he’d intended.
You bastard.
12
BLOOMIΝG SHADOWS
Staring into my own reflection in the vanity mirror the next morning, I realized my eyes had dark circles underneath. The deep shadows even seemed to reach my irises, making the brown look nearly black. Almost like Vehyn’s. Perhaps it was the result of only a bad night of sleep, compounded by the gray light filtering in from outside.
But I couldn’t shake the memory of the black patterns surfacing on my skin, taking control of me, lending me unnatural strength. Maybe something inside me had changed, and my time in Vehyn’s realm was lending shadows to my eyes from more than simple sleeplessness. I shuddered to imagine him peering out through my own face, speaking in my head, moving my body. He was silent now, but I knew that wasn’t permanent.
How had it come this far?
Something was wrong. With Vehyn. With the fortress behind the black door. With me. But I didn’t know what to do about any of it, and it was easier to focus on the wrongness outside of me, under this roof.
I put on a lot of powder before heading downstairs. I even tried on a creamy peach gown to lend me some warm, bright color, but it only made me look worse, and I hated peach besides. I settled on the midnight-blue affair that I had worn last night. The one Vehyn had complimented.
Stop thinking about Vehyn.
As I fitted a pair of glimmering earrings that would hopefully distract from my face, a knock at the door made me startle. It was only Nikha.
She took one look at me and said, “Sweet Heshara, did Moholos breathe too hard on you last night?”
Moholos was a folk figure, sometimes described as an old man, sometimes a mischievous imp, who purportedly carried out tasks for Heshara and also occasionally got up to no good. He put people and especially children to sleep by exhaling on them. He wasn’t in any religious texts, and at an early age my mother had told me he was only mythical. Even so, the plant used to distill sleeping tonics was called mohol after him.
Maybe Vehyn is Moholos. Picturing Vehyn bending over beds and breathing on people nearly made me laugh. I would have to ask him about that just to see what he’d say, if I ever decided to speak to him again.
Stop it, I told myself. To Nikha, I said, “I … didn’t sleep well.”
“I can see that. Feel free to claim that as an excuse.”
I frowned at her. “Excuse for what?”
“The master of the house has decided to take breakfast with us commoners this morning.” Heavy sarcasm underlay her obsequious words. Under normal circumstances, it would have wrung a smile from me, especially since it meant she’d grown comfortable enough around me to mock my fa—No, I thought. Not my father. “I couldn’t imagine you felt like suffering through that, so I thought I’d warn—”
“No,” I said vehemently enough to make her raise her eyebrows. “Thank you, Nikha, but it’s he who will have to suffer through my presence.” With that, I swept out of the room, catching her muttered “Oh boy” as I passed her.
For breakfast, I always had to sit next to the head of the table, where a place had been set for Jidras, in case he felt like showing up and pretending we were something vaguely resembling a family. He usually didn’t. It was ironic that he decided to do so right when I’d abandoned any last thought of him as family, but at least it was convenient. He was, for once, the exact person I wanted to see.
He was there at the table when I arrived, a long hardwood affair that was always too big and imposing for just me. I usually asked Nikha to sit with me, which was permissible because of her status as head of the household guard and because she was a woman, so anything untoward was less likely to occur, in Jidras’s estimation. But this time, she wisely hung back. Steaming cups of coffee were already laid out, along with plates displaying luscious slices of mango drizzled in coconut cream and speckled with nuts. That dish was normally a favorite, but I ignored it entirely. I didn’t pause between entering, dropping into my chair, and opening my mouth to speak—all before Jidras could stiffly bid me good morning.
“The last time I saw my mother, she told me I was to find you,” I said, my words as cutting as the knife next to my plate. “She gave me a letter that I wasn’t to open until my eighteenth birthday. She wanted me to wait until I was an adult and could judge the contents for myself. I carried it with me from our burning villa.” The lie was a ready one. I’d prepared it earlier as I’d tried to mask the circles under my eyes. I needed some excuse for the fact that I was reacting to this knowledge only now. “In it, she told me the truth about you.”
Jidras’s mouth opened in surprise, then in outrage, and then in shock, repeatedly, like a fish’s, never once able to form any words. Eventually, he leaned back in his chair and stared at me. He looked as haunted as I had appeared in my vanity mirror. “What truth?” he asked finally, his voice faint.
“You know the one. Do you want me to repeat it in present company?”
He made a show of folding his napkin and setting it carefully next to his plate. “Leave us,” he said to the servants lingering along the wall, and to Nikha, standing in the doorway.
Once everyone had departed, some quickly, some reluctantly—with curiosity written all over their faces—Jidras looked at me. “Where is this letter? I would like to see it.”
“I burned it.”
His face hardened. “Then how do I know—?”
“How else could I know that you tricked my mother into getting pregnant just so she would stay with you?” And then, when I realized his true concern, I laughed derisively. “You think only to protect yourself. You’re worried I would show it to someone.”
“It would be no good for either of us if rumors were to—”
“It’s not a rumor!” I said. “You did it, and I know it … and that’s enough. That should be enough for you to be properly ashamed, without the threat of public humiliation hanging over your head. I’m not going to use it against you. I’m not like you, after all. You’re your own person, and I’m my own, separate,�
� I said, quoting the hurtful words he’d thrown at me the day I’d met him.
His eyes narrowed. “Then what, exactly, do you want?”
I scoffed. “An admission of guilt, perhaps? You can’t apologize to my mother, but you can to me, especially given how you’ve treated me.”
“And how have I treated you?” Jidras demanded coldly. “I have fed you, clothed you, put shelter over your head, and more.”
I gaped at him. “You’ve treated me like you had nothing to do with me! Like I wasn’t part of your twisted plan to coerce my mother into staying with you! At least take responsibility for that.”
“Responsibility?” His jaw went so tight it grew paler at the hinges. “Who should take responsibility? Her work always landed her in trouble, didn’t it? Getting so close to people as to make them think you’re real, when in fact your heart is false, comes with its risks. First she ended up with you, and now she’s dead. I don’t know what she finally did to get herself killed, but I can’t say I’m surprised.”
It took every ounce of restraint to not hurl my plate of mango and coconut across the room. “She was a pleasure artist,” I pronounced, hard and cold. “I’m sorry if you wanted to see more in that than there actually was. You were using something other than your brain to assess the situation, and that’s your fault, not hers. The pleasure she gave wasn’t yours to own.” His blue eyes widened with icy fury, but before he could interrupt, I leaned forward, my hands gripping the edge of the table. “And if you won’t admit the truth, it doesn’t matter. Because I know. And you know I know. And that’s what matters.”
His voice was as tight as a fist when he spoke. “I took you in when I didn’t have to, and now I will see this through, even though I don’t owe it to you, and especially not to Marin.”
Apprehension rose in my chest. “What do you mean?”
“I was joining you at breakfast today to tell you we are going to the royal court. Sooner rather than later, I think. There, I will throw you a gala to mark your debut … and your eligibility.”
Beyond the Black Door Page 13