“But—”
She pressed a cool finger to my lips. Her lashes fluttered, but there was no pretense of humility about her. When she brushed her lips against mine, my denials unraveled. Before long, I would lose myself to her, and I couldn’t. I needed to know the truth.
I touched her face—she felt real, this woman of light and dark—and pulled back while searching her eyes. There was a plea in those eyes, nothing like the commands she spoke. “What is this? Why are you here?”
She slid her fingers down my chest, over my nightshirt, and slipped her hand beneath the fabric. Her touch was smooth and painfully light, testing me in the same way I had touched her face, wondering if this was real.
“I need to feel,” she whispered, and this time her kiss wasn’t nearly as fleeting. She pushed me down, and I let her. Dream or not, I didn’t care. She tasted too sweet and felt too good to stop.
Her fingers teased open the buttons and buckles of her leather waistcoat. All the while, she never took her eyes off mine. Rolling her shoulders, she dropped her waistcoat and then lifted off her blouse. Without thinking, I reached out to touch the curve of her waist. Jewels winked across her body, from her left shoulder, across one breast, and down her midriff, wrapping out of sight around her hip. I trailed my fingers along them. Some gems were no larger than dust, whereas others were the size of marbles. At my touch, her breath caught and the jewels shimmered. She closed her eyes and arched back, her body a terrible invitation. The moonlight spilling in through the window filtered through her braid of dark hair and poured its milky glow over her. I had never seen anything as beautiful.
She caught my hand and directed it to her thigh. “Touch me.”
“Shaianna—”
“Don’t speak, thief. Do as I command.”
Oh, by the gods. She was killing me. I pushed up, tore my nightshirt free, and captured her face in my hands, but there I froze, holding her still and peering into her eyes. How could she be so fierce, so terrible, and look at me with fear in her eyes?
“Agatha and her people?” Desire had wrecked my voice.
Her hands slid down my back, and when she touched my side, a spark of pleasurable pain jolted through me. The brand.
I sank my hand into her hair and held her still, teeth gritted in restraint. “Tell me their slaughter wasn’t you,” I hissed, holding myself in check as much as her. “Tell me it was the mages.”
Her eyes widened, and her disappointment was clear. “The mages came. I had no weapons in that ridiculous dress. I tried to reach my room, my blade … but it was too late.”
That was all I needed. I kissed her hard, groaning into her as she pushed into me. Her nails sank in, raking over my back. I flipped her under me and tasted her as I had wanted to since seeing her in the river. At the swirl of my tongue over a nipple, she rose, my name—Curtis, not thief— a whisper on her lips.
“Show me what it is to feel.” She breathed the words against my neck and a tumble of shivers rolled through me. “Before I am lost.”
She was too precious a thing for me, but I’d take her all the same. And as we lost ourselves in each other, she came alive beneath my touch. I knew the real her—a woman of passion, of light and life. She smiled, she laughed, she nipped and teased. She pinned me down and exposed all that I was, all that I could be. She was the woman in the waterfall, raising her hands to the sky, and the dancer in the crowd, carefree and lighthearted.
Impossibly, she had stolen my heart.
I was hers.
Chapter Twenty-Three
As Shaianna lay tucked against my chest, I trailed my fingers lazily up and down her bare arm and knew I would never understand her. Her words—and her glances—hid meaning upon meaning. But her touch, her desire, her need—those things had been clear. And for that, I was grateful.
Candlelight warmed her skin, turning it caramel. I would never tire of touching her, for every time I did, her softness surprised me.
A headache left over from the alcohol threatened to spoil my mood, but for now, I was content to hold her and forget.
“You saw the beast in the spire,” she murmured.
I didn’t want to think about the beast in the spire—or the mages, or magic, or anything that had become a part of my life during the last few months. Just her. In my arms. Warm and soft and real.
“What you saw … it is all-consuming,” she whispered.
I closed my eyes and clung to the moment, but her words were already chasing it away.
I gathered her hair back, exposing her bare shoulder, and kissed her smooth skin. It seemed, with her pulled close, that all was right in the world. I had been alone too long, focusing only on the next client, the next artifact, and how I could squander my gems in taverns, taunting death. But since Shaianna, since the alley and the cup, I’d gained purpose. I should probably ask how she knew I’d been back to the spire, or how she had known where to find me, but I didn’t care. She would answer with riddles, and I’d much rather she just lay in my arms. I didn’t want to know the truth. I feared, I already did.
She threw back the blanket and collected her clothing. I watched, soaking up the delicious sight of her draped in flickering candlelight. She knew my thoughts, her secret smile said so. She found my day shirt and threw it at me.
“The beast in the spire,” I began, snatching up my shirt. “Can you stop it?”
She had tamed a warg in the Draynes. She had power enough to heal me and herself. From her glances, her stillness, her control, I suspected she could do more, so much more. There was a depth to her, but she feared treading too close.
“No,” she replied.
She layered on her attire, and with each buckle and strap, her smile died a little more, until all that remained was the stern-faced sorceress. But I knew more of her now. I’d run my tongue along the gems speckling her curves. Touched her in places that made her come alive. I didn’t even try to understand her true motives for last night, but I knew the coldhearted sorceress was an act.
“Is it a dragon?” I asked.
She tilted her head with a frown. “A dragon?”
“Like the monument in the Arachian tomb?” I shrugged on my shirt, resigned to the fact the warmth was leaving us. We would soon revert to being the sorceress and thief, and that was how it would always be. It wasn’t enough. It would never be enough. But I’d take it while I could.
“They are called dearmad.” She rolled the r, giving the word reverence.
“What does it mean?”
“Why must it mean anything?” She snatched her sheathed dagger from the cabinet and attached it to her belt, then paused. Her glare, when she turned it back on me, softened. “It means, the mistake.”
“Are there more?” I asked, aware she might shut down at any moment and cease answering my questions.
“No.”
At least she was answering my questions, albeit with short, sharp replies. “Where did it come from? From what I saw in the spire, it’s no small beast. The size of a house, at least. Something like that doesn’t appear overnight unnoticed.”
Unless Anuska and her mages had summoned it. Was that what they’d been doing with the Dragon’s Eye? The Eye controlled earth magic. Was that thing of the earth? Over and over questions tumbled in my mind.
“It’s always been here.” She strode to the window and would have vanished outside had I not caught her arm.
“Shaianna, wait.”
“Thief, I cannot give you what you want.” She pulled her arm free. “I am sorry for that.”
“Thief? I thought we’d at least progressed to names. Shall I call you sorceress or The Shadow?”
She bowed her head with a sigh. “I should not have come.”
“Why did you?” I waited while she hesitated, either lost for an explanation or unable to speak whatever was on her mind. “Let me help you. Show me what it is to feel before I am lost. Your words.”
“Curtis, I am sorry.” Her gaze stayed on the window, her es
cape.
“Sorry for what, exactly? Sorry for branding me with a mystical mark, almost getting me killed, or sleeping with me?”
She lifted her head. “It is best if we stay apart. Perhaps you should leave Brea as you wanted to.”
“Leave?” I retrieved the rest of my clothes and tugged them on. “I’m not leaving. I’m just now discovering who I really am. With Fallford’s help, I will expose the Inner Circle and resurrect the truth right out of his history books.” I headed for the door.
“Books?” Her voice held a note of curiosity, enough to give me pause. She could decipher Fallford’s texts. She could confirm whether his scholars’ assumptions were correct.
“I’ll show you,” I offered. “That is, if you can stand to stay?”
She followed me out the bedchamber, down the hall, and into Fallford’s library. She immediately saw the spread of books and hurried to the table. By the time I’d checked the hallway for any prying eyes and joined her side, she had spread the parchments before her, organizing them in an order, of sorts. It occurred to me that Fallford had worn gloves while handling them, but Shaianna’s wide, joyful smile stopped any rebuke from leaving my lips.
After a few moments, she laughed. Just a light, little skip of laughter, but enough to summon a smile from me.
“Oh, thief. Such wonder in such fragile things.” She pushed a parchment toward me, the one depicting the faded image of a ship. “I remember this day.” Sadness returned to her eyes, but her smile stayed, turning her expression wistful. “The day was bright. Sunlight shattered on the ocean. I watched the people row in from their ships. I remember … I remember the taste of salt on the sea breeze and the warmth of the sun on my back. I remember the expectation, like a sweetness in the air.” Delight warmed her face. She ran her hands over the texts and then reached for the books. “Ah, but these are so old and fragile, like the memories of those alive today.”
“You were there?”
“Yes. Her guardian. Her advisor. It was my duty to protect our city.” She opened a large moth-eaten tome, but her eye was pulled back to the parchments. Slowly, she brushed her fingertips across the text. “The new people were so filled with reverence. We did not understand them at first. They spoke differently, but we learned quickly. When they witnessed our magic, they called the queen’s people gods. They wanted to learn. Together, we learned many things, but not enough.” The light in her eyes dimmed.
“What happened?”
“I counseled my queen to be generous and trusting. I was wrong. They stole from us.”
“What did they steal?”
“They saw our power, harvested from the earth, and they wanted it for themselves. They stole the first Eye. They lied and misled us. We offered them hospitality, and they sought to take everything—treacherous beasts,” She paused, wet her lips, and looked again at the parchments, her eyes settling on the images depicting the battle. “Justice was all-consuming.”
“Shaianna, tell me … the justice you speak of, has it returned?”
“Yes, thief.” She closed her eyes, and on opening them again, a darkness had gathered, drowning their color. “And she is hungry.”
In a blink, the blackness was gone, and I doubted whether I’d seen it at all. “The spire … the beast inside? That is the justice?”
“Few survived her before.” She gazed at the parchments, sadness weighing her expression once again. “It feels like yesterday. So many lives were lost, and all for greed.”
“The spire …” I moved closer. Soon, she’d lose herself to the past and stop answering my questions. I needed to know what we were facing. She knew everything. All I had to do was ask the correct questions. “The beast inside. It’s the queen’s wrath. The wrath of the earth?” It’s you, I silently accused. It was always you.
“Wrath?” She paused. “Yes, she was her wrath. She is the shadow that consumes the land.” She touched an image of a swirling dragon, so faded by time it barely made any sense to look at. “She is the whisper in the wind, the rise of ocean waves, the stirring below still waters. She is the beginning of the end, and I cannot stop her.”
“The Eye?” I tried to swallow past a rising sense of panic and failed. “Why did you destroy it? Surely with that, you could have stopped it—her?”
Shaianna smiled the very same smile she favored when humoring me. I’d seen it often enough and knew it well. “The Eye had become a mere trinket. It’s magic already consumed.”
“By who? The mages?”
“No, thief.”
By her, at the tomb, all those weeks ago. “Then did you know this would happen? That she would rise again?” I asked.
Her face immediately revealed the answer. She’d been able to hide her thoughts once, but not anymore. She knew. She’d taken the Eye’s power for herself, and now we had no defense against the beast inside her.
“You can stop her, but you refuse to? Is it fear?”
She turned away, prompting a tear to slip down her cheek.
It broke my heart to see her cry. “Shaianna, please, tell me.”
A howl barreled in from the street outside. I’d heard it before, on the road through the Draynes.
I ran for the window as volleys of screams started up in the wake of the howl.
“Wargs!” Wargs had never ventured far from the moors, never mind inside Brea. “Shaianna, you can stop them. You—”
Fallford stood in the doorway, rifle shouldered and aimed true at Shaianna’s head. Though she faced him, I could see the stern press of her lips. I tensed to lunge forward, but Fallford’s trigger finger twitched, freezing me still.
“Do not move, Curtis,” Fallford ordered.
“She’s here with me. She’s a friend—”
“I know exactly who she is. I’ve known about her for years, since the early days of the mines and the miners with their tales. But I could only dream this moment would come.” His gaze flicked down. “Hands high, my dear. I know you are proficient with your weapons, whatever form they may take.”
Shaianna lifted her hands. “Who are you?”
“You might say I am a collector of legends. And you”—his lips pulled into a thin line—“are the finest legend of all. The last legend, the Forgotten One.”
“I could kill you where you stand,” she replied without a quiver of doubt.
This was absurd. Howls echoed through the streets, and Fallford had chosen this moment to lose his mind. “Fallford, by the restless gods. What are you thinking?”
“I had to know if you were real. The cup, the parchments. Lie upon lie, and yet here you are, so very real and so beautiful. Although, unlike the thief, I have yet to see the truth of you. The truth in the lies, if you will.”
“The truth is your death, my lord,” Shaianna replied lightly, yet she still sounded as though she were about to deliver his death sentence.
“I have no doubt.” He stepped into the room and shifted his angle, giving him a direct line of sight across the table to me. “She has you fooled, Curtis. Do you think she cares for you? This was always about her. Every moment since you met and before then, it has always been about her.”
“Fallford. Lower the gun.” I stepped closer. I’d left my dagger in the bed chamber, but Shaianna had hers, and I had seen her release the blade in the blink of an eye. She wouldn’t hesitate to kill him at the first opportunity.
“There is timeless beauty in the pattern of deceit she weaves you.”
I might have thought him insane had he not looked upon her with an admiration I was guilty of myself. These weren’t the words of a madman. Fallford was the most reasonable man I knew, and his reasons were solid.
“Fallford, don’t hurt her.” Without her, I have nothing left to lose.
Shaianna turned her head just enough to catch me in the corner of her eye. “Stay there, Curtis.”
Fallford’s gaze flicked to me then back to her. “Your queen and her people are long dead, faded from memory and relegated to myth. Your du
ty is redundant.”
“My duty is all I have left.”
He considered that and drew in a breath. “Then why haven’t you yet fulfilled your duty? Vance here tells me you destroyed the Eye.” His eyes narrowed. “What are you waiting for?”
“I …” She paused.
Fallford’s frown deepened. He chanced a step closer. “As wonderful a treasure as you are, it would be a mistake to let you live. You will not leave this room.”
“You cannot stop me, my lord.”
“There is always a way.” He smiled. “What others forgot, I believed. And here you are, after years of research and discovery, standing before me. The queen’s wrath. The Shadow who consumes all. A forgotten legend. I am truly sorry it has to be this way. It was an honor, my lady.”
His words crept beneath my denials and ignorance, peeling them apart and revealing the truth inside. I knew who—what she was. Perhaps I’d always known but didn’t want to believe. How could I believe she was the one, the nightmare, the watcher in the dark, the creature from my nightmares who could have stopped it all but never did.
She reached for her dagger. Fallford’s finger twitched. The rifle fired, but his aim went wide.
The dagger punched into his eye socket and threw his head back. He collapsed, dead and convulsing against the floor.
Shock cocooned me inside its protective bubble. As the howls rose outside, rolling into another and another, Shaianna turned to me, her face a mask of concern. She said something, perhaps my name, but I didn’t hear. Casually, Shaianna strode across the room and pulled the dagger from Fallford’s eye.
Fallford’s fingers jerked. His remaining eye was vacant, his face slack.
“Tell me it’s not true,” I whispered. “What he said. Those are lies?”
She sauntered back around toward the window, dagger dripping. “You know the truth in your heart, thief. You always have.”
“You were the queen’s wrath?” It sounded like my voice, but I didn’t remember speaking. This was all happening to someone else, wasn’t it?
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