by Jessa Lucas
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I think my mother liked it, but she died when I was young. Never been to the ocean, but I don’t think I’d like it much. Something about water freaks me out. All the things lurking just underneath the surface, you know?”
“Not to mention all the damn sand.”
“Sure,” I agreed. “So where’re you headed?”
I’d reeled Gilles in, and now I was anxious to keep him in conversation. It was like hitting two birds with one stone; keeping him hooked satisfied both my eagerness to spite him, and diverted my instinct to compel him. Win-win.
“Not sure yet,” he said simply. “Just along for the ride. What about you?” It was a dull question, posed with so much disinterest that I could feel the apathy rolling off of him in waves.
Yes, I could definitely work with this.
I smiled, letting myself slink into the coyness that came so easily these days, tempering it with as much controlled friendliness as I could. “I’ve been skipping around for a few years now. Eventually trying to make my way to Los Angeles. But who knows. Can’t ever seem to get there.”
His eyes lingered on me a second, long enough for something to snag deep in my stomach, and then he tore his gaze away and set his head back against the glass of the window.
Well. I’d certainly never gotten that weird-ass reaction before. My nostrils flared, and I dragged my inhuman intentions in and held them close, trying not to think about how easily he’d been able to look away from me. I mean, don’t get me wrong— beauty queen I was not. But men did not dismiss me.
“Where are you from, Gilles?”
“Neither here nor there.”
“Wow, your answers are so thorough.”
He sighed like he was put out. “Montana. Near the mountains.”
“I’ve always wanted to see mountains. It’s so flat and dry where I’m from,” I said. “So, you don’t know where you’re going at all? Like, no plan whatsoever?”
“I’m kind of dying, so pretty sure where the ground is that I end up in doesn’t matter too much.”
I stared at him. This Gilles guy could be the quintessential master of sarcasm. Or, he could be telling the truth. “You’re dying,” I repeated flatly.
“Cystic fibrosis. Genetic. Might or might not make it to thirty at the rate I’m going. So like I said before, Saylor? Just along for the ride.”
Right on cue, the guy burst into a fit of coughing— which was definitely far beyond the required performance to sell me. Plus, no way was this the type of guy who tried that hard in the first place.
“Fuck,” I whispered. Gilles nodded without much emotion, like he was already resigned to his fate. “There’s nothing the doctors can do? No experimental studies or anything?”
“No cure. Tired of treatment.”
I burrowed farther into my hoodie. “Boarding a bus to nowhere is obviously number one on my bucket list, too,” I said.
Gilles gave a nonchalant shrug. “Step one was just getting as far away as I could. Everyone worries too much. If I’m gunna die, I’ll die— but god, I’m not dead yet.” A bitter smirk came to me, hearing this angry resilience. It was all too familiar.
I stared down at my hands. Talk about karma, a runaway arsonist-slash-murderer sitting next to a dying man. My problems couldn’t be less sympathetic right now.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Gilles hesitate, and then he finally asked, “What’re you reading?” I held up the book so he could catch the title when he leaned over to answer for himself. “What the hell is that?”
“I have a thing for Greek mythology, I guess. It’s just leisurely.” I shrugged, dropping the book back into my lap.
“That shit’s leisurely?”
I nodded. “I’ve got no clue how to, like, get myself government mandated healthcare, but I could totally tell you all about how the gods needed it.”
“You sound smart in the annoying way.”
“I am,” I said proudly. “Also, that last part was a hyperbole. I know step one to adulting is getting a job.” Unfortunately, those were kinda tricky to keep longterm when you were on the run for murder. But it wasn’t like I needed to elaborate.
Gilles shook his head, gaze trained on the world outside the bus. “And you say I’m pretentious. You’re the one using words like ‘hyperbole.’”
“Everyone knows what a hyperbole is, Gilles.”
“That’s a hyperbole.”
“See?!”
He stared at me a moment, those bright hazel eyes fiercer than was good for either of us. I swore he was about to smile, but I looked away before I saw it. My heart felt like it was beating with a strange push-pull rhythm for him, a tension building in my chest that I recognized from somewhere.
It was no use drudging up excuses. My attraction wasn’t good, even for douchebags who possibly deserved the consequences. The guy was already dying, and I was on a diet from my abuse of power after the last time.
But hot damn. Something about this guy... some confusion of devastation, some glimmer of hope. Some weight swinging eternally between the hot and cold of the two.
“Anyway,” I said, clearing my throat, “Mythology is, like, super interesting. Right now I’m reading about Orpheus. Have you heard of him?”
Gilles shook his head and I smiled triumphantly. At least I could indulge in this pastime without mutilating someone!
“So Orpheus is the guy who helped the Argonauts escape the sirens,” I said. “The sirens would shipwreck sailors on the rocks by luring them there with their songs. Luckily, Orpheus’ voice was more beautiful. When the ship passed by the rocks, he sang loud enough to drown out the sirens’ song, granting them safe passage.”
“And what do you find so interesting about that?”
“What’s not interesting about it?!”
Um, luring men to their untimely ends? A gal could relate.
“I’m reading about a pretty sad part now,” I continued, “where Orpheus goes to rescue his wife from the underworld. Hades and Persephone are so moved by his song that they tell him he can take Eurydice home as long as he doesn’t look back at her on the way up. But he does, and he loses her all over again.” I paused, lost in the thought of such a tragic ending to a love story, and then— “I mean, can you imagine a song that’s so beautiful it sways the heart of the king of the underworld, Gilles?”
“I mean, it’s mythology so.”
“Yeah,” I rolled my eyes, “but if it were like real, that’d have to be a pretty fucking powerful song.”
“You like music, I gather.”
“It’s a sort of obsession for me,” I admitted, knowing he’d take it more casually than I meant it.
“Ah, the words of tortured artists around the world.” He set his head against the glass, choking back a cough as he added with accentuated boredom, “I’m guessing the humming is a precursor to your love of singing?”
I couldn’t help but take the bait. I was like a starved creature who hadn’t eaten in years. Not food— companionship. Honesty.
“No,” I answered instantly. “I mean, I love it but I never do it in front of people.”
“Except me.”
“Apparently,” I grumbled, more for his benefit than mine. Had I actually been humming in earshot of the guy, he’d be at my throat now, trying to put me in bed instead of the other way around.
“Stage fright?”
I stifled a laugh, taking a detour from the subject. “There are other instruments, you know. Piano, guitar, the harp. I’m trying to memorize some of the chord fingerings for the harp now, see if it comes naturally, you know.”
I demonstrated, holding my hand out and flicking my fingers around in the progression I’d read about a few hours before.
“That both looked and sounded dirty,” Gilles said.
“Well it’s hard when I’ve never so much as touched one before.”
“Can you even hear yourself right now?” Gilles laughed.
“I absolu
tely hear myself,” I said wryly. “It’s like I invented innuendo.”
“Well executed.” He paused a moment and then made a face at me. “You would play the harp.”
“Based on the way you said that, I think I’m supposed to be offended.”
“It’s just so kitschy. You’re one of those manic pixie girls aren’t you?”
“I literally have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Never mind.”
I folded my arms and glared at him. “I’m not.”
“You used the word ‘adulting.’”
“But I’m not manic.”
“You have crazy eyes, Saylor.”
“Ass,” I muttered, tucking my hands under my armpits. Why’d it have to be so fucking freezing on public transportation? “I’ve never even touched a harp before, which you’d remember if you’d been paying attention ten seconds ago.”
Gilles looked over at me, and I begrudgingly caught his eye. His laugh lines were crinkling, and he seemed genuinely pleasant for the first time. “It’s good that you know what you want. That you have a path. Not everyone is so lucky.”
“Do you know what you want, Gilles?” I raised an eyebrow at him.
“Sure, Saylor. I want lots of things. Not everyone is so lucky to have the time, either.”
I frowned, trying to understand his tone. It wasn’t really bitter, but there was something so slicing about it, something that struck me to the core. I looked away, but my eyes crept back to him involuntarily. He was still watching me.
My stomach swayed. I was starting to get antsy, like something was crawling underneath my skin. I was never stupid enough to fall for this— this staring-deeply-into-some-guy’s-eyes routine. But this one?
My demon was coming. She’d been riled by the banter and now she was basking a little too intentionally in that gaze, settling herself a little too gleefully in the longing found there...
Fuck, fuck, fuck. This was the first time in a long time she’d snaked her way to the surface with such subtle expertise. The first time in a long time that she’d risen without my consent, a starved predator on the hunt. And the last time—
The last time, I’d been sixteen, and he’d been a grown man.
I shuddered, pushing back all the primed fury, the excruciating hurt. I’d promised myself. I’d promised that I would remake myself, that I would be new. That I wouldn’t do this shit anymore. And that I’d never look back.
But as I peered at Gilles, I knew it was too late. I saw the same look in those eyes that’d beckoned me into damnation before. Intrigue. Fascination. A fleeting vulnerability that flickered like a vacancy sign above his heart.
Something in me was awakening— some beast I’d caged—
I’d promised myself never to free her again, but she was clawing her way to the surface—
Hungry—
Ready—
I wrenched my mind back from the next unwelcome moments of the memory, mind stumbling as it tried to register where I was. Warmth, not cold. Sun streaming in through the diamond-shaped panes of glass. Something hot against me.
Gilles. He was no longer twisting my wrist high above my head, taunting me with that infuriating steel grip. No— he was hugging me tight against his chest, and I was shuddering.
I immediately yanked myself from his arms, thrown by the closeness. I willed my body to still underneath the tremors that wanted to surge through me, and cleared my throat uneasily.
I couldn’t watch myself kill again. Real or not, Gilles or not, I wouldn’t watch myself hurt someone that way. My heart stammered in my chest, and then for a fraction of a second it pounded to a nauseating halt.
The tale is a lie. What it tells is the truth.
“Gilles,” I said, frowning up at him, “are you dying?”
“Nearly, of irritation,” he said as his grasp on me slackened. His voice had all the usual impudence in it, but he was looking at me strangely, the way someone looks when they don’t quite believe the lie you’ve just told. I didn’t like it. It was a look that reeked of pity all over again. Shocked though I was that Gilles might be capable of such a thing, I certainly wouldn’t be the object of it.
One of those eternal moments passed between us and I stood a little straighter to compensate for the uncomfortable hit my emotional pride was taking. Because regardless of why I’d just been in Gilles’ arms… I’d definitely just been in his arms.
“Muscle spasms,” I cleared my throat. “Guess you were right about my core.” Obviously, he didn’t believe me, because it was a shit lie like the fifty before it (but at this point, who was counting?).
Damn those muddied green eyes. They were so full of amused ridicule that I couldn’t help but retreat into his favorite stereotype of me. Folding my arms over one another, I narrowed my gaze. “You didn’t answer my question,” I said carefully, eyes roaming his face for any crack in his mask.
For one, glimmering moment, I thought I was going to get a real answer from someone in this damn tower. Gilles’ eyes locked with mine, tightened, and then he let out a heavy exhale through his nostrils. “Where do you get these ideas of yours, Princess?”
My turn not to believe him; the smirk that’d slid onto his face was too practiced to be honest.
The gears in my mind kickstarted into a frantic grind. What if Gilles had been dying before we’d set out from Lithron? And what was this strange feeling in my gut, like a hand had reached in and twisted it, devastating my whole body with the thought?
“Shall we?” he motioned back at the target with both arms, sounding impatient now that I’d left his arms.
My heart stammered against my ribcage, a sickening ocean of horror rising in my stomach.
Because I had a new problem.
“I gotta go.” I backed away from Gilles slowly, a theory taking root. What if Gilles was dying, and the whole reason he’d gotten on that damn boat— got locked in this fucking tower— was because Valtronya had promised him something? Something like a cure.
What if Gilles was the traitor, and I was his bargaining chip out of here?
Chapter 16
The Beauty of Such Stars
“Where’s Jude?” I asked to the otherwise silent dinner party. It was unusually quiet among my men tonight, and even I wasn’t putting in an effort to spice things up.
“He is not feeling well.”
“Still?” I asked Jabari, his answer too simple to be the full truth. Something was definitely wrong.
I shifted uncomfortably in my seat as silverware scraped against plates in the enduring silence and peered across the table at Gilles. He was watching me carefully, and my eyes darted back down hurriedly. My face flushed and I was suddenly terrified that the threat of what I suspected he was might be too clear in my gaze.
“We should join the two of them tomorrow,” Sy said gruffly. “Resume our training.”
Dash gave a short nod of agreement as he tipped the bowl of soup up to his lips.
“How is training, Saylora?” Jabari asked lightly.
My eyes passed across Gilles again, afraid he was going to offer them a very sour answer and he looked at me expectantly. I cleared my throat, realizing he’d deferred to me. “Well, I haven’t managed to kill him yet,” I said dryly. “Either accidentally or on purpose, so take that as you will.”
Dash shared a look with Gilles, and Sy’s lips trembled with a faint smile as he bit into a knob of bread, watching me.
“You are always welcome to train in other areas if you prefer,” Dash smiled.
“Best to focus efforts on advancing the same skill,” Sy said. “Time is limited.”
I locked eyes with Gilles. “Guess you’re stuck with me.” He looked across at me without any obvious reaction and I studied him a moment longer than I should’ve. He didn’t seem phased by whatever had happened between us in the training room earlier. What did he think had happened?
What did Jude think had happened? And why was he almost entirely avoiding m
y company?
If whatever was going on with Jude had something to do with that night, I needed to know. Only then could I discern what Gilles might do with similar information.
I stewed over these thoughts as the five of us slipped easily back into wordlessness, stirring my spoon around in idle circles. After a moment, I reached to hastily ladle carrot soup into the untouched bowl on the table and then stood abruptly. I felt Sy’s eyes on me.
I didn’t indulge their curiosity as I marched out, my own bowl still full on the table. There was apparently only one way to move forward in this quest of seduction.
Time to pay Mr. Oath Breaker a visit.
The problem with huge ass towers is that unless you’ve been living in them for a decade (and conscious the whole time), it’s nearly impossible to find your way around them in a timely manner. Which, with a time sensitive curse at hand, was not super ideal.
Since I’d only managed to accidentally-on-purpose break into Sy’s room, it was mostly guesswork as to where the rest of my watchmen laid their heads to rest. Sy’s modest, compact room was on the fifth level along with mine, but the whole floor was a series of confusing step offs and split-level corridors. I was banking on the odds that if I ever managed to navigate my way through this labyrinth of private quarters, this is where I’d find Jude.
The candlelight cast long dancing shadows across the grey stones, and I tried not to spook myself as I pivoted on my heel carefully, twisting to gaze down the various passageways for any clue of where Jude’s room might be. The bowl of soup sloshed in my hand, and I stepped forward with necessary lightness, trying to keep the brimming bowl at equilibrium.
Down the hall to the right, the golden glow of firelight tapered out into murky shadow. I didn’t recognize this area from the numerous times I’d tried to inconspicuously escape Sy’s bedroom, so I crept toward it. A pointed arch opened into a tiny space that looked like a stairwell. The faint flush of blue light emanated from below.
I mean, ‘follow the light’… right?
