A Song in the Night (TEMPTED KINGDOM: The Series Book 1)

by Jessa Lucas

  And when he said my name, there was a single, gut-wrenching pang in my heart. I understood what he was asking, and why he was asking it.

  “I might’ve,” I said. He squeezed my hand. I didn’t want to let go. It was the first time I’d never wanted to, but I withdrew my hand anyway and set it on the strap of my backpack.

  “Make like Orphan-man, and don’t look back.”

  “Orpheus,” I corrected.

  “Make like Orpheus then,” Gilles said. “I’m serious, Saylor. Don’t look back.”

  And so I didn’t.

  Chapter 21

  The Siren and the Storm

  “I got off,” I gasped.

  “That makes one of us,” Gilles muttered.

  “I didn’t kill you,” I whispered as I blinked back to my surrounding.

  “That’s...” he started, and I registered the sound of his confusion, “an encouraging update.”

  I settled back into reality. I was still straddling Gilles, but now my head rested on him, his hands wrapped around mine as I shuddered against his muscled chest.

  Man, never had I ever thought straddling a medieval babe in leathers would be my reality.

  I pushed off his chest and peered down at him, shaking the last of the shivers from my spine. “Are you dying?” I asked quietly. “Tell me the truth this time, Gilles, or I swear to god—”

  His expression flashed through several reactions before landing on stoicism. “We’re all dying, Princess. Me a little more than others, especially right now.” His gaze dropped down to where our more sensitive parts were still flirting.

  “You’re just as bad at lying as I am.” I dug my hip bones deeper into him and crossed my arms, more than happy to sit on top of him for as long as it took to get a straight answer.

  When the answer finally came, the statement was absent of the accusation I expected. “I thought you didn’t remember anything from before.”

  “So you are.” A staggering beat passed. Then another. My throat trembled, unwilling to swallow the implication of his silence.

  Gilles tore his eyes away from mine, but they wandered back almost guiltily a second later. “Yes. I was dying, Saylora. Then we found ourselves in Abduult, and I simply… continued existing.”

  “But when the curse is lifted and we get out?” I cocked my head at him, a jolt of sorrow puncturing me as I watched his casual shrug.

  “I’ve had a lifetime, Princess. That’s more than enough time. More than I ever thought I would have.”

  I tensed at Gilles’s return to mock formality, the attempt to rid this revelation of its intimacy. “You’ve been trapped in a goddamn tower,” I whispered. It hadn’t been much of a life, certainly not the one he’d deserved. A deep regret warmed in my limbs, and I wished his mask of nonchalance would fracture— even briefly— for this truth. For me, as I learned it.

  “Did you find what you were looking for?”

  I paused, adjusting to the swift change in topic. “I think so.”

  “Do you still plan to ruin my reputation?”

  “No...” I said slowly. “Unless you’re still dead set on ruining mine, of course. In which case your reputation is totally fair game.”

  I considered him as he considered me, the two of us sharing a silent understanding that something had shifted infinitesimally between us. Enough for me to know we’d had a bond before. A bond that didn’t end now in treachery.

  “We were different, before Abduult,” I inclined my head. “I cared for you. And you used to trust me.”

  “You used to confide in me.”

  I watched him study me, these words an invitation. “I’m trying,” I confessed, “to be what I am without killing any of you.” I felt him tense underneath my weight and took a steadying breath. “You’re afraid of me, Gilles.”

  “I’m— uncertain what you’re capable of.”

  “Is that why you’re punishing me this side of the curse?”

  “I’m not—” his eyes tightened. “You were terrible and magnificent, Saylora, when the curse struck.” He shook his head as if at a loss. “Such a terrifying splendor, released like a tempest none could outswim. And then you fell unconscious for half a century, and when you woke you were changed.”

  I was pretty sure this wasn’t the answer to what I’d asked, but I still felt like this scrap of vulnerability was a peace offering. I tilted my head. “What happened that day, Gilles?”

  “Tell me, what happened just now?”

  “That’s not a fair bargain and you know it,” I said.

  He nodded slowly. “I know. But I was not the only one on that ship.”

  I looked him over, gaze flitting between each of his eyes, and finally said, “All of you were in the deep sleep with me. That’s the theory, at least.”

  Gilles frowned. “Your plan involves the dream?”

  I gazed out at the sea through the tall windows of the Great Hall. I could hear its waves thrashing in the darkness beyond the glass, and for the first time in forever I took satisfaction in a storm that didn’t feel like the manifestation of my wreckage.

  I thought of the ephemeral burn of those words, searing themselves onto my heart. And I love you. It was my truth, so bright that it’d shone through a life unremembered. I knew if it could be summoned when tested by Valtronya, then it had to’ve been kneaded into my dream, my subconscious working to keep it afloat. My strategy was going to work.

  “Yes,” I said. “My plan involves the dream. And each of you.”

  Gilles examined me and I knew from the questions in his eyes that he wanted to ask more. I could see him trying to put the pieces together. But I watched as he tucked away the lingering curiosity and his face broke out into that smug look I was unfortunately taking to, as of this moment.

  “I knew you dreamed about me,” he said. And then, quite to my surprise, he leaned in, his lips gently grazing mine one last time.

  Before I could react, he withdrew and tapped my hip. “Get off, I want to show you something.”

  I stared at him one more moment before finally lifting myself off and waiting for him to gain enough composure to stand. He gave a sort of discrete cough that I felt proud of as he adjusted himself.

  “You’re okay, right?” He tossed a glance back at me like he just remembered to be concerned that I’d trembled and gasped in his arms, not in a hot way.

  I nodded. I was more than okay.

  Terrifying splendor, released like a tempest. It was exactly what’d emerged from me in my standoff with Valtronya. Savage Siren Saylor wasn’t evil— she was necessary.

  Without so much a backwards glance to see if I was following, Gilles turned out of the Great Hall. I couldn’t help but smirk, watching the corded muscles of his back work as he strode determinedly ahead of me. He’d been so hard for me.

  No powers over him? As. If.

  He hiked up the spiral stairs and I trudged after him. Higher and higher we wound until my cramping body cried out for respite. What I wouldn’t give for ready access to my floating powers right about now.

  It wasn’t until I was about to collapse right there on the stairs that I realized Gilles was taking me to the very fucking top of Abduult. I bent over with labored breath, hands on my thighs, only a handful of steps left.

  “You’re a delicate creature,” Gilles observed.

  “You’re one— to talk— dying man—”

  I literally felt him roll his eyes, and then his hand entered into my line of vision. Trying not to think too hard about the fact that I was willing to let Gilles help me, I took it and heaved my body up the last few steps.

  “I fear to think what shape you’d been in right now had you not gone into a freakish trace while on top of me, Princess.”

  I scowled. “Trust me Gilles, you would’ve been the one working for it.”

  Stepping onto the landing, I finally looked out. The sheet of rain was thinning by the minute, its chattering drops just out of reach as they washed over the land. I pivoted
, taking it all in. Beyond the pillars of the terrace, falling like a backdrop as far in every direction as the eye could see, were sky and sea, rolling hills and crashing waves.

  My breath caught as I fathomed what looked like the whole world, my stomach a little queasy. “It’s beautiful. Also terrifying.”

  “I forgot you dislike heights,” Gilles said. Had to give him some credit for actually sounding a little sorry.

  Towering behind him was a massive hourglass, tall enough that it bridged the space between the domed ceiling and the floor, three times the height of any man. The sand piled high in the lower bulb, but the upper one had dwindled down to a thin layer.

  I approached it cautiously, marveling at its breadth as the reflection of heavy storm clouds stretched across it. “What is this, Gilles?”

  “Time started the moment we stepped foot in this tower. It counts down to the eclipse.”

  I felt my brow furrow in tragic awe as it sunk in how many grains had siphoned through the neck of the hourglass through all the years that had passed over this place. My hand passed across the surface, the smudges of my fingerprints clouding the glass.

  Fingerprints, like mine all over these men’s lives. And like theirs, all over mine.

  “This was especially cruel of her,” I whispered.

  “It was crueler to be reminded of what she’d done to you. Your shallow breath under the glass, taunting us with the stakes of your life.”

  I shuddered at the thought of my nearly lifeless body dressed up like a doll for her charade, haunting them as they watched their time run out. I spread my palm against the hourglass again, mesmerized by the steady churn of sand and wishing I was powerful enough to stop time. To reverse it.

  “But your breath also gave us hope,” Gilles said. “I didn’t think it would matter, Jude’s absurd idea that we could reach you in your sleep. I wanted to just leave it. It seemed better somehow.”

  “Better?”

  “Better,” he nodded, “than believing we could save you, and then living with our failure. Eventually, long after Jude made his attempts, I found myself willing to try his plan.”

  “What changed your mind?” I asked.

  I saw Gilles run his fingers through his hair, the movement in the reflection catching my eye. “The truth is, Saylora, I was hopeless long before Abduult. Until I met you. It felt disloyal to your memory, to squander what you’d given me out of grief.”

  “You’re not the traitor,” I conceded quietly.

  “I’m not a traitor,” he agreed.

  I nodded to myself, the words believable at last. Time to put them to bed.

  “I think I know what I see through to now, Gilles. You’ve always been so aware of your time. You know better than the rest of us how precious it is.”

  “Precious or not, it’s passing,” he said roughly. “We’ll die in here, or we’ll die out there.” Gilles gestured to the world beyond Abduult and its rugged, startling wilderness. “One way or another, our time eventually runs out.”

  I glanced over my shoulder at him to see that same face of resignation he’d had in my memory. Looking at him now, I felt as though my heart had expanded to make room for his shape, softened to accommodate for his rough edges. Gilles’ wounds were the identity he claimed, but I saw the boundless affection he kept in check and knew better. It was his truth.

  “We’re not dead yet,” I said, his defiant words to me on the Hound filling in for the ones I’d lost. “I swear on my life, Gilles. I’m not going to let her win.”

  “I know,” he answered, breathing in deeply.

  I turned back to the hourglass, trying not to despair the diminishing layer of sand as grain by grain trickled onto the bed below in a steady murmur. Valtronya’s face fell like a veil over my mind. She wanted to cast a net for my soul, but what she didn’t know— what I was only beginning to understand— was that my soul was wild.

  A chill crawled up my arm, some reactionary magic riled by the mere thought of Valtronya. And then, suddenly, a few grains of sand lurched and hung, suspended in the air. I moved my face closer to the glass, peering on as a handful of granules slowly began to rise... up, up, up.

  I was sure I was hallucinating as I squinted my eyes, my heart skipping a beat. But I blinked, and the sand began to continue its slow and steady gravity-induced pour.

  “What’s wrong?” Gilles asked, and I flipped around to him, stepping away from the hourglass.

  “Nothing,” I shook my head.

  He was watching me carefully, a faraway reverence in his gaze. It was the same look I’d caught on his face when Jabari had danced with me at the ball—

  I gasped dramatically, this time on accident.

  “What?” Gilles eyed me.

  “It was you, wasn’t it? You rallied everyone for that fucking disaster you called a ball?”

  He flushed, not expecting this abrupt allegation. “Look, I was just trying...” his words faltered. “I knew you were shaken by what’d happened with Jude, and I wanted—”

  I tried not to smile when he couldn’t finish. “You wanted to make me happy, Gilles. That’s an okay thing to admit.”

  “As I said,” he sighed, clearly not fond of heartfelt confessions, “on the ship, you always wanted to dance. I suppose it was amusing, for you to suddenly have so many dance partners.”

  “Was I really that desperate?” I rolled my eyes.

  “You’d been mostly banned from the banquets in Lithron, for fear of seducing all the stately young gentlemen.” The smirk on Gilles’ face was somehow reassuring to me. “When we set off and you wanted music, dancing, I was the first to take you into my arms despite Valtronya’s warnings about you. The two of us paraded around that ship like it was ours, and you hummed in my ear.”

  “No way.”

  He nodded earnestly, folding his arms into one another, eyes darting out to the sea. God, I loved how uncomfortable he got admitting this shit to me. “I thought you might remember, if we threw you a ball,” he finally said.

  “Remember what, Gilles?”

  The expression on Gilles’ face mimicked what I thought must’ve been on mine— a thoughtful, barely-there sort of smile.

  “That we haven’t always hated one another, Princess.”

  “And yet we’re so good at bickering,” I said.

  He wound his gaze back to me, those hazel eyes unyielding. “Sometimes that’s easier.”

  “How the hell does that make any sense?”

  “Because I know you don’t choose me, Saylora.” My brows knit together as I looked on at Gilles, his posture so stiff, so guarded. He sighed at the look on my face and unfolded his arms. “Look, I know you don’t.” He paused. “Even if there’s a future for me outside Abduult, I’ll never be able to have children.”

  “You wanted to?” Wow, I’d done a pretty shit job hiding that cringe.

  Gilles shook his head at me. “Every decent person cares about the legacy they leave behind. For me— before Valtronya, before you— that looked like a family. Alright,” he added pointedly, “you can stop looking at me like that now.”

  “Oh, sorry.” I wiped the unacceptable look from my face. “Kids are just a different sort of legacy than I’ve, like, ever thought about. But I’m sorry, Gilles. That you can’t have the kind of legacy you hoped for in the way that you wanted it. Maybe we can be family. Maybe we already are, I don’t know.”

  “What do you want your legacy to be?” he asked after a minute.

  You have stolen my legacy, I’d told Valtronya. The words hung before me now with such tempting potential. Such threat of failure.

  “I never thought I’d get a legacy,” I admitted. I pondered for a moment. “Maybe something like ‘the girl who set herself free’ or whatever.”

  A musing smile came to his face. “In spite of knowing I have life here and may face death out there, somehow I’d still rather have that as well. Freedom.”

  “No one wants to be caged,” I said, looking out at the se
a. The contrast between water and sky was growing with the greying dawn. The storm had waned to a light drizzle. “So let me get this straight, Gilles. You’ve been a total dick because you were trying to protect me from falling madly in love with you.”

  He hesitated for a half a second. “I thought I would make things uncomplicated for us.”

  “Well, your efforts have been commendable,” I said, irritation carved into my tone. And then the irritation— so habitual, so natural between us— melted into something else. “You really are as fragile as the glass you make,” I shook my head, eyes locking onto his. I moved closer, reaching for him. Taking Gilles’ fingers into my own, I said quietly, “You don’t know what I choose.”

  I watched his throat bob, his voice cracking gently as he spoke. “I came on this journey because I needed to make amends, Princess. I needed to do one thing in my life that had honor. I hadn’t understood that honor requires greater sacrifice of us than we often realize.”

  My eyes roamed his, the hazel reading emerald in the impulsive and brief illumination of lightening. Gilles inclined his head ever so slightly, his brows lifting in confession. “They’re all good.”

  “You’re good, too,” I reminded softly, in case he forgot as often as I did. “Especially for someone with such an extraordinary talent for being an ass.”

  The corners of his mouth twitched, and then Gilles took a steadying breath. He cautiously put a hand to the back of my neck and pulled me forward, bowing his forehead into mine. My breath hitched, this new posture between us feeling as easy as the exasperation.

  “Gilles,” I whispered. “What happens if I remember who she is— that woman from the ship— and she’s nothing like me?”

  “I’m not certain anymore that you’re such a long way off from who she was.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “You think I’m sneaky and stubborn, remember?”

  “What you meant to say was ‘crafty’ and ‘determined.’” Gilles’ dorky lopsided grin was showing. “I have a new theory that despite your newest peculiarities— likely because of them— the two of you would get along nicely.”