His mask was bronze in the darkness, and the emeralds glittered. “You seem … upset.”
I stalked to the nearest rosebush and ripped off a rose, my fingers tearing on the thorns. I ignored the pain, the warmth of the blood that trickled down. I could never paint it accurately—never render it the way those artists had in the gallery pieces. I would never be able to paint Elain’s little garden outside the cottage the way I remembered it, even if my family didn’t remember me.
He didn’t reprimand me for taking one of his parents’ roses—parents who were as absent as my own, but who had probably loved each other and loved him better than mine cared for me. A family that would have offered to go in his place if someone had come to steal him away.
My fingers stung and ached, but I still held on to the rose as I said, “I don’t know why I feel so tremendously ashamed of myself for leaving them. Why it feels so selfish and horrible to paint. I shouldn’t—shouldn’t feel that way, should I? I know I shouldn’t, but I can’t help it.” The rose hung limply from my fingers. “All those years, what I did for them … And they didn’t try to stop you from taking me.” There it was, the giant pain that cracked me in two if I thought about it too long. “I don’t know why I expected them to—why I believed that the puca’s illusion was real that night. I don’t know why I bother still thinking about it. Or still caring.” He was silent long enough that I added, “Compared to you—to your borders and magic being weakened—I suppose my self-pity is absurd.”
“If it grieves you,” he said, the words caressing my bones, “then I don’t think it’s absurd at all.”
“Why?” A flat question, and I chucked the rose into the bushes.
He took my hands. His callused fingers, strong and sturdy, were gentle as he lifted my bleeding hand to his mouth and kissed my palm. As if that were answer enough.
His lips were smooth against my skin, his breath warm, and my knees buckled as he lifted my other hand to his mouth and kissed it, too. Kissed it carefully—in a way that made heat begin pounding in my core, between my legs.
When he withdrew, my blood shone on his mouth. I glanced at my hands, which he still held, and found the wounds gone. I looked at his face again, at his gilded mask, the tanness of his skin, the red of his blood-covered lips as he murmured, “Don’t feel bad for one moment about doing what brings you joy.” He stepped closer, releasing one of my hands to tuck the rose I’d plucked behind my ear. I didn’t know how it had gotten into his hand, or where the thorns had gone.
I couldn’t stop myself from pushing. “Why—why do any of this?”
He leaned in closer, so close that I had to tip my head back to see him. “Because your human joy fascinates me—the way you experience things, in your life span, so wildly and deeply and all at once, is … entrancing. I’m drawn to it, even when I know I shouldn’t be, even when I try not to be.”
Because I was human, and I would grow old and—I didn’t let myself get that far as he came closer still. Slowly, as if giving me time to pull away, he brushed his lips against my cheek. Soft and warm and heartbreakingly gentle. It was hardly more than a caress before he straightened. I hadn’t moved from the moment his mouth had met my skin.
“One day—one day there will be answers for everything,” he said, releasing my hand and stepping away. “But not until the time is right. Until it’s safe.” In the dark, his tone was enough to know that his eyes were flecked with bitterness.
He left me, and I took a gasping breath, not realizing I’d been holding it.
Not realizing that I craved his warmth, his nearness, until he was gone.
Lingering mortification over what I’d admitted, what had … changed between us had me skulking out of the manor after breakfast, fleeing for the sanctuary of the woods for some fresh air—and to study the light and colors. I brought my bow and arrows, along with the jeweled hunting knife that Lucien had given me. Better to be armed than caught empty-handed.
I crept through the trees and brush for no more than an hour before I felt a presence behind me—coming ever closer, sending the animals running for cover. I smiled to myself, and twenty minutes later, I settled in the crook of a towering elm and waited.
Brush rustled—hardly more than a breeze’s passing, but I knew what to expect, knew the signs.
A snap and roar of fury echoed across the lands, scattering the birds.
When I climbed out of the tree and walked into the little clearing, I merely crossed my arms and looked up at the High Lord, dangling by his legs from the snare I’d laid.
Even upside down, he smiled lazily at me as I approached. “Cruel human.”