“Please look at me,” I ask. Beg. Because he hasn’t yet, and I can’t bear it. Can’t bear for the last memory of his eyes to be the ones that didn’t belong to him.
His jaw bulges, as if he’s resisting turning toward me, and there’s something about his shame that stings all over. In my gut and my lungs and my throat and my soul, and I’d take his teeth in my neck before I’d take this.
But then his eyes settle upon me. They’re pale and hollow and utterly empty.
But they’re unmistakably Nox’s.
So I decide I’ll take them.
“Do you hate me?” The question slips out of my mouth, hangs in the stale air between us that refuses to budge.
A notch forms between his eyebrows. The vial doesn’t clatter when he sets it on the table.
“How could you even ask me that?” he asks, his voice as empty as his eyes.
A lump forms in my throat, and my vision begins to blur as tears sting at the rims of my eyelids. “Right. Of course you do. I didn’t mean to say you shouldn’t…I just…”
“Why would you think that I hate you?”
Confusion sweeps through me. “Because it’s my fault Gunter is gone. It’s my fault. It should’ve been me, not him. I was the one who was supposed to die.”
The muscles in Nox’s face go lax, and something like understanding coats his pale eyes, causing them to shimmer. “I don’t blame you, Blaise. I’m the one who killed him. I’m the one who…” He swallows, then places both hands on the counter and leans over it, steadying himself as he lets out a strained exhale. “You need to get away from me.”
This time, it’s not hurt that punctures my throat. Just sorrow. Sorrow for my friend. So I steel myself and grind my bare heels into the cold stone floor and say, “I’d rather not.”
His sharp exhale straddles the line between a laugh and a scoff. “I’m going to hurt you.”
I shrug, then slip my hand into his. “If you do, I’ll just burn you again.”
The exasperation that lines his eyes is the closest thing to looking like Nox that I’ve seen yet, so I sidle up next to him and tuck myself between him and the workbench, pressing my cheek to his chest.
At first he goes rigid and his arms remain plastered to the counter, pinning me against it.
But then he starts to shake.
“Please. Let me be here for you,” I beg.
I give him a gentle squeeze, and his warm hands respond in turn, sliding up my back and pulling me close.
He doesn’t bury his face into my neck. He just sets his chin atop my head and shakes for a good long while, tearless sobs convulsing his chest.
We’ve been silent for what feels like hours when he finally says, “How are you not afraid of me?”
I bite my lip, close my eyes, and listen to the steady beat of his heart against my ear.
“I am afraid of you, Nox,” I say, because it’s true. Because I’ve never feared anyone more in my life. “I’m just afraid of me, too.”
CHAPTER 34
NOX
I’m at my desk, craning my neck over a stack of Gunter’s notes, my fingers tugging at strands of my hair and the skin on my forehead, halfway nodding off to sleep when there’s a knock on my door.
The gentle glow of the candle atop my desk warms the interior of my eyelids, which jolt open at the rapping noise. At first, I think it’s Gunter, eager to wake me with a late-night revelation he can’t keep to himself, but then I notice the way the wax dribbles down the candle, pooling into the bottom of the dish.
Pooling like Gunter’s blood on the floor.
I shove myself from the desk, sending papers scattering as the legs of my chair scrape against the ground, and stumble over to the door.
I open it to find the queen’s pale face hovering in the hallway, her body obscured in shadow as the candle she holds illuminates her face.
She reminds me of the full moon.
“What do you want?” I don’t bother with the “my queen.” It’s probably foolish of me to disrespect her so openly when my family’s wellbeing is on the line, but the queen’s been too distraught over my state to bother punishing me.
There’s nothing this female can do if not coddle.
She was there. Every second of my recovery, stroking the veins in the back of my hands with her palms, careful to trace the patches of skin the sunlight hadn’t touched.
I sang myself to sleep with fantasies of ripping her throat from her neck.
I hated her before, but now that Gunter’s dead, the hatred has warped.
Before it was hot and livid and passionate.
Now it’s numb. Cold. Slow. The way frostbite can be equally as lethal as burns.
“A delivery,” the queen says, pulling a parcel from her robes and handing it to me.
