The Shadow of Theron, page 20
There is some debate among scholars of the temples as to the fate of the Eye following Theron’s victory over Argoss. Some argue vehemently that it spirited itself away, returned to its primal source, and that it lies in wait for a new owner. Others insist that it was not destroyed, nor did it disappear, but that it was sealed away, with such nearly insurmountable difficulty that a number of Morgassen assigned to the task surrendered their lives in order that the seal might succeed.
Lothan tore his gaze away from the graven image, its center a deep inky black, a reflection of the Abyss itself. The next page bore an illustration of a twilit desert with a forbidding citadel towering over a walled city of stone. The shadows of the dunes in the foreground took on shapes of their own. The image was framed from a great distance, its imposing scale and mazelike structure shrouded in darkness. Lothan tilted the page in his hand, trying to get the dim light to reflect off the golden ink etched across it. All he could make out was the simple description written at the base of the page.
THE LOST FORTRESS—Argoss’s hidden stronghold. Obscured and impenetrable until Morgasse produced from her forges the Cerulean Key, which pointed the way and allowed Theron to hunt down Argoss in his own domain. The site of the final confrontation.
Lothan squinted. In the weak light, the ink from the reverse page was seeping through. He flipped the page to find what appeared to be a map, except that it had no names.
There were no words, no markings of any kind except for the crudely drawn sand dunes, what might have been a canyon or mountain ridge, and a diminutive source of water. Lothan assumed it represented what the Aruni knew of the location of the fortress—in other words, nothing.
He leaned back in his chair. His heart was now set on the Eye. A deep craving for its power had already taken root. It was not unreasonable for him to assume that, whether sealed or hidden, it would be found where Argoss had breathed his last. But far more important—Lothan no longer lamented his limited ability to acquire more shards of the Blood Sword in the hopes of reforging a complete weapon. It would grow on its own; he needed only to use it.
15
Sera didn’t know how she was supposed to look at Lysandro and pretend that last night hadn’t happened. She’d barely gotten any sleep. When she had, she had dreamed of Lysandro, and losing herself in his never-ending kisses.
He was thinking about it too. She could see it in his eyes as he stood opposite her in the doorway.
The morning light played on the strong lines of his face, and the gentle curve of hair that fell past his shoulder. Lysandro’s gaze shone with an eager hopefulness, kept in check by the barest hint of a smile. There was a quiet, seductive quality to his eyes that she hadn’t seen before. His attention drifted downward to her lips, sharpening her own hunger and causing the butterflies occupying her chest to flutter violently against her ribcage.
Lysandro swallowed hard, and greeted her in a subdued voice.
“Good morning.”
“Good morning,” Sera replied.
Lysandro bit his lip. It made Sera dig her nails into the doorway to keep from swaying on her feet.
“I wasn’t sure if you would see me.”
Sera blinked, confused. “Why wouldn’t I?’
“Yesterday. I promised I’d come to see you, and then—”
“Oh.” Right. Of course. She wasn’t supposed to know that Lysandro and the Shadow were the same, and that she had seen him. She should be cross. But it just didn’t feel right.
“I…assumed it was for a good reason.” Sera hadn’t forgotten the horrors she’d witnessed on the beach, or the cold misery of the hours preceding them.
Lysandro’s cheeks colored, and he shook his head.
“You’re being too easy on me. I’m not in the habit of breaking my promises, and it pains me deeply that I broke one to you. I’d like to try to make up for it, if I can.”
“What did you have in mind?”
Lysandro extended his hand. She was not the only one to feel a thrill rush through her as their hands touched; she was sure of it. But neither acknowledged it as they climbed up into his carriage and sat opposite each other.
“Did you sleep well?” he asked. His unease was palpable. For all he supposedly knew, she hadn’t been drenched to the bone for hours only to witness a bloodbath. But that didn’t stop him from worrying about her. Her sleep had been disturbed, but the Shadow’s warm embrace had given her mind the excuse it needed to chase her nightmares to the very back of her thoughts.
“I’m okay,” she said. And she was, given the circumstances.
He nodded, and didn’t press her further.
Long minutes passed wordlessly by as they made their way to the main road. Sera didn’t know what to expect this morning. She half-hoped that he would tell her who he was, then and there in the privacy of his carriage, and end this need to feign a detachment that contradicted every impulse of her body. Then she might be able to make sense of what she had seen from behind his shoulder.
But he didn’t, and that left Sera feeling unsure of what to do. After giving it some thought, she tried to feel around the edges of what they weren’t saying.
“Is everything alright?”
“Hmm?”
“With—” she hesitated. “I don’t know what, I guess. With whatever it was that called you away.”
“No,” he answered after some deliberation.
It wasn’t what she wanted to hear, but she was grateful for his honesty.
“Still,” he continued, “it’s not an excuse for my absence. I wouldn’t want you to think that—”
He avoided her gaze, turning his face out toward the window.
“I hadn’t forgotten about you. I know I haven’t made the best impression, but I want you to know that any confidence you put in me won’t be misplaced.”
She could see why he would be upset. Without knowing what she knew, Lysandro’s behavior would appear erratic. But she understood the root cause of his distraction all too well, and couldn’t help but be sympathetic. The fact that she was a consideration at all, given the state of things, showed how much he cared.
She thought about their upcoming dinner date, and how it would stop the Shadow from being where he might be needed.
“We don’t have to go anywhere tonight, if you don’t want,” she said.
His face snapped to hers, creased with worry.
“I mean, we can go another time, if that would be easier for you, once things are more…settled.”
Lysandro’s frown increased. “No. No I don’t want to do that.”
“Lysandro, the world is turning upside down.”
He winced.
“The streets are not safe to walk alone, according to you, Marek has thrown care to the wind, the temple is in ruins…”
“All the things you’ve said are true, but not every hour of every day needs to be consumed by them. Come with me tonight. Please.”
If he could spare a few hours with her, then maybe things were not as terrible as they seemed. Sera wanted to believe that.
“If you insist.”
The light returned to Lysandro’s face. “I do. And now, I owe you a proper apology.”
The carriage stopped, and he let her out into the middle of a road lined with shops, right in front of the—
“I thought jewelry at first, but that didn’t seem quite right. Too predictable, not sincere enough. Then I thought perhaps something edible,” Lysandro continued, his smile reflecting the pure delight on Sera’s face. “But given your impeccable talents, I didn’t think any of the confectioner’s shops were up to the task of impressing you. So I asked myself, what would Sera most enjoy…”
She was deep into the labyrinthine pathways of the bookshop before Lysandro could finish. By the time she felt his stalwart presence behind her, she already had a book in each hand.
“I’d nearly forgotten about this one. It was set to be released just as I was leaving Mirêne.” She weighed the tome in her other hand. “This one though, is much harder to find.” She balanced the books in her hands like scales, and settled on the rarer book before moving on.
Time fell away as Sera rifled through books she had never heard of nestled next to more renowned tales.
“What do you think? Stolen portrait or hidden staircase?”
“Hidden staircase, of course,” Lysandro replied. “Sounds much more dastardly than a musty old painting gone missing.”
She would have been overcome by the urge to smack him, had he been serious. But his snooty air was accompanied by a wry smirk. He was teasing her, and she relished it.
“You never know. The painting could be haunted.”
He laughed and threw his hands in the air. “Sure. Why not?”
“Fine. Neither of those then.” She replaced the competing titles and drew another from the far-right side. “Maybe this one. His stories are a little on the weird side, but always satisfying. So what’s left then? A cursed jewel, always in style, something hidden in the attic, no doubt a lunatic—”
“Naturally.”
“A murder at sea, and…” she pulled again at the latest adventure of her favorite detective, discarded earlier in favor of the rarer find. “Still thinking about this one.”
She laid them all out next to each other on a narrow table in the middle of the aisle, designed for customers to examine precious texts. “Now: to choose.”
Sera assumed a posture of deep thought, but Lysandro just laughed under his breath, shook his head, and began stacking the books one on top of the other.
“Oh no—” She tried to stop him, but his strides were long, and he reached the counter before her.
“We’ll take these.”
The storekeeper’s eyes lit up. “Certainly, Don de Castel.”
Sera scrambled up from behind him, pressing her back to the counter and putting herself between him and the shopkeeper.
“Lysandro wait. I didn’t mean—”
“Sera. If you agree to marry me—”
“We’re on this again?”
“Mmhmm. It’ll be up to me to provide for your every need. And your every wish.”
As he said this, he touched the tip of her nose with his index finger. The affectionate touch and his warm smile sent a shiver across her skin.
“Thank you,” she said. “You didn’t have to.”
“It’s my pleasure. I really am sorry about yesterday.”
“I know. I’m not angry.” She never had been.
“I wish I could take you to lunch, but I do have some other things that need taking care of before tonight,” Lysandro said as they resumed their seats in the carriage. “Now at least you’ll have something to keep you occupied.”
Sera wondered if that wasn’t his intention all along, to keep her nose-deep in a book so she wouldn’t go wandering about again and get herself into more trouble. Either way, it worked.
“Why didn’t you get anything for yourself?” she asked.
Lysandro shrugged. “I’m not in need of new books just yet. There’s still some life in my well-worn favorites.”
“But can any of them rival the likes of these?”
Lysandro’s head lilted to one side and arched his eyebrow.
Sera rose to the challenge. She unwrapped the neat bow tying her purchases together, opened the book at the top of the stack, and read aloud.
“True! Nervous—very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am, but why will you say that I am mad?”
Sera closed the front cover, aloof to it, and returned the book to the pile. Lysandro stared at her with an expression that was unreadable. Neither of them said a word. Sera very calmly began to retie the string atop the books.
“You can’t just stop there.” Lysandro left the opposite bench to sit beside her and took the book from her hand before she could fasten it to the others. Sera smiled in triumph as he put his arm around her, opened the book again on her lap, and began to read over her shoulder.
“Not too sordid for you?” she asked, looking up at him through veiled eyelids. “I’d hate to ruffle your delicate sensibilities.”
He was ruffled, all right. The fire in his eyes nearly melted her, and turned all her witty remarks to pudding inside her head. She quit needling him and settled into a comfortable position. The scent of open fields and spiced soap from Lysandro’s skin, so close to hers, warmed her cheeks. His fingers curled around her shoulder, then began absently twirling her hair around themselves.
Sera couldn’t read like this. The words on the page swam in front of her eyes, her head spun in feverish circles. All her concentration was directed to the places where he was touching her. Any words or movement threatened to shatter the intimacy of the moment, so she stayed still, only daring to lean deeper into his embrace. Her heart raced at a furious gallop, and she wished that Lysandro would toss the book aside and kiss her, wildly and without restraint. She couldn’t be sure, maybe she only imagined it or wished it to be so, but she felt his body curling tighter around hers. His face was so very close, enough so that if she only dared to turn her head…
“You can turn the page now.”
Sera inhaled sharply as if waking from a dream, and did as he asked.
I have no idea what that said.
Lysandro’s fingers didn’t leave her hair until they left the carriage. He carried the books for her up to the house, but she held the one they’d been reading (he’d been reading) out to him.
“You first,” she said.
“But it’s yours.”
“Husbands and wives do share books sometimes, don’t they?”
Lysandro went very still.
“It makes for good conversation, I imagine.” She extended her arm out to him further, pressing him to take it. She saw the notch at the base of his throat bob as he did so.
“I’ll be back at six o’clock.”
She smiled. “I’ll see you then.”
“I don’t like her.”
“You’ve never even met her,” Lysandro protested. It had taken him a while to catch up with Sancio, but now that he had, he wished he’d put it off for longer.
“Even so,” Sancio said. He uncrossed his arms to take a swallow of his ale, then tucked them back again.
“What don’t you like about her?”
“She’s lying to you, for starters.”
Lysandro balked in disbelief. “When? She hasn’t lied to me once.”
“She’s supposed to be engaged to you—or almost—and she’s spending her nights in the arms of someone else.”
“But it is me!” he hissed, dipping his voice below the din of the tavern’s midday crowd.
“She doesn’t know that,” Sancio pointed out. “Doesn’t say much for how faithful she’d be as a wife.”
Lysandro tried to rationalize it, to unfurl the knot his friend’s words were tying in the pit of his stomach.
“We’re not married. Not yet.”
“That doesn’t give her the right to throw herself at other men behind your back.”
“You don’t understand…”
Lysandro’s mind was a whir. He couldn’t bring himself to doubt Sera’s sincerity. Although she hadn’t said yes to him yet, she hadn’t said no. The more time they spent together, the less he believed she would. This morning with her had been perfect. Or nearly; he’d stopped himself from sweeping her up into his arms in the coach. Now, of course, he was kicking himself for not seizing the moment. The feel of her body nestled beside his, the closeness of her soft curves, were enough to drive him mad. He could have told her everything. He should have.
Things got more complicated when he considered how things might have been, had she rejected the Shadow’s advances. He wouldn’t be as close to her as he felt now; they might not have been on speaking terms at all. And that kiss—he’d never wanted that kiss to end. He would tell her the truth. But for now, he trusted that dizzying feeling he had whenever she was near, and the sparks that flew between them whether they met in the open or under cover of night.
“She’s playing with your heart and you’re letting her.”
The words came out louder than Sancio meant them to, but Lysandro was just being so thick-headed. “At the end of the day, you’re courting her, and she’s giving her affection to another.”
Lysandro’s expression soured. “Why do you always have to spoil everything?”
“You want to blame me? Fine. But you know I’m right.”
Something ugly boiled up inside Lysandro. He tried to bury it by changing the subject.
“Why did you come to see me at my father’s house?”
“I don’t remember anymore. Nothing for you to worry about now.”
Lysandro sat back in his chair. “Which is it?”
Sancio dodged the question. “I’ve got to go, or I’ll be late for my training.”
“I thought that was Lundays and Tyrsdays.”
“The Aruni train every day. And I am an Aruni.” Sancio stood abruptly and left.
Whatever change had come over his friend, Lysandro didn’t like it. He finished his meal in solitude, and tried to remind himself that his friend was going through a lot. He had to face the ruination of the temple every day, and Lysandro was sure tempers were running high there, with no clear person to direct their anger at. But it was no excuse for talking about Sera like that. He didn’t know her, didn’t know the first thing about her. And whatever Sancio said, Lysandro was the Shadow and Sera hadn’t given her affection to another. If she was falling in love with the Shadow, she was falling in love with him, or, at least, a part of him. He just hoped she would fall in love with all of him.
Lysandro paid his tab and walked the short distance to Rafael’s house. The door was locked, the windows reflected only darkness from inside, and no one answered when he knocked. Everything was exactly as he expected. Casting a glance over his shoulder to make sure he was unobserved, he slipped through an unlocked window on the east-facing side of the house. He fastened the sill shut again the minute he was inside. The candle was where he’d left it. It was almost down to the nub, and Lysandro had a hard time making out the surgeon’s handwriting on the slip of paper he’d given him.
