AllFreeNovel
Share Us
No more hiding. No more fear.
I stopped when we were a few arms’ lengths apart. The hilt of my small dagger felt hot in my palm despite the cold.
Lorik studied me. The longer he studied me, the more realization settled into the lines of his features, deepening his frown, the space between his brow growing darker when he furrowed it.
“Marion.”
I felt something crack in me at my name.
“Why can’t you take a step toward me?” I asked.
His jaw ticked. He looked down at the ground between us, and I wondered what he saw.
“Is it because what you said is true? That Peek really does protect me from Severs?”
Lorik’s head rose slowly, his eyes beginning to glow blue.
Finally, he said, “Yourbraydusdrew its own barrier here. You’ve changed your mind about me. Peek senses it and will not let me cross.”
How could I have been such a fool?
“So many things that I willfully ignored,” I said quietly. “Why? Because I was lonely? Because I was that desperate for affection and intimacy and touch?”
“Marion…” Lorik rasped, running a hand through his slick hair, combing it back away from his face. Rain shimmered across his cheekbones as moonlight filtered into the clearing.
And I didn’t know who he was at all.
Then he sighed, a rough exhale. I watched the light shift off his face. That familiar shimmering I’d only caught glimpses of, writing them off as a trick of the light. Then, with parted lips, I watched as his features changed, his body growing slightly larger, slightly taller.
Another veil dropping from my eyes.
Him.
It was that image I’d caught when we’d first made love. His features were sharper, more beautiful, more cutting. The tips of his ears were like knives, and his ethereal blue eyes glowed even brighter. His jawline widened. His skin silvered even more, practically glowing in its luminosity.
“Magicked glamour,” he explained, though his voice didn’t change. “Difficult to hold, and it takes energy. It’s why the infection took root…because I was using most of my strength to sustain the glamour, even in my sleep.”
“Who even are you?” I whispered. I feared my words would be carried away by the sudden gusting of wind, bringing in another dark cloud bank from the west.
“I’m the same as I was, Marion,” Lorik said, attempting to step forward, to reach forward…but he hit something. Peek’smagic. Peek’s barrier. He’d been telling the truth about one thing at the very least…and I’d never even known. “I swear that to you.”
“No, I never knew you,” I said, my shoulders dropping. “Lies upon lies. And maybe you didn’t outright lie to my face, Lorik. But you certainly weaved. And avoided. Anything not to tell me the truth.”
“I am bound byoath, Marion,” he insisted, a pleading note entering his tone. His face was the same, but the structure was all different. More rugged, more roughly handsome than the delicate Allavari features I’d come to know. “I cannot say things without punishment.”
I certainly understood that. But there were ways around it…and he’d never eventriedto help me understand.
“Tell me the truth now.”
His sharp jaw tightened. There was a scar just underneath his chin, a scar that hadn’t been there before, one he’d hidden with this glamour. I remembered what Veras had told me, that Severs had been living among us for a lot longer than anyone realized…and perhaps this was how.
Because no one would look at Lorik in his true form andnotknow there was something otherworldly about him.
He was Allavari and he was Kylorr…but he was much, much more. His bloodline must’ve run back generations.
“Marion,” he said quietly.
“The truth. Or I walk back into my cottage and we will never speak again. Whatever oath you took be damned—I deserve to know the truth, Lorik.”
