Page 52 of Envy

I took it.

We left the alcove together, and as we walked away, I heard Lydia say, in a tone just loud enough to reach me: “Good girl.”

Afterwards,thepalacewasquiet as the dead.

We walked the Spite Road home, hand in hand, the obsidian so cold it felt like being dipped in memory. When we reached the Argent Halls, the door closed behind us with a finality that felt earned.

He took me to his chamber.

It was the same room as the first night, but the fire was low, the wood burned down to embers, and the darkness in the corners was a gentle one. The bed was open, the linens the color of unspun wool, and every other mirror in the palace—every panel, every sconce, every silvered cup—had been shuttered. Only the canopy above the bed remained, and even that had been covered until the moment he lifted me onto the mattress and drew the curtain back with one bare hand.

We lay there, naked, nothing between us but skin and the bond.

I curled against his chest, my cheek to the place where his heart would have been, if he had one. His hand found my hair and drew it slow, a motion so patient that it might have gone on all night.

We did not speak at first.

It was not silence; it was language without words, the kind that happens in the dark, the kind you cannot translate.

When I did speak, it was because I could not contain it any longer.

I said, “I want to go back.”

He did not tense. He did not flinch. He only drew his hand through my hair, once, and said, “To her?”

I shook my head. “To the world. To the book. To—” I hesitated, then said, “—to my own name.”

He was quiet.

Then: “I can do it for you. It will cost, but for you, it’s worth it.”

I felt it. He told the truth.

I said, “I want to do it myself.”

He nodded, and the shimmer at his cheek went soft. For a second, I saw in him the whole of his long, patient self—the one who had watched a thousand worlds rise and fall, the one who had never dared to want anything as much as he wanted to be himself.

He said, “Of course.”

He kissed the top of my head.

“I won’t stay. This is my home now. But I have to have a moment, to be myself.”

We lay there for a long time.

I looked up, at the mirrored ceiling.

The girl in the glass was different now.

She was naked, but not raw. She was marked, the gold and blue and white of the bond running through her skin, but it looked like an adornment, not a wound. Her hair was wild. Her mouth was red. The man beside her was all shadow and light, the shimmer at his cheekbone the color of a star that had finally, after a thousand years, found its way home.

I traced the line of his jaw with my thumb.

He caught my hand, kissed the palm, and for a long time neither of us moved.

The bond behind my ribs steadied: gold, blue, prismatic, every color at once.

I closed my eyes.

And in the dark, with my face pressed to his skin, I said, “I want to be looked at. By you. Forever.”

He answered without opening his eyes.

“Yes, baby. Forever.”