Page 37 of The Unseen Hour

He’d spoken of death in such a nonchalant manner. Before explaining himself, he turned and walked into the forest.

“You did warn me not to wander. Aside from Charon, what dangers does the Ether hold?” I demanded as I ran after him.

He turned with a smirk.

“Unfortunately, many things, but if you stay with me you should be safe enough.”

“Is that confidence speaking, or cockiness?”

Orion pulled the neckline of his shirt to the side, revealing his shoulder and the top of his chest. A raised scar bisected his collarbone.

“Experience.”

I reached a hand up, but he slid the shirt back in place before I could be so foolish as to touch the scar.

“That looks like it was deep. Something here caused that?”

“I’ve been in the Ether for a hundred years. I’ve had more than one thing go wrong and leave me with a scar. Not that I didn’t have a few before I arrived here. You said you weren’t the ‘ideal’ lady, and I guess I’m not much of an ideal nobleman. I was more interested in collecting experiences than tailored suits. And those experiences occasionally resulted in some mishaps.”

I snorted with laughter.

“Be grateful you were up against suits and not corsets.”

“Ah, yes, fearsome and constricting devices, so I’ve heard. They’re still using those, then?”

“To my undying resentment, they are indeed. If you’d met me on any day other than New Year’s Eve, I’d have been wearing both a corset and a vibrantly pink dress.”

He looked into my eyes.

“You don’t like pink, then?”

I started to shake my head, then stopped, chewing my lip.

“It’s complicated. My father has pink eyes. Many Hipnosis do. But sometimes it would be nice to just be myself and not a well-behaved Hipnosi.”

It felt a little bit like a betrayal of my family, but it was how I’d felt. Searching for my father, sneaking into the library and reading Holmes’s journal. All for a purpose, but also the greatest adventure I was ever likely to have. A substitute for the traveling and exploring I wanted to do, but couldn’t, unless I wanted to devastate my relatives and their reputation.

“I understand ‘complicated,’” Orion said.

His expression fell back into a frown. He scanned the trees around us. The lights that danced in the sky were still vibrantly orange and purple.

We made our way in silence for a while. When the trees grew sparser in the distance, I guessed we had to be nearing the Meadow.

Orion turned to me.

“Who are we looking for? Your husband? He’s fortunate, having someone dedicated enough to follow him here.”

I shook my head, and for some reason felt my cheeks heating at his assumption. I realized that while I’d mentioned my family, I’d never said who I was searching for.

“Not a husband. My father. He disappeared during the Unseen Hour when I was twenty-one. There was no body, but I knew he’d been Taken. He never would have left us otherwise. Then I started snooping. I found out he wasn’t the first to disappear without leaving a body behind. One of the Holmes brothers …”

“Go on,” he urged as I gave a sheepish smile.

“And some others over the years had gone missing during the hour. The king was lost at sea during an Unseen Hour, and the queen believes he might still be out here. At least I think so, given some things my father was working on for her. Either way, I thought it was possible. I just had to find a way to follow my father, and I did it using y— … some writings.”

I felt it best not to mention that I’d dug through his dead brother’s private possessions. There was no way that would endear me to him. It made me sound like a silly, lovesick girl at best, and a ghoul at worst.

We’d hit the treeline, but Orion wasn’t looking out at the Meadow. He was watching me.