Page 19 of Autumn Queens & Shadows

When I rested my palm against the ground, everything made sense. The soil below still held a taste of the power she had used that day to kill her father, it still held traces of her anger, her anguish and her pain. Right where I stood was where Thora had killed Silas.

Chapter five

The Past

Malik

“You’re hiding again,” Thora said, settling next to me against the library shelf.

She’d found me again. Or maybe I wanted to be found and had hid in plain sight. Thora knew the Amaris library was where I chose to rot most of the days lately. Mostly because part of me knew this place was where she spent most of her time, too. I’d never been much of a fan of absolute darkness. The darker it was, the more honed my senses were. But I liked being in the dark with her.

“I’m a bit tired, little bird,” I admitted, brushing my hand through her hair just once to feel if she was really beside me or just inside my head. “Though not sure why exactly.”

“You're tired because everything touches you,” she said, gathering her knees to her chest. “You’re tired because you are never indifferent to anything around you whether you like to be or not. And it isn’t because of your magic. It isn’t because of your magic at all. Your magic makes it worse. You feel deeply and irrevocably. You feel so humanly. More humanly than most. And you were taught it to be wrong. It is tiring to feel you’ve done wrong when you doubt that you might have not. It’s okay,” she whispered, resting her chin on her knees and rocking herself back and forth. “It really is okay, you know.”

“Were you talking about you or me?”

She glanced at me a little. “Would you hate it if I was talking about you?”

“I don’t know.”

After a little disappointed sigh, she said, “Then maybe I was not.”

Reaching a hand forward, I pulled her hair away from her face, gathering it on the other side. She just watched me as I dared run my fingers back and forth her jaw, her eyes frozen in place, frozen on me.

“Say something. Anything,” I spoke amidst the odd silence that had never fallen between us as it had now.

She raised a finger and traced the tattoo down my forearm. It always started like that. Little touches to test herself, to see if she could take it further. Because she had no reason to fear me. I had more reason to fear her. And it wasn’t because she knew all my secrets. “Why do you mind the silence so much? What do you think will happen if we just don’t say anything?”

“I want to know when you’re with me. Sometimes, when you’re quiet, I’m not sure if you are.” And I was terrified that if it was quiet enough, she’d hear my heart erratically, torturously, painfully pound out her name. She couldn't know about my sickness, about my torment, the slow, slow ways it was starting to kill me. Because I didn’t deserve this sickness. I didn’t deserve its sweet torture. Because I was a man who’d turn this sickness into a plague, a curse, a blight to escape it, but never choose the cure. Because I did not deserve the cure either. There were better men than me who deserved that cure. Someone who deserved her back.

“I’m here.”

“Good. I’m here too. All the fucking time,” I said, my fingers sliding from her face to her brow. “So don’t go there so often. Or at least take me with you. Wherever you go, take me with you.”

She swallowed, and whispered, “You’re such a bad friend, Malik Castemont.”

I don’t want to be your friend. “You knew I was a piece of shit when you entered this agreement. No take backs allowed.”

A smile began slowly to spread over her face. “I’ve been defrauded.”

You have. “Don’t seem so upset, I might start to feel sorry for my crimes.”

She buried her face in her hands and laughed.

I pulled her hands away and she startled a little. “Why hide it?”

“Hide what?”

How stunning you look when you smile, laugh, exist. “That I make you laugh.”

“You want me to hide the fact that you’ve made me cry.”

Because I’d be tempted to be good and stay away. I can’t stay away. “I’m a bad friend.” I wanted to be something worse to her. Anything, actually, I just wanted to be anything to her, and being a bad friend was the only way to keep her. I wanted to keep her the first moment I saw her. I wanted her to be mine to keep.

She sighed and sat up straight, dropping her head back on the bookshelf so she could stare at the library's starry ceiling made of tiny little black crystals etched in the walls that reflected the daylight outside. “Let’s see the real stars next time, Malik.”

“These will do.”