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“What did you do?” he asked me.
“It is infuriating when you answer a question with a question.”
He smirked at me, some of the concern covered by humor. “No, that’s not normal. But nothing about that rune is. I’ve never seen it’s like. So I ask again, what did you do?”
I stared at him for several seconds, unable to fully process his words. He’d never seen this before. Why did that make it so much worse?
“I tried to access the aether,” I said.
“How?” he asked, staring hard at my face.
Our gazes held, and I could see him searching me, something like suspicion in his face. But I had nothing to hide. He was the one who abducted me, for Maker’s Sake.
Warmth pooled through me, and I found myself unaccountably relaxed. He truly was the most handsome creature, all angular bones and full mouth, his hair a rakish length with blonde streaks filtering through many shades of mahogany brown. I leaned into him, and his mouth quirked as he bent closer, but then he seemed to catch himself because he straightened and withdrew, dropping my hands in the next instant.
It was akin to plunging headfirst into an icy lake. Mortification bloomed a hot blush in my face. Had I meant to kiss him?
Pressing my hands to my cheeks, I turned to face the trees. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what came over me.”
Derrick’s voice was curious behind me. “You really don’t, do you?”
Keeping my back to him, I tried to fight my own blush. Which was, of course, impossible, but blast it all if I couldn’t at least try. “You must think me the worst sort of woman.”
“It was a charm, Miss Grayson.”
I turned to him again. He looked slightly embarrassed and would not meet my eyes, choosing instead to frown out at the forest on the other side of the driveway. “For a woman from Boston, you are remarkably ill-versed in the ways of Bright.”
“I beg your pardon?”
He ignored that and gestured toward the forest. “There’s something I’d like to show you before we go to the lake.”
Flummoxed by his behavior, I stared after him as he started walking into the forest. My initial reaction was to tell him no, to turn around and go back to my room. The arrangement with Delilah did not require that I join the party, after all.
“You can’t possibly want to stay in that room all day,” Derrick said over his shoulder.
I scowled. “You don’t know that. The walls are probably better company than you.”
He chuckled and kept walking. It would serve him right if I did go back, but he was right, blast him. That little windowless room didn’t even have a book in it. I would be bored within an hour. Still scowling, but with no reasonable alternative before me, I followed him.
Sunshine gave way to shadow as we crossed into the forest, and I was forced to watch my footing with all the roots and rocks beneath us. These were old trees, their branches overhead splayed out in a myriad of greens that danced in the breeze. Their roots dug deep, some of them so deep they touched the borders of Fairy, and I took a deep breath.
Nana Bess always warned me away from old forests.
Old forests still remember the world before the Breaking. Dangerous creatures find safe haven there, and they do not like trespassers.
Shivering, I crossed my arms and wished with all I had to be home again. To be safe inside my little house at 47 Dawning Drive, sipping coffee on the bottom step and watching light make rainbows of the crystal chandelier. I wanted my father’s study and its oriental rug, the ridiculous cuckoo clock chirping the hours at me as couple after couple visited the house. I would even enjoy suffocating under Daphne’s vampiric silence if it meant I was back home.
Derrick was silent until we reached a small pairing of birch trees. We were deep inside the woods now, and there was no true path leading back to the manor. I checked twice to be sure, an unpleasant prickle at the back of my neck as I realized we were absolutely secluded, and he had used magic to disorient me.
Or maybe it was my own distraction.
Probably both.
“Why are we here?” I asked, scanning the forest.
There was no birdsong. Even the insects were quiet, the way they get when a predator was nearby.
I swallowed. “Constable?”
