AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Devere
I’d already said too much, and now Valentine wouldn’t stop with the questions. The more he knew, the more he risked losing his mind to the puppet master. He’d always been different, always able to look deeper than the surface in front of us all. His parents had feared him for it, thought him possessed, but I’d known he might one day be free, free like I could never be.
He’d flown away…
He should have stayed away. Likely would have if Adair hadn’t lured him back.
“Then he’s your real father?” Valentine asked, determined to pluck the truth from my every word.
“My father? No. I don’t have a father, not in the role you’d recognize. You must stop, Valentine. Stop asking questions. Play the game. Neither you nor I can prevent any of this.” I tried to shoo him back from the counter. “Perhaps if you do what you came here to do, it will all end well. Go back to the city, to your life—”
He caught my wrist and held me still, then leaned closer and poured all his fervor and righteous passion into his gaze. “I won’t leave you again.”
My breath caught, and my heart might have stopped. While I’d forgotten these recent events he spoke of, I hadn’t forgotten how we’d played hide and seek in the graveyard, and how we’d tumbled in the long grass. He’d laughed so freely, a laugh he only gave to me when we were alone. I had not forgotten the feel of his warm lips on mine, or how his eyes had lit up when we’d kissed that day.
I had not forgotten the way he’d made my heart race.
I’d wished to forget that. I’d wished to forget it a thousand times.
I tore my wrist free. “I believe Lord Rochefort requires your presence, no?”
“What?” He finally backed away from my counter. “Rochefort’s alive?”
He hadn’t died despite what Valentine believed. It had only seemed that way to him. Adair must have enjoyed the ruse to allow it to get that far. “Only fools keep the lord waiting.”
“No.”
“No, what?”
“No, I will not go to him.”
“Isn’t he paying you to find my father’s killer?”
“You don’t—” Valentine cleared the pitch in his voice behind a cough and adjusted his jacket. “I told you, we had a disagreement.”
“That was then. This is now. Think of it as though you have an advantage on this go-around. Whatever your argument was, you already know its outcome.”
He pressed a hand to his chest and glanced around the store. “That’s rather the problem. Do you believe in magic?” he asked suddenly.
I looked up and found him staring back, trying to dissect my expression. “Yes.”
“Magic is the unknown,” he said, as though testing me for something.
The words sounded familiar, but I couldn’t place from where. “That is true. But true magic seeks to be unknown forever.”
He placed both hands on my counter and stared as though he could pin me to the spot with his gaze alone. “Tell me what I do not know, and I’ll make magic a reality. I’ll study it, and together we’ll make it so you no longer have to be afraid. What is happening in this godforsaken town that I clearly cannot see, but you can? Why am I being toyed with? Who is doing this to me, to you? Devere, trust me. Let me help you.”
“I trusted you once before.”
Shame doused the fire in his eyes and he withdrew, as I’d hoped he would.
I hadn’t expected my heart to hurt as he turned away. It shouldn’t have, but I’d never been able to guard against his effect on me. In another world, another place and time, one in which I was not trapped, would we have been lovers?
I wasn’t sure I deserved such a thing. Or if I was capable.
“I’m sorry, Devere. I’ll say it again a thousand times if you’ll just believe it.” He looked back at me from the door with something like hope on his face.
Yet I’d only heard him say it once.
