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Devere seemed… different. Colder. Colder than before, when he’d demanded I take his coat. “Oh, you forgot your coat.”
He drew his gaze back into the carriage from the window and blinked as though seeing me anew. “I’ve forgotten much more than that.”
“Oh.” There was more happening here. Something had changed, something fundamental. “Devere, I… I know you don’t believe me, but just know… I’m sorry, and I care for you. I always have. It must seem as though I’ve been away for years and that I have returned quite mad. But that is not the truth. I’m not even sure what is true now. I just know you and I… Well, that is to say, I…”I love you.I couldn’t say it. The words wouldn’t come. It wasn’t the right time, not after what he’d seen.
“Please, stop. I need to think.”
I clamped my mouth shut. He hadn’t raged at me or called me mad, and we were leaving Rochefort Manor. Rochefort would come after us, after him, but for now, this was a victory.
ChapterThirty-Six
Valentine
I almost wept anew as soon as I stepped into the toy store. Devere hurried ahead, leaving me to dally in the brilliantly lit storefront, with its manic trains and chiming wall clocks. I ran my hands over the stacks of jigsaw puzzles and drifted toward the blazing fireplace. Even the cinnamon and toffee smell was the same. After so long away, it felt like coming home.
I absorbed its warmth, let the familiarity soak into my bones and chase the recent horrors away, then went in search of Devere.
His workshop remained as chaotic as before, scattered with half-broken toys, and there he was, at the workbench, hunched over a magnifying glass on a tripod, using tweezers to reassemble Hush.
I watched from the doorway. He didn’t look up, so I shifted toward the stove, keeping him in my sights should he snap at me to leave. But he didn’t, and so I made tea, then settled in the chair by the stove and watched how he pieced Hush back together one tiny cog at a time.
I couldn’t think about my own mistakes or what I’d done at the house. Devere’s whole world was fixing Hush, and mine was watching him. How his hair would slip forward, and his precise fingers would tuck it back behind his ear. How the lines gathered on his forehead, and how his eyes grew ever more intense the more he lost himself in the moment.
He was the true wonder of this world.
If only we could pack our bags and flee to Massalia, make a new life there, away from magic and nightmares. Away from Rochefort—Adair. There had to be a way to separate them. To free Devere of Adair’s magic.
“Damn it!” Devere flung a tool down, launched from the chair, and paced across the room. I almost went to him, but he shook his head and marched back and forth, then plunged his hands into his hair. “I cannot fix her. I don’t remember how.”
“Tea?” I asked in the hope it might calm him.
His reply was a scathing glance, so I poured him a cup anyway and ventured closer to the bench. He’d gotten as far as crafting Hush’s main body, but much of her insides were laid out beside her. It seemed terribly complicated. Each cog was unique, and they all had to be layered in such a way as to make magic when they came together.
I set the cup of tea down and watched him pace. “You’ll figure it out.”
“You do not know that.”
I shrugged. “You always do.”
“Do I?” He laughed, but it sounded sharp and cruel.
Something had happened.
This was about more than fixing Hush. This was about us.
He hadn’t questioned me, he hadn’t accused me of being mad, and he hadn’t looked at me with that horrible hatred I’d seen earlier in the night.
So he remembered, but something was wrong.
Why couldn’t he look at me for any length of time? Was it because of what I’d done with Claude and Vine? The shame of it burned more now that the whiskey had faded from my system.
Shame and… relief.
Because if they were real, then the fae were real. That meanteverything.
“Do you remember us?” I finally asked. “I need to know if it’s real, Devere. I’ve waited months to get here, to see you again and to know I’m not mad. Tell me this is just a go-around, and you and I, we’re the same as we always were? You have to tell me that, even if you tell me nothing else.”
He stopped pacing. When I looked up, would I see pity or regret on his face?
