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I lifted my gaze and saw a sorrow so raw in his eyes that it tugged on my heart.
“I remember,” he said, his voice snagging on emotion. “I remember us.”
Then it was real.
That was all I needed to know.
Relief lifted off my back, so much of it that I staggered, suddenly dizzy. I clutched the workbench to keep from falling. It was real. We were real. That was all that mattered.
Devere swept in, suddenly in front of me, so beautiful, so lost, with eyes full of sorrow and guilt I didn’t understand but wanted to, like I wanted to understand him. I touched his face before I could stop myself, and when his fingers skimmed my cheek to drive into my hair, I let them, let him tip my head up, and welcomed the ghost of his kiss on my lips.
“I’m sorry, Val,” he whispered. “So sorry.” Then his arms wrapped around me, and he sobbed into my neck, wetting my skin with tears.
Whatever he was sorry for, it didn’t matter. We were here, together. I crushed him close, needing to feel him, the only man I wanted to be with, the only soul I wanted to share mine with.
“Forgive me,” I heard him whisper.
He had nothing to be forgiven for. We were both trapped in Adair’s never-ending illusion. “Of course, Devere. You’ve done nothing wrong.”
He tore himself free so fast that his absence left me reeling against the workbench a second time.
“I… It’s been a long night.”
Focused again on Hush, he nodded. “Yes, you must be exhausted. Why don’t you take my bed? I must work on Hush.”
“Yes, I think I will… Thank you.”
He shooed a hand, still not looking up.
I drifted toward the door, lightheaded from shock.Everythingwe’d been through, over and over again—so many versions that I’d lost all sense of who I was, but not who he was. “May I… draw a bath?” I could smell the fae’s sickly sweetness on me still.
“Yes, go do that.”
I hesitated in the workshop doorway. He was hurting, and when he hurt, he lashed out and shut down. “Everything will be all right, Devere.”
“Will it?”
“The puppet master cannot change our hearts.”
He didn’t turn, didn’t look up from his work, but his shoulders tensed. “No, only the truth can do that.”
He was right. And we knew each other’s truths now. As long as we had that, Adair’s lies could not touch us.
I climbed the stairs to Devere’s apartment, drew a bath in the separate washroom, avoided my ghastly reflection in the mirror, and stripped off my tousled, sweet-smelling clothes. Hot water sloshed as I climbed in. Then I sank my shoulders beneath the surface. With soberness came the cold clarity of my actions, and despite the steaming water, I shivered.
It had been… a lot.
The last few months felt as though I’d lived too many lifetimes, and during it all, I’d had no control. I’d been a tiny boat tossed around the ocean in a storm. This had to be the end of it. I couldn’t do another go-around. I’d rather die than face horrors like the asylum again.
“Val?”
“Devere!” I jolted upright, sloshing water over the side of the tub, then grabbed the edge of the tub to keep from sliding around.
Devere stood inside the doorway. “I should have knocked—” He turned his back and looked as though he might leave again.
“Don’t go,” I blurted in a very ungentlemanly way. “I mean, it’s just… I find everything of late has rather weighed me down, and I do not wish to be alo—”
He rushed at the bath and me, as though meaning to attack, but at the last second, when I gasped and almost peddled backward, his lips skimmed mine. His hand was in my hair again and the kiss landed like a butterfly, so soft, so gentle it almost wasn’t there at all.
