Page 28 of Iridian

My eyes closed.

“Sweetness, you okay?” asked Taland, but I was suddenly feeling…fatigued.Weak. I was feeling so damn weak, and I just wanted to sleep. I wanted to eat and sleep until I couldn’t keep my eyes closed anymore.

Dark.

“I’m fine,” I thought I said while the others continued to argue about who got what shape right and who sucked at drawing more.

“We’ll figure it out,” Taland said, bringing my hand to his lips and kissing my knuckles.

“I know,” I said, though I could have been lying. But when my eyes opened, I feltherson me like sun rays.

Madeline stood at the corner of her desk with her hands crossed in front of her chest, watching me. She looked…unusual, a look I hadn’t seen on her before. Calm but furious. Unbothered but curious. Her eyes could melt the skin off my flesh, my flesh off my bones. And if I could somehow look inside her mind right now, I’d find out exactly how much she despised me, even if she sometimes looked like she didn’t. Even if she hid it well.

The others talked. Taland pulled at my hand, but I couldn’t turn, couldn’t look away.

Madeline reminded me ofbadthings, always had. She was synonymous with every ounce of pain I’d ever felt, and right now the pain of that spell was the most vivid in my mind. I couldn’t tell you why I was so caught up in the way she was looking at me, why I felt the heat of her hatred on me so perfectly, why my bracelet kept tugging at my arm and why that voice wouldn’t stop whispering,dark, dark dark.

It was dark outside, no doubt, even though the drapes wouldn’t let me see the sky.

It was dark outside, andthat’swhy we couldn’t see.

“The sun,” I said, and the word could have popped into my mind from that old voice, not mine, but my lips said it all the same.

Only when the others stopped talking did I realize how loud it had been in the room until now.

Madeline raised a brow at me.

“The sun?” Flora said, and I nodded.

“The sun. That light that gave us these looked like a little sun, don’t you think?”

A moment of silence.

Laughter—Natasha. “The oldest trick in the book,” she said. “The girl is right.”

“We’ll need sunlight to see the full picture,” said Radock, and Seth was already by the windows, pulling the drapes to thesides to reveal the dark sky with a million stars twinkling in the distance.

“We can’t see the map for another…six hours then, give or take,” said George, looking at his watch.

Six hours.

“Sweetness.”

I broke eye contact with Madeline to look at Taland. The heat of all that she felt for me disappeared into thin air instantly.

“Do you want to get out of here?”

I thought,more than anything in the world.I said, “I think we should stay.”

Taland nodded. “Then we’ll stay.”

Madeline continued to look at me. The others continued to talk about ideas—not bickering at the moment but talking. Exploring possibilities. Wondering how Hill would have gotten his own script to work, and if we would even find him wherever these scrolls said the Delaetus Army was.

But we would, I was sure of it. Hill was not a fool—on the contrary. He might be the smartest man any of us had ever met. He’d have figured out how to find the Army with or without that script.

As I rested my head on Taland’s shoulder for a moment, I just prayed to the goddess that he hadn’t brought them back to life already.

Chapter 8

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