Page 75 of Iridian

“Apparently, they will,” I said, moving off him to lie on the bed again because I needed a moment.

“I’ve been trying to come up with different ideas, different spells on how to takethemoff the radar. Me and you, I can erase us from anything, no problem, but they stay together, and together, they emit too strong a signal. I can’t seem to be able to keep it under. I can’t just…turn it off.”

“And you’ve been figuring all of this out without me,” I said, and I tried—Goddess, I tried not to be bitter about it, but I was. At least a little bit.

“I’m sorry, baby,” Taland said. “But your safety ismyresponsibility. I should have told you about the voices and the soldiers, but it’s my job to protect you and I will do that job thoroughly whichever way I see fit.”

Just now he didn’t really sound sorry at all, actually. “I’m not a baby you need to babysit, Taland,” I spit, and he smiled.

“Noted.”

“And it’s notyour job?—”

“We can argue about this. You won’t win,” he cut me off, then gave me a peck on the lips.

I sighed. “Fine.” I didn’t want to argue, anyway. There were apparently more pressing issues that needed to be addressed first. “We’ll argue later. Right now, I need to know if there’s anything else you’ve been keeping from me since we came here.”

“Aside from having made up my mind that you look much better naked—no, I think you know everything.”

“Asshole,” I muttered, but when he pulled me in to kiss me, I didn’t stop him.

“I’ll be anything at all as long as I’m here,” he said, raising my hand to his lips to kiss my fingertips.

All that anger was starting to fade away already. “What else?” I asked, even if I hated to take him back there. But I needed to know. I wanted to understand this whole thing better, how deep it went. “What else have they been telling you?”

Taland didn’t hesitate. “Stories—mostly about their loved ones. Their families. It’s not so much that they’retellingme these things, more like…I’m seeing their memories.”

“Like you saw mine when you carried me through the Drainage?”

“Exactly like that,” Taland said, and when he was done kissing my hand, he leaned in to kiss me on the lips, too. “It’s like the images in their minds are mine—for me to read like books or see them like movies. This one man, Luigi from Romania, whose parents abandoned him when he was four, left him in the middle of the street, was raised by three prostitutes in a brothel. He grew to love them like his own sisters. He took Titus’s deal because he offered all three of them houses and enough money to live comfortably without having to set foot in a brothel ever again. He was nineteen.”

Shivers ran down my spine. “That’s fucking sick.” And it made perfect sense, unfortunately. A man like Titus, a power-hungry fuckingmonsterwould use his money to trick and entrap someone as young as that boy.

“I can see him, you know,” said Taland, and my breath caught all over again. “I can see him through their eyes. Through their memories. He was…good.Really good.”

I rose on my elbows again. “Good, how?”

“At tricking people. At making them trust him. Believe in anything he said. He was strikingly handsome, with long hair and an easy smile—and a fortune in his pockets he didn’t seemto mind spending. Every single one of the soldiers who linked themselves to him genuinely believed he was a good guy.”

“Goddess, that’sincredible,Taland. This kind of magic…” I shook my head, at a loss for words.

“Should be wiped from all books and the minds of everyone in the world,” he whispered. “Sweetness, he’s tied them to himself like animals. Worse than animals. He’s made slaves out of their souls.”

I snuggled closer again, rested my head over his shoulder. Goddess, his heart was galloping like it was being chased by a storm.

“He was a monster,” I whispered, kissing his skin. “But you’re not.”

“I know,” he said. “I would never even dream of trapping someone like that, let alone work Goddess knows how many years it took him to create that curse.”

“Tell me more,” I whispered. “Do you mind?” Because I wanted to know. I wanted to share his pain with him. I wanted to understand him fully, and I could only do that if I knew what he knew.

“You don’t have to, baby,” he said.

“I know. I want to.”

“You sure?”

“Unless you don’t want to talk about it, I am.”

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