Page 84 of Only Cold Depths
Kyrion thrust into me again, deeper than before, and all that heat and energy and sensation erupted, flowing from me to him and back again in a cascade of white-hot pleasure.
“Vesper,” Kyrion murmured against my neck. “Vesper.”
I clutched him tighter, and once again, we both forgot everything else—except for each other.
Sometimelater,KyrionandI made it over to the bed and fell asleep. Sometime after that, I started to dream.
The castle, the library, the stairs down to the round room of my mindscape, with its doors, blue-moon peonies, and sapphsidian eyes. I walked through it all and stepped into the waiting darkness beyond. Once again, I wound up at my psionic nexus, and the eye-shaped sapphsidian altar was the same as always, right down to the lunarium eyes and arrows floating on the surface.
The last time I’d been here, I’d grabbed one of the eyes and hurled it into the darkness, and it had zipped back to the table like a boomerang. I had no desire to injure myself in my own mindscape, so this time, I gently, carefully, picked up one of the eyes and cupped it in my palms.
The opalescent lunarium sparked with color, and the stone itself gave off a pleasant, tingling warmth. I reached out with my magic, tightened my grip, and stared down at the eye, willing it to move, twitch, vibrate, maybe even fill me with some great wisdom or show me a startling new insight . . .
Nothing happened.
The eye just sat on my palms, shimmering with color and warmth. Was that all it did? If the nexus just sat here in the heart of my darkness, then what was the point of it being in my mindscape at all?
Disappointed, I dropped the eye back down onto the table, and the lunarium piece plopped into the sapphsidian like a raindrop hitting a lake. The shimmering eye disappeared below the dark blue surface for a moment before bobbing back up to the top.
More disgust surged through me. Why did I keep coming here and wasting my time?
I spun around on my heel, left the nexus and the darkness behind, and returned to the round room of my mindscape.
Useless child. . .Nerezza’s voice hissed from its usual doorway.
I glanced at the memory, but it didn’t ignite as much heartache as usual. My mother’s long-ago insult was an old wound, and right now, I was much more concerned with the new wounds the Zimmers might inflict on me—
A door to my right flung itself open, and images started playing on the other side—my talk with the Zimmers earlier in the library. I hesitated, not wanting to relive that memory since it was so painfully fresh, but I stood in front of the door and watched the whole conversation again.
Beatrice’s explanations. Wendell’s pleas. Zane’s quips.
My gaze lingered on Zane. Instead of crowing about how he’d supposedly helped Kyrion and me escape from Crownpoint, Zane had downplayed his role, and he’d cut off Wendell when his father had started to offer up more examples of Zane’s supposed aid.
Yet again, that annoying spark of hope flared in my chest. If Zane really had helped Kyrion and me even before he’d known I was his sister . . . then maybe, just maybe, my brother wasn’t the villain I thought he was. Maybe he actually had some tiny bits of decency buried deep inside his arrogant exterior. Maybe he really did care about me, at least as much as one could care about the sister they’d only known about for a few weeks.
That spark of hope burned a little brighter, but I was determined not to be fooled again. So I decided to approach the situation the way I would test a new brewmaker in the R&D lab.
Hope, but verify.
I went around my mindscape, waving my right hand, opening and closing first one door, then another, then another . . . until I found my memories of the midnight ball.
I stood in front of the open door and watched it all play out. My confrontation with Nerezza. Holloway taking some of Kyrion’s magic. My yanking the butterfly dagger out of my hair and stabbing Dargan Byrne with it. Kyrion and me unleashing our truebond. Our psionic lightning crackling through the throne room like a violent electrical storm. Then Kyrion and me running through the palace, boarding theDream World, and zooming away from Crownpoint . . .
A frustrated growl rumbled in my throat. I’d already seen everything that had happened from my point of view. I wanted to know whatZanehad done.
Wait. I was a seer. Whycouldn’tI do that? My magic often surged up and showed me things I hadn’t witnessed in person, like Esmina shoving Micah off the bridge at Stardrop Falls. So why couldn’t I do the same thing now? When I actuallywantedto?
I stalked over to the door that featured the large stylizedZof House Zimmer—Zane’s door. “Show me Zane.”
Nothing happened. The door remained shut, and the blue opals and sapphsidian pieces that made up theZsigil glimmered at me like mocking eyes.
“Show me Zane,” I called out again, my voice louder and more insistent.
Once again, nothing happened, although the jewels glimmered a little more brightly.
“Show me Zane!” This time, I snarled the words, putting as much effort, force, and magic into the command as possible.
But for the third time, nothing happened . . .
