Page 79 of The Nightmare Bride
I cleared my throat. “You happen to be in the direct path of my eyeballs. It has nothing to do with you.”
He laughed softly. “You’restaring.”
I huffed. “Okay, fine, well, so are you.”
“Mmm. Because I like your face. I like your hair. I likeyou.”
Heat throbbed in my cheeks. Looking at him did things to me, but being lookedatpiled a whole set of other things right atop the first. “Youdoknow I still hate you, right?”
His smile deepened. “Oh, I’m well aware of how you feel about me.”
The air thickened. Gods, how did he do that? Say one thing and mean another entirely?
Time to change the subject, since I couldn’t win at this little game. “As delightful as your arrogance is, I actually... Can I ask you something?”
He hiked a brow in invitation. Or challenge, maybe. “Go ahead.”
“I want to know...” I picked at a loose thread on my nightgown. “...What did the nightmares show you? When you first came here?”
His face blanked.
I almost smiled. Finally, I’d managed to surprise him. Ha.
But it didn’t last long. A divot formed between his brows as he considered. “The storms told me...I wasn’t enough. Not charming enough, not witty enough. Not enough for anyone to want.”
Shock bloomed, but I tamped it down. That was so close to my own fear, yet he and I couldn’t have been more different. “And so you conquered that by...what? Changing yourself? Making yourself so charming, so witty, that your shortcomings didn’t matter?”
“Shortcomings?” His smile edged toward slyness. “Lioness. Are you suggesting I’m compensating for something? Because I assure you, there’s nothingshortabout me. Not where it counts.”
I shook my head. Sweet Zephyrine, he could probably sexualize a conversation about a potato.
When I didn’t rise to the bait, he sighed, apparently deciding to grant me mercy. “The thing is, it wasn’t about that. When the storms came, it didn’t matter what I was. Only what Ibelieved. Which meant I didn’t have to become more charming. I had to realize I already was. Define myself so the nightmares couldn’t. Because they don’t tell any kind of truth. When they say you’re worthless, that’s simply your own fear, aimed back at you. The storms’ only weapons are the ones you hand them yourself.”
His words settled into me, heavy and warm. The nightmares had always felt so inescapable, like truths shouted from the exact centerpoint of the universe. But maybe that was just another one of their illusions. “You just...figured that out? On your own?”
“It took time,” he admitted. “Months. But once I understood, half the battle had been won.”
“And now you resist by just...believing you can?”
“No. By knowing it.”
Something squeezed inside my chest. “What’s that even like? Having that kind of faith in yourself?”
“It’s...” His eyes glossed over as he searched for an answer within. “Freeing.”
I stared. My whole being boiled down to a complex simmer of reverence and envy.
“But you’ll have an easier time than I did,” he said. “You’ll conquer the nightmares with hardly any trouble.”
My brow crinkled. I hadn’t once imagined myself accomplishing what he had. Not when I was so susceptible, and he was so...I didn’t even know.More.More than me.Larger than life. “Why do you say that? Because I have you to help me?”
“No. Because you’re immoveable.”
I side-eyed him. “Is that a fancy way of calling me stubborn?”
He chuckled. “I value my life much too highly to admit tothat. I only mean...you’re strong. Strong enough to handle me, at any rate, and I can’t tell you how rare that is. I tend to run roughshod over people, if I’m not careful.”
Well. That much, I believed.
