Page 82 of The Nightmare Bride
“Hey.” I was barely able to get the word past the hundred-pound weight in my throat.
She glanced up, sadness etched in her smile. Her hair hung in drab curtains, and even her eyes had lost their hint of green. “Hi.”
“Are you all right?”
Her fragile shoulders rose and fell. “It’s calling to me. Again.”
“What is?”
“The marsh.”
I sucked in a breath. In the past, I’d always brushed off her yearnings, but now they filled me with foreboding. What if therea reason she longed for the swamp? What if freeing Zephyrine took her away from me, somehow? What if...
Seven hells, I probably didn’t even understand all the what-ifs.
I cleared my throat, telling myself not to panic until I had something to panicabout. If only I could find that damn diary. Then I’d have some idea of what all this meant. “Can I ask you something?”
Amryssa nodded. “Of course.”
“What do you remember about your mother?”
She blinked. “My mother? Hmm. Warmth, I suppose. Laughter. Brown skin. Shiny black hair. Fingers stained with charcoal—she was always drawing. And a smell like...bergamot tea, maybe? Oh, and hugs. Lots of them.”
My heart squeezed. “She loved you a lot?”
“Oh, fiercely. Me and Father both. Sometimes I think...”
Her throat worked. I waited.
“I think she’d be sorry to know what’s happened to us. Where we’ve ended up.”
That rammed an arrow through my chest, but I forced myself to continue. “But what about the dagger? It was hers, right? Do you remember much about that?”
Amryssa’s attention fell to my belt. “Oh, yes. She used to wear it, just like you. I always thought it was because...well, I don’t know. I suppose I never asked. It’s an heirloom, perhaps.”
Her gaze strayed to the window again. The sheer longing in her eyes made me wilt inside. Goddess, Ihadto help her. I had to fix this.
So I devoted the rest of the afternoon to sifting through the last brown books in the library. Hours later, I was sweating, cursing myself into a foul mood, when I slid the final volume from its shelf. I cracked the cover to find a primer on...ornithology.
Birds. Freaking birds.
Something snapped inside me. I hurled the book and sank to my knees, my face buried in my hands. I’d failed. I’d pinned my hopes for Amryssa to this, and had nothing at all to show for it.
A pent-up sob cooked the inside of my chest. A moment later, a warm hand landed on my shoulder. I looked up to find Kyven smiling down at me. The collar of his shirt hung open, exposing the smooth column of his neck.
I shouldn’t have stared, but I did. I liked that he so often left that button undone, that I could see the ripple of muscle when he ate, the bob of his throat when he laughed. Moreover, the sight of him—thatthingthat blazed inside me whenever he came close—chased away the shadows clogging my veins.
Right now, it was probably the only thing that could.
“The diary might not be in the library,” he said, “but that doesn’t mean it isn’t in this house.”
I scrubbed at my cheeks. “We don’t know that it actually exists, though. What if that steward was wrong? What if the Lady was writing letters? Or...I don’t know. Shopping lists?”
“She wasn’t. He called it a diary. He sounded sure.”
“Maybe. But if she kept a journal, it should be here.”
A mischievous spark flared in his eyes. “Well. There is one more place we could look. A rather obvious one, actually.”
