Page 220 of The Nightmare Bride
And...wow. I’d have to leave her with Lunk more often. He’d done more to revive her than anything else I’d tried. Affection for the man surged through me, so potent my eyes stung.
“Harlowe.” Amryssa patted the floor. “Come sit. Lunk was just telling me about the time he tried to slaughter a chicken, but it made off with his underwear, instead.”
The giant ducked his head. “Oh, the keymistress doesn’t need to hear about that.”Keymistresscame out askeymithreth, whiledoesn’tbecamedoethn’t.“No doubt she’s got better things to do.”
He was right, of course—there were four massive walls of books here for me to hunt through. A million leatherbound possibilities that might describe the rise of the nightmares, or the Lady Marche’s dagger, or...well, I didn’t know what I was looking for, exactly.
But Ididknow Lunk was simply being shy. Amryssa had an undeniable softness, a tranquility that encouraged confessions about underwear-pilfering chickens, but I was decidedly less inviting, and the giant often slanted away when I came near.
I smiled, trying to soften the harshness of my features, but Lunk’s dark eyes sought the floor and stayed there.
Well, no chicken stories for me today.
“Don’t mind me.” I moved away. “Pretend I’m not even here.”
“Oh, but you are.” Amryssa pulled a pale curl through her fingers. “And without your husband, at that. Where is he?”
Myhusband. I wished she wouldn’t call him that. Somehow, on her lips, the word sounded much too real.
“I’m right here,” came a voice behind me.
I turned to find Kyven striding through the doors.
My heart momentarily forgot its cadence. He looked fresh and clean and perfect, his wet hair glinting like polished mahogany, that sky-blue waistcoat accentuating his eyes. As I stood there, trying to quiet the fireworks in my bloodstream, he rolled one snowy shirtsleeve to the elbow, then the other. Those sinewy forearms hooked my gaze and held it.
I tried to shake off my reaction. All he’d done was resist a nightmare—okay, he’d also done a mild amount of saving my life—but that shouldn’t have granted him the power to affect me like this. Especially because logic implied he might also be kidnapping the housemaids.
I just...gods among us, I didn’t believe it. I couldn’tmakemyself, not when he was standing there like he was ready to work. To help me save the person I loved most.
“How’d you get out of my room?” I said, hating my own breathiness.
He shrugged. “I picked the lock.”
“Picked the...” I pressed my lips together. I didn’t want to know where he’d learnedthatparticular skill. Or why. I didn’t want to know anything except how to free Zephyrine, because every word I exchanged with this man only drew me further into his thrall.
“I assume,” he said, “that when I agreed to help, I agreed to do research. So where do we start?”
“Didn’t you say you don’t read?”
He made a face. “Gods forbid. But this isn’treading, really. More like solving a puzzle. Conquering a challenge, you could say.”
“Which is...something you enjoy,” I said, more statement than question.
He started toward me. I swore I caught Amryssa smiling from the corner of my eye.
“It absolutely is.” Kyven came close. His voice dropped, his vowels filling out even further. “And the pricklier the challenge, the more liable I am to throw myself at it. I’m especially fond of the ones that seem impossible at first blush.”
A heatwave rolled up my spine. Were we still talking about books? Something told me not.
A sound like a suppressed snicker broke into my awareness. I glanced around to find gray eyes and black ones taking our measure. For all that the colors differed, both pairs shone with repressed mirth.
My gaze narrowed. Great. Lunk and Amryssa were clearly in cahoots, now.
“Right.” I turned back to Kyven, my tone brusque. “Why don’t you start at the other end, then, and I’ll stay here. We’re looking for...ledgers, maybe. Diaries. Anything that might chronicle the years around the start of the nightmares. Or that might mention the dagger.”
He nodded and moved off. I watched him go, earning myself another round of giggles from the peanut gallery.
I briefly wrestled with the compulsion to flip Lunk and Amryssa the bird, then stalked to the nearest bookcase without lowering myself to their incredibly childish level. Moral high road, and all that. Because wasn’t I just a paragon of fucking virtue.
