Page 7 of Reap the Night
The only woman whose love could free him.
My throat pinched, and I blinked to dispel the heat gathering behind my eyes.
“You look better,” he said. “You have a little color in your cheeks.”
“Yes, I feel better. I feel almost like myself.” Small talk hurt. I needed to broach the subject and?—
“Orina…what you saw in the dining room…It isn’t what it looked like.”
“I know what I saw. You were about to have that woman executed.” I made my tone curt and cold, the tone any Order member would adopt in response to what had happened in the dining hall.
I couldn’t tell him that I knew about the curse, not without revealing who’d told me. Ordell and Hemlock needed to be kept out of this. He couldn’t know they were his brothers. That knowledge would send him spiraling into insanity. I had to play this carefully. “After everything that we discussed. After everything you said?—”
“There’s more to this than you know.”
“What more could there be?”
He made a sound of exasperation. “That woman is part of my eternal curse. I know it sounds insane. But it’s true. Every century…Every fucking century she’s here, and I…”
“You what?”
“I find myself drawn to her only to have her die,” he said in a rush. “It's an eternal torment. Something that I am not willing to go through again. Something that I don’t feel Ineedto go through anymore. I’m done playing the games of an unseenpuppet master who’s placed me in this predicament. I’m done being a pawn. I’ve decided to choose my own destiny.”
My pulse thrummed in my throat, making it hard to speak so that when I did, my voice was nothing but a whisper. “And what is that?”
His eyes glittered in the gloom, softening as they raked over my face, unsaid words hanging between us. I wanted nothing more than to tell him everything, to tell him that I knew, that I understood, that as much as it hurt, I needed to leave. But I held back the words and kept the emotions from my face. Don’t cry, Orina. Don’t you fucking cry.
I had to end this. Now before I broke. “I’m glad you feel liberated, Ezekiel, but if youareunder a curse as you say, then curses have rules, and this woman is obviously important to it. You can’t give up on the chance of breaking free.”
“I’m not giving up. Merely taking a sabbatical.” He shrugged. “I feel that I deserve one.”
He had no idea how little time he had left. He thought that he could ignore the curse this time around. That he could what? Be with me?
I took a moment to breathe through the ache in my chest that made the threat of tears stronger and hardened my tone. “You deserve a sabbatical? Well, I deserve one too. Which is why I’ll be moving back to the chapter house.”
He sat forward in his seat. “What?”
“Yes. Tonight. Ordell will drive me. Obviously, I’m still your watcher, and if you go to any functions or leave the castle, then I will accompany you with my guards, but other than that, I need some space.”
He unfurled his body from his chair, smooth and fast like the predator he was, and I flinched, barely holding my ground.
His eyes narrowed as if he was attempting to look into the heart of me, into my very soul. I quelled the shiver that racedthrough me and lifted my chin to meet his gaze with a steady one of my own, but he took it as an invitation, hand coming up to cradle my throat, his long fingers tightening ever so slightly.
It took every ounce of will not to lean into that contact.
“What if I refuse to let you go?” he said, his breath whispering across my cheek.
My eyes misted, and I blinked back tears because yes, a small part of me wanted that. It wanted him to keep me. To refuse to let me go, but the bigger part, the part that was blessed and knew her duty, fought back, burying the small voice that begged to be heard.
“What if I keep you here, locked in my quarters, little silver?”
His words, the soft abrasion of his tone, tugged at the knot of longing inside me. “Then I’d think you a fool, and ungrateful too. But I’d stay because I had no choice.”
Hemlock had said Ezekiel had already decided to retreat and reduce bloodshed, so my being here or at the chapter house should make no difference to him. Still, I waited with bated breath for his response.
“Is that what you want?” he asked. “Youwantto leave…”Me.He didn't say it, but I heard it anyway.
My traitorous pulse fluttered against his fingertips. “That’s what I want.”
