Page 105 of Architecti
“This place is enormous,” I say.“We need to be more strategic before Lex bleeds out.”
Bastien touches Lucy’s arm.“Would your runes help…?”
I frown at him.“You can’t be serious?”I bury my head in my hands, heat rising up my neck.
“What can’t he be serious about?”Lucy says.
He shrugs.“This place is massive, and we’re running out of time.I’d put money on your runes calling to their source, or maybe helping like a map.I don’t know, but it’s worth a shot if it saves Lex…”
“In here?It’s the Celestial Library…” Lucy dances from foot to foot, but I’m out of ideas too, and Bastien has a point.
“Do you have a better idea?”he asks.
Neither of us come up with anything.
He smirks and flicks his tongue like a snake.“Be quick.No pressure, Midnight, but now would be a good time to work your magic.I’ll check on Lex.”
He vanishes and the pair of us face each other awkwardly.
“Listen.We don’t—” Lucy starts, but I place my finger over her lips, shutting her up.
“You need to stop.”
“Buthhh,” she mumbles against my finger and then sags when she realises she won’t be able to get her words out.
I brush a lock of hair behind her ear.“When are you going to realise that I love every moment of being with you?”
I stiffen, realising I shouldn’t have used the L word, not in any context.
“What I meant to say?—”
This time, she cuts me off, pulling my hand away from her mouth.
She holds my gaze, our eyes lingering on each other, hungry, exchanging so many unspoken words.Things that our bodies have come to accept but our minds cannot.Things that we wish we could whisper but admitting them would mean… I can’t even think about what it would mean.
How is it we’ve ended up here?How is it that our promise to make it all about the contracts has become a lie to protect our hearts?To protect her power.
I can’t have her.There are too many obstacles in our path.
I’m meant to reap her.She is forbidden from loving a mortal.Iammortal and she isn’t.I’ll die, she won’t.Her father hates me and loves her.We were never meant to be.
But that doesn’t stop me sliding my hand behind her head and pulling her mouth to mine.When I kiss her, it’s not with the urgency I should feel.It’s not with the cocky lust I felt in the graveyard.
And it’s not with the heavy weight of knowledge that one day soon, this will end.
My lips move as if nothing else exists.
As if the angels have stopped time just for us, and I can finally believe we control our own fates.
As if this single kiss will save us both.
She tastes like heaven.Like a thousand different caresses under a thousand different skies.Like dreams and hopes and all the wishes I’ve ever had.But what terrifies me most is that she tastes like every forever I’ve ever ached for.
She must feel it too because she steps us back, down an aisle, our hands ravishing each other.This isn’t fucking anymore.This isn’t a quickie.It’s not sex for the sake of contracts and runes.
This is something else, something more.
We practically trip and fall out the other side of an aisle into an open space.We break apart long enough to find a fountain at its centre, dark and glistening like a waterfall of stars.Architect moths flutter in and out of the flowing liquid, their wings making new sprays and flows as they drift around the fountain.
