Page 130 of Architecti
“Oh, I dunno, how about how you actually feel?”
She fires me a look that bears the weight of a thousand emotions.She ages a decade in one fleeting glance.
“How I feel is irrelevant.”
“Is it?”
“Yes, if I want to live.Don’t you get that?”
I grit my teeth.I’m pissed at her tone.Pissed that she has feelings.More pissed that she’s not admitting to them and royally fucking pissed that if she does admit to them, she’ll render herself powerless.
I must be seething because Lucy stops dead.
“For fuck’s sake, Midnight.What do you want me to do?Confess and what?Lose my power?For what?A relationship that’s going nowhere?”
“Wow, just wow.”
She looks at the floor, kneads her forehead.“I didn’t mean that.I— Gods.I’m sorry, that was really shitty of me.But… we can’t talk about this.”
She staggers, her hands clutching at her chest.
“What’s wrong?”I say under my breath, the first hint of panic seeping into my ribs.
“This is… This is why I’ve been avoiding you, why I can’t tell you how I feel.”Her voice is softer now.When she steadies herself and moves her hand away from her chest, a wispy ribbon of red protrudes from her skin.
“Oh my gods.It happens that fast?”I say, all the rage seeping out of me and leaving me with a cold coil in my gut.
“All it takes is one slip, one truth told to you in an offhand comment, and I lose everything.”
“I guess, I always thought… So… this really isn’t going anywhere?”I exhale, my throat thick, a hard lump making it tricky to swallow.
She doesn’t respond to that.What would be the point?
“What happened to believing in free will?In our ability to change our future?I thought I was the pessimist?”
She doesn’t respond to that either, and it makes my blood boil in my veins, my stomach swirl with hot thoughts and a crippling pain that shoots between my ribs.
The red smoky magic slides back into her chest and seals itself inside her crystalline heart.I bite the inside of my cheek until I taste copper, the searing heat and spike of pain calming me and grounding me.It’s the only thing that stops me from clawing my chest open, ripping my heart out from between my ribs and stamping all over it.
What hurts the most is understanding what she’s thinking: why bother giving your heart to someone when you know they’ll be dead in a few weeks?
My eyes sting.
I move away from her.I don’t want to be near her.All of this was for nothing.Because one way or another, we’re not meant to be together.Be it because I’ll leave her powerless or because her father will come for my soul.
That thought makes me angrier than it has any right to.
Bastien rounds the corner, giving me something else to focus on.“We need the safest of safe rooms, ones where the exterior walls have had their Veil fabric reinforced.Plus, a room with wards on the walls, so that whatever we resurrect can’t go any further than the room we’re in,” he says.
If we were just resurrecting a basic shade or reanimating animals, it wouldn’t matter so much.But bringing a desiccating shade back to Finis is dangerous as fuck, especially when it’s a family member.
“And just to be absolutely clear, you’re all sure there’s no one else we could find?”Bastien asks.
“I mean, sure, there’s a girl I know from a different city who knows literally everyone, but she got married recently so I suspect she’s busy,” I say.
He pouts at me and continues pacing up and down and around us in circles until I grab him by the wrist and hold his hand, forcing him to stay by my side.
“You’re doing my head in,” I mumble.
