Page 11 of Left Hand of the Divine
A sad smile curled his mouth. “Yes. Many times, but that was a lifetime ago. And once, fairly recently, but that was a very short interaction.”
There was such longing in his eyes as he watched me, and I wished I knew who he was. I wished I knew why he looked at me like that—with desperation and hope.
“When I was here before, did I take the Diadem?”
He nodded solemnly. “You looked a little different.”
“Did I?”
“Yes. Your hair was not as vibrant; it was more like the colour of the first rays of a sunrise.”
Wow, this guy was poetic. And handsome. And I was totally keeping him. Would it be wrong of me to lick him?
And he knew something of my past. A million questions flew through my mind. Why was I in the Vault? Who sent me? Why did I take the Diadem? What was myname?
“It has been a long time since I’ve seen a sunrise,” he said, as he gazed up towards the ceiling, pulling my spiralling mind back into the room. “Since I’ve seen anything other than shadows and monsters, in fact.”
I didn’t get a sense of evil from him. His power was there, but it felt muted, like it was locked in a box. I suppose that was part of his prison as much as the marble walls were. Gods, my heart was breaking for this guy.
That was it. I was going to free him. “You’re coming withme.”
He gave me a sad smile. “I wish it were that easy.”
“Don’t you know the way out?”
He scoffed and tucked his hands into the pockets of his trousers. “Of course I do, but that doesn’t mean it’s as simple as walking out the back door.”
“Um, it doesn’t?”
He laughed, a low dark rasp, and my insides melted. Why did this guy have such an effect on me? It was mad; that’s what it was. My body instantly reacted to everything about him. Was this fate? Or magic? There had to be a reason why I felt connected to him, why part of me was irrevocably tied to him. My mind knew it was madness, but my gut was telling me that there was something more at play here. And if there is one thing I’d learnt to trust when having no memories of my previous life, it was my gut. It had yet to steer me wrong.
“No,Asteri, but with the help of the others, we might just manage.” He closed the distance between us, and I was hit with the scent of him. All dark and woodsy, a promise of something delicious and decadent. He brushed a finger across my cheekbone with a whisper of a caress. “But be warned, this place is designed to keep in all the darkest things in the universe. If you set the Keeper free, then there will be no one here to guard them.”
Which meant all those dark things would be free to escape as well. Was I really going to risk all that suffering and turmoil for one man?
What if I could find another Keeper? Someone else to take his place?
“It is alright,” he said, with that damn sad smile that tugged at my heartstrings. “I earned this punishment. I will see it to its bitter end.”
I grabbed his hand, and electricity zapped up the nerves in my forearm. “Did you feel that?”
“Yes,” he replied a little breathlessly, a small smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “I must admit, this is the first time I have felt much of anything.”
If I wasn’t already committed to freeing him, that would have tipped the scales. “Take me to the others, and let’s make a plan to get out of here.”
“As you wish.”
Chapter Four
Thane
The Hounds were frantic, and I sensed their beasts pushing against their human shell. I understood why. We were in the belly of the main Vault, having given up trying to get through the door which we had entered by. I figured that there must be another way out and persuaded the rest of the men to follow me deeper into the maze. Uncertainty prickled at my skin the deeper we went, and I wasn’t one to suffer regret, but there was a first time for everything.
Magnus was doing his best to keep the twins calm whilst Atticus kept provoking them with little snappish jibes. I was half tempted to kill the four of them just for a moment's peace. I wouldn’t, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t tempted.
“We’re lost,” Atticus said as we paused at yet another collection of artefacts. They seemed to be catalogued by the type of creature they were associated with and then subdivided by type of object. We’d been through a chamber of witchcraft, then a lesser demonone. The chamber of angels had been interesting, but we seemed to have stumbled upon one pertaining to the Gods.
“We are not lost, Atticus. Lost implies that we had a direction to travel in in the first place,” I stated. “We are simply here.”
