Page 42 of The Deathless One
“Jessamine, we don’t have time for these theoreticals.”
“I just want to know the answer.”
“I think it’s much more likely that I’m slowly regaining my form as I remember what I used to be,” he replied offhandedly. “The longer I spend time in this realm, the more I remember myself.”
“There’s a statue of you in the parlor.”
“A statue that was a version of me, not the same one that will eventually be resurrected. I never know who I will be or what I will look like.” He sounded cross as he stopped on the other side of the island and slammed his hands down onto the surface.
She jumped at the loud bang, and even he seemed to look down at his hands in surprise. A thick clay vase toppled over, fell off the table, and rolled onto the floor. “How did you do that?” she asked.
“I don’t know.” He shook his head before looking back at her. “You are trying to distract me.”
“I’m the one who summoned you!”
Senseless, arrogant god. She’d had a reason for summoning him, and now she had no idea why she’d done it. Her mind had been so scattered today as she tried to get all the pieces together to move forward. She had clothing, she could figure out what to do with herself now. And he was right. They had to find Benji and force him to tell them who’d convinced him to betray her family, who was behind the plot to seize the castle.
“I need to learn more magic before I feel comfortable finding Benji,” she finally said. “I called you here because I found another spell book that I think might be useful in our research. It said that sometimes a gravesinger’s magic can be blocked, and if you can figure out where the block—”
“Why are you preventing us from going to this boy? Are you afraid of what we might find?”
A spike of anxiety coiled through her chest. “No.”
“I can see that in both your magic and in this, you are trying to slow down the process. Why is that, princess?”
“I won’t run blind into a situation that feels a bit like you’re manipulating me. I know nothing about you, only that at this moment, you can only touch me and Sybil.” She took a deep breath. “And the table, it seems. Everything is so far out of my realm of understanding, I don’t want to make the wrong choice.”
He stared at her, and she stared at him, and she wondered just how wrong she was to hold him back. He seemed so confident in everything he did. She wished she had an ounce of that confidence. Especially when he cocked his head to the side and she swore she could feel his eyes on her like a physical touch.
Curling her fingers in the hem of her cream-colored skirt, she told herself not to try to decipher if he was looking at what she wore. It wasn’t one of the skirts they had bought. Mostly she’d gotten pants in that store. But this was one of Sybil’s, and it was rather pretty, even if there were a few colorful patches over her knees and one large one over the thigh where the fabric had torn.
The Deathless One rounded the island, turned her to face him, and took a seat on the stool right in front of her. He sat with his knees on either side of hers, trapping her legs between his and making it so she couldn’t look anywhere but at him. Suddenly, he was everywhere. The smell of him filled her nose with the sharp shock of mint and citrus as her gaze filled with black.
But it wasn’t entirely darkness anymore, was it? She could see that his pants were made of the finest cotton she’d ever seen. They weren’t leather as she’d imagined. They looked comfortable, even with the fine starched lines in them. If she squinted her eyes and tried to see through him, she swore she could also see the toe of a leather boot.
“Jessamine.”
His sharp tone didn’t make her stop looking at him. It was easier to focus on his shape than it was to focus on the tumultuous thoughts rumbling around in her head. Like, she should touch him. She could drag her finger down the pants to see if they felt real. No, she would just look athim instead. At the way his thighs bunched when he leaned forward and how there was the faint outline of a hand resting on his right leg.
“Nightmare.” He said the word so softly it made her squeeze her eyes shut. “Benji is the key to everything.”
“He’s the key to nothing. All he did was hold the gate open. What makes you think he knows more than a when and where?”
“Intuition. And he has something of mine that I need you to take back.”
“He has something of yours?”
At his silence, fear bloomed.
His honeyed words were so pretty, and she wanted to believe he was here to help her. But he was the Deathless One, a god with no love or ability to think about anyone other than himself. He was a dangerous creature who made deals with witches and consumed them in return.
So she whispered behind the safety of her closed eyes. “I’m afraid you’re trying to control me.”
“I’m trying tosaveyou.”
Two warm hands landed on her knees. She could feel the heat of them through the fabric of her skirt, and quickly realized one of the patches wasn’t stitched closed. Once again, she could feel his calloused fingertips against her skin. But this time, she swore the scars felt like symbols etched into the pads when he touched her.
The heavy weight of his grip was more comforting than any words he could have said. He squeezed her knees, and he and Jessamine both let out matching gasps. She could feel him. Not just the sensation of him, or the strange warmth when he’d undone her laces in the shop.
