Page 50 of The Deathless One
“I didn’t think it would feel like… this.” Her hands were shaking, too, now. She couldn’t quite think right, other than to stare at them and realize she had done that. With her magic.
No, not her magic. His. The magic he had given her because she’d made a deal with a horrible god who had resurrected her for his ownpurposes. She wasn’t in her right mind. If she had been, she never would have hurt Benji. She wouldn’t have.
“Jessamine.” The dark voice had softened. So quiet that she almost didn’t hear her name as he whispered it. “Pick up the book in the trunk at the foot of his bed and go find Sybil.”
“I don’t know if I can walk.”
“You can walk because you must. Get going, Jessamine.”
She found her body moving of its own accord. She continued forward, her knees weak and wobbling. The book was exactly where he’d said it would be. A black leather-bound grimoire with etchings all over the cover. She held it to her heart, tucking it against her chest as she made her way down the rickety stairs.
Some part of her heard the creaking noises and the warning sounds of a building that was far too close to collapse, but she didn’t feel the spike of fear this time. All she could feel was a sense of numbness that should have made her nervous.
Sybil waited for her at the bottom of the stairs. The witch took one look at her, and her face crumpled into pity. “Oh, sweet thing. Come here.”
Safe beneath the arm of a witch, Jessamine was ashamed to admit she felt much better. Even as her heart turned brittle and thin as the first winter ice.
He worried that perhaps he had broken her. A tie between them had knotted a little tighter, though, and he no longer needed to wait to be summoned. Wherever she was, he could follow.
The first time he’d tried to find her after what happened with Benji, she’d slammed a door in his face. Which, considering the crumbling nature of their current home, only resulted in the door falling onto the floor straight through the shadow of his body. She’d glared at him before pointing to the exit.
The second time, she had ignored him, purposefully looking straight through him like he wasn’t there at all.
It was at this point that he realized perhaps he had pushed her too far. Which was silly, really. He hadn’t made her do anything that she hadn’t wanted to do.
The boy was venal, heartless, dangerous. This Benji had taken royal lives into his own hands and then crushed them in that weak, sweat-slicked grip. It wasn’t even an indirect attack. That young man had allowed infected people to walk into the castle and kill everyone who stood in their way. He was the reason Jessamine’s mother was dead.
She shouldwantto hurt him. Revenge tasted sweeter when your hands got dirty—how did she not see that?
By all the dead gods,hewas the consequence of her actions.
And it annoyed him that he was so upset about why she wouldn’t talk to him. He’d never wondered if the witches who served him actuallylikedhim. Liking him wasn’t required to perform magic, nor was it required for him to exist.
But he wanted this one to like him. He couldn’t explain why or how or what it was about her that made him care, but he did.
Maybe he was just getting too soft in his old age.
Blowing out a breath, he stood in front of her room again. Because the door was broken, she’d hung a sheet over the space and remained aloof. Even Sybil hadn’t gotten through to the young woman, who wandered the halls like a wraith.
The only living creature who walked in and out with impunity was the kitten he had conjured. He’d half a mind to tell the creature to do his bidding, but the one time he’d poked his head in, he had seen it resting on her chest, purring so loud he could see its entire body rattle.
But she’d been sleeping. And she hadn’t slept in days.
“Jessamine?” he called out, standing in front of her door like an awkward suitor, hoping for her attention. “Are you ready to talk?”
Nothing stirred on the other side of the curtain.
“It’s been nearly a week. I understand you’re feeling a certain amount of remorse after Benji, but you do realize we’re running out of time? The people who killed your mother are slipping through your fingers while you’re—”
He didn’t get a chance to finish that sentence.
The curtain whipped open and sunlight speared through him. It shattered his strange corporeal form for a few seconds before his magic realized she was there. He could feel his body solidifying, all that darkness pooling together and dragging into one body that felt… solid.
Actually solid.
He had a weight to him that pulled him toward the earth. And there was a sensation of clothing on his body, shoes on his feet.
Gods, the texture of clothing distracted him. That there was a heaviness against his skin when he wore it and that the boots on his feet made his toes jam against the tips uncomfortably.
