Adrian took a few steps forward before he sat and lay on this back, hands behind his head.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“How else do you stargaze?”
I tried not to smile and lingered on my feet for a few seconds longer before joining him. We were quiet, and while I tried to focus on the sky, it was hard with Adrian lying beside me. A warm tension grew between us, and I fought to keep myself from touching him. If I did, it wouldn’t be fair.
I was not going to live for long.
“I know what you want,” I whispered.
“What do I want?” he asked.
I took a breath, intending to tell him that nothing could happen between us—that it would end far faster than it began. I never fought the future, but I fought it with him because I knew that if we came together, we would only ruin the world.
But when I looked at him, no words left my mouth, and I understood that we were inevitable. Slowly, he kissed me.
For Adrian, that was our first night together, the start of something wild and passionate—the promise of a future he might build separate from the horror of his work as Dragos’s guard.
For me, I knew I had taken the first step toward my impending death.
Two hundred years later, he had brought me here for the first time as Isolde to witness the fires lit across Revekka.
The night High Coven was murdered, the world looked just like this, he’d said. Then, those words had hardly fazed me. Now, they twisted through me, a thousand knives in my skin.
I thought he’d hoped it would awaken some part of me, but I had only pitied his quest for vengeance.
The roof was snowy and slippery, and the air was so cold, it stole my breath as I moved to the edge and looked down on Revekka. As before, fires burned across the land, but they were no longer isolated pyres; they surrounded each village, large circles of fire that would hopefully keep monsters at bay, though they had done little to keep the aufhockers from Cel Ceredi.
But maybe I could…if I could force myself to change.
I closed my eyes and spread my arms wide, focusing on the part of me that had not felt the same since the night I changed. It was a jumble of thorns, a chaotic mix of feelings I had not been able to confront but needed to untangle, and I knew, at the center of it all, was anger.
Anger that I had not had control.
It had started from the moment I drew my first breath and my mother died and only continued when Adrian walked into my life. From the beginning, I’d had no command over my body, which responded to him like it knew him, but once I came to love him, I’d only ever assumed I’d be the same kind of monster as him.
I was angry because I had once been able to see the future, and now I could barely navigate the present without coming away bloody and broken and bruised.
I felt my resistance give a little, and as I began to relax, an arm came around my waist. I stumbled as my back settled against Adrian’s chest. His other arm crossed over my body, and he held me tight, his face pressed into the hollow of my neck.
It was an apology and I reveled in it.
We stayed like that for a while, silent and still. I was the first to move, turning in Adrian’s arms to face him.
“I have something to show you,” I said.
“I hope it is a good surprise,” he said, smiling.
“I never promised a surprise,” I said. “Or that it would be good.”
“Quite the pessimist, aren’t we?”
I smiled and led him inside, though I could not help feeling slightly nervous at the idea of showing him the library full of spell books. I knew Adrian was not opposed to magic, but that was before Ana and I had made a plan to contain the crimson mist.
“You are anxious,” he said as we returned through the once-mirrored hall.
“Are you reading my mind?” I asked.
“Should I?” he asked.
“I don’t like this room,” I said, which was true, though it was not currently the source of my unease. Adrian said nothing, only held my hand tighter.
He did not question me when I led him to the former sanctuary, when I reached for a torch on the wall, or as I climbed onto the altar and squeezed into the narrow passage where the door to the library was hidden.
I did not prepare him as I led him into the darkness. I felt dizzy as we made our way down the floating stairs.
Adrian placed a hand on my shoulder, another on my waist.
“Wait just a moment,” he said, his breath tickling my ear, and then he chuckled. “Breathe, Sparrow.”
I exhaled slowly and deliberately, and when I took another breath, I inhaled Adrian’s scent. He remained close, his presence a tangible thing that made me feel safe as we continued down the stairs to the small library.
I faced him but found his expression placid, not at all the surprise I’d imagined.
“I wondered when you would find this place,” he said.
I blinked, shocked. “You knew this existed?”
He smiled faintly. “I did.”
“Why did you not tell me?” I seethed.
“Because you were not ready,” he said.
“Is that for you to decide?”
“When did you ever tell me you were interested in magic?” he countered. “I have only heard about how you do not have any and your fear that I will not love you without it.”
I glared.
“Does this mean you have warmed to the idea of learning magic?”
“We do not have a choice,” I said, still frustrated. “Can you battle magic?”
“You know the answer,” he said, unamused. “How did you find it?”
“Ana brought me here,” I said. He did not seem surprised by that either. “Were you aware that she has been practicing magic?”
“I wasn’t…unaware,” he said. “But I never told her I knew.”
“What else do you know that I should also know?”
He raised a brow. “I could say the same for you. Did you not find all this out and keep it secret?”
“I am telling you now,” I said. “As I always intended.”
“I could say the same.”
We stared at one another in tense silence.
“You never told Ana you knew of this place either?”
“No,” he said. “But she is watchful.”
I thought it odd that he did not say curious instead.
“Do you trust her?” I asked.
“To an extent.”
“And what extent is that?”
“Ana has her own agenda,” Adrian said. “It does not always align with mine.”
“Are you worried she is working with Ravena?”
The thought had crossed my mind in the direct aftermath of Ravena’s attack, but that had only been because I was surprised by Ana’s magic. Since then, I had come to realize that she was only curious. Besides, she had been adamant about not being used as a weapon, and any alliance with Ravena would make her just that.
“No, even if she had betrayed us before, her loyalty would have shifted after Isla’s death.”
“And that does not concern you?”
“Not as long as she remains useful,” he said.
There was that word again—useful.
“You do not like my answer,” he said.
“I cannot easily forgive betrayal no matter how useful someone seems.”