“I’m sorry you didn’t learn sooner that caring about anyone here only causes pain.”
I straightened.
His words struck me with such force that they left me reeling. This was what he thought. Why he kept to himself. It was probably why he couldn’t understand Hellas’s devotion to his sister long ago. And why he tried to have me sent home without Zosa.
Then there were so many times I caught him looking at me then tearing his eyes away. So many instances where he shifted conversations away from anything deeper than lighthearted banter. All because he’d been hurt and was afraid of being hurt again.
The cage had opened on six. I only noticed when Bel stormed off.
“Wait!”
More leaves drifted from the ceilings, splashing the carpet with pools of colored smoke. They tickled my ankles as I raced to keep up. When Bel reached his room, I rushed around and flung myself against his door.
“You’re wrong,” I blurted. “In Alastair’s office, I learned a suminaire’s artéfact is determined by their soul’s desire. Bel, I’ve seen your atlases. I remember the expression on your face when you moved the hotel that first night. And this—” I ran a nail along the chain that held his key. “The first time you saw le monde entier scratched into the front door’s black lacquer, it called out to you like it did to me, didn’t it?”
“Jani—” he started to protest.
“At first, I thought you were so arrogant, so awful,” I said, cutting him off. “But you’re good. You’re only afraid of getting too close to people because you think it’ll distract you from your goal of getting home. But if we void the contracts, you can have everything you want. Please, Bel, take me to Champilliers.”
“I don’t want everything,” he said, resolute, then pushed his door open, brushing past me.
But before he could get far, I took hold of his hand. “Your memories can’t be the only thing you want. There has to be something else.”
Just like in that doorless room, his eyes settled on my lips. “I think you should leave,” he said, his voice a little rough.
There was anger there, to be sure, but alongside it was something that flared inside me.
Reaching up, I touched his cheek, and his eyes squeezed shut. He looked so resigned. He’d been trapped here for years. Decades. He must have denied himself what he wanted countless times.
But so had I.
A surge of something bubbled up—the need to prove to him how much he could have, deserved to have.
“You should leave,” he repeated.
“You’re probably right,” I said, and pressed my lips to his.
A noise caught in Bel’s throat, a little gasp of surprise that soon melted into something else that made my toes curl.
I broke away to gaze up at him, amazed. “I was right. You do want this.”
“Would you just shut up?” he said, breathless.
“I had thought—” I started, until his mouth found mine again. His tongue parted my lips, and all words—all reason—floated out of reach. Without thinking, my fingers skimmed across his back, nails dragging along his ribs.
“Careful,” he whispered.
So I did it again.
He growled my name, and hooked his thumbs under me. Lifting me. Pressing me flush against a wall. No, not a wall. A book fell to the ground with an angry thump. I tore my mouth from his and glanced down. Verdanniere stood out in crisp black ink, but it might as well have been a different language entirely because I couldn’t make sense of it. I was too distracted by Bel’s hand as it slid under my skirt to smooth around my thigh, and his lips as they pressed kisses to the neckline of my dress, my collarbone. And stopped.
My back arched when he brushed a hand across my throat where Maman’s necklace had popped out from my dress collar. He buried his face in my neck and exhaled. Slowly, I slid down the bookcase, while his fingers grazed up my sides, causing my stomach to do that silly thing stomachs do.
I gasped when he fixed the sleeve of my dress. His eyes roamed over my face. Then lower. “It’s late. If I don’t go downstairs now, I’ll never make it,” he said seriously.
Warmth spread throughout every inch of me, and my tongue—my tongue tangled in my teeth, refusing to work. I nodded and he left to go change. Then I stood there, clumsy, my thoughts muddled and molten, attempting to make sense of everything, then only one thing: Bel was moving the hotel soon.
The map.
I ran over and ripped it from the pocket of the pants he’d tossed in the hall. When he returned, I pushed it into his hands and curled his fingers over, holding his palms tight to the paper, like I’d seen him do to the pages of the atlas. His lashes fluttered closed. I felt it, too: that tug of wrought iron and kiss of cool canals.