With only one destination in mind, Emmery stalked past him, up the stairs, and down the hall. Aera followed at her heels and nosed the back of her calf. “Is his bedroom locked?” she asked.
“I don’t think so.” Brennen followed, his steps punctuated by the click of his nails on the marble. “You seem frantic, princess. Are you alright? I thought you wanted to chop off his unmentionables and watch them burn.”
“I can’t say it hasn’t been on the top of my mind, but—shit, it’s hard to explain. I’ll tell you later. I need to get my book first.” Emmery reached Dez’s room and threw open the door, praying he hadn’t moved it. And when she caught sight of the leather cover, her heart swelled.
She crossed the room and seized the book, then flipped past his note still tucked inside, to the dedication.
It wasn’t exact by any means. In fact, what Reize had said was so much more powerful.
Her heart slowed as she withdrew the letter he’d written, followed by a whole stack of papers covered in the handwriting etched into her heart. Seems he’d made notes,copiousnotes, written quotes, and marked passages.
Emmery turned to the door and her damn toe caught on something again. She hissed a curse and bent to pick up yet another book she’d checked out months ago, a story with a heavy romance plot, surely something Dez wouldn’t be interested in.But as she picked it up, it fell open and she noticed, in the margins and underlined through the book, he had noted his thoughts. And there, on the page, was her name.
Aera yipped and darted beneath the bed skirt. With a sigh, Emmery lifted the fabric, but when she did, she lost her breath entirely.
There were nearly fifty books tucked under his bed.
Allherbooks. Every single one she’d read from his library. Like some crazed woman, she pulled them out one by one and found them all dogeared and annotated, like the dirty book he’d replaced.
Tears sprang to her eyes. She quivered as everything she had ever known shook loose. She clutched the book to her chest and sank to the ground.
She had an impossible choice, though her heart had already decided. And she would follow its guide.
When Brennen poked his head in the door and spotted her, she turned to him, still hugging the book as if it were the last piece of her heart, the final sliver to make her whole. “Where is he?”
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
VESPER
Vesper spat blood. Each time after the beast’s fist connected with his face, he counted his teeth with his tongue. By some miracle none had fallen out, though blood leaked from his crooked nose.
“Can you swing the other way?” he asked, the words hoarse and pushed between swollen lips. Thick, metallic saliva pooled in his mouth. “If you’re going to break my nose again, save me the trouble of straightening it later. Otherwise my face just won’t look right.” He leaned to the side and spat again, but only red, stringy drool dripped from his mouth.
The creature stared at him, or at least he thought it did since vines consumed the entirety of its eye sockets. Its growl rumbled in the chamber before it shrieked like some feral rodent.
He winced as the high pitch stabbed his ears. “I’ll take that as a soft no.”
The creature struck him again and knocked his head to the side. Blood sprayed the nearby brick wall. Acute pain tunneled his vision, and his consciousness wavered, but he summoned all his strength not to let the creature see what being locked in that fucking dungeon with no food or water or, well,anythinghad reduced him to.
He hadn’t seen Kyrith or his friends since he’d woken up, and he didn't have a clue where he was. Sharp pain lanced through Vesper’s scalp as the creature dragged him by his hair and the chair he was tied to screeched across the floor, reverberating through his bones. It cinched the chains tighter before it tossed him back into that fucking cell that had been his home for the last … week? Honestly, he’d lost track.
He tried to move his arm. Couldn’t. His dislocated shoulder was numb aside from the usual tingling. His nerves screamed in protest at the beyond swollen joint. It wouldn’t pop back in, and, really, if it did reset they would just rip it back out.
“Same time tomorrow?” he called out to the creature as it skulked from the room on tangled limbs. It didn’t turn back. How bloody insulting.
They wanted information. And it was information he would rather tear off his arm altogether than give to them. But not the one Kyrith had painted. That was the only thing that held him together some nights. He would trace the design with his eyes in the low lamplight to try to sink back into that moment. To be anywhere else.
Especially because every time he closed his eyes, he saw Nef’s bloody, mangled face, and it made him want to die too. And he couldn’t let himself go there. Not now. Not here.
He had taken so many smacks to the head that he wasn’t sure of much but he was sure of one thing: they wanted Emmery.
Vesper blinked his blurry eye. Even if the other one wasn’t swollen shut, he couldn’t make out much in the dark. He pressed his nose into his good shoulder to staunch the bloodflow and hissed as pain sang through his face. Definitely broken.
He slipped into unconsciousness and let the darkness blanket him in a brief moment of peace where the pain left him.
But after what felt like seconds, a sickening, high-pitched scream wrenched his eyes open. His ears strained as another blood curdling scream reached into his chest, seized his heart, and squeezed.
Because he knew that voice. But it was impossible. She was in Ellynne.