She swatted the lever to flush the toilet. Her arm fell back to the tile with a thud, but her disoriented dizzy state stole her ability to care. She wanted to crawl back in her bed, alone, and hide under the covers while she prayed for a merciful death.
He continued that calming rhythm against her back. “Tell me why.”
As Emmery hauled herself to her feet, Destonne hovered with his hands under her arms, ready to catch her. After she rinsed her mouth and washed the beaded sweat from her face, she braced her hands against the counter and contemplated. Would there be any harm in telling him? And hewasasking. For gods sake, he’d just held back her hair as she vomited, something she still couldn’t believe had happened. Maybe telling Destonne would help or maybe she was too tired to fight anymore. Maybe she needed to spill this from her festering soul to free her mind and release the confession into the world.
Or maybe she didn’t want to face this by herself and feel so damnaloneanymore.
Destonne followed while she dragged herself back to the bed and flopped down, her limbs impossibly heavy. A long breath escaped her as her head struck the pillow and she squeezed her eyes shut. Her empty stomach ached. He pulled the quilt tangled at her feet over her like he had for Soren.
Impossibly gentle, his finger brushed a damp lock of hair from her face. “Do I have to coax the answer out of you, Emmery?”
Her heart skidded at her name like a plea on his lips. Like he really wanted to know why she did this to herself, but she didn’t have a good explanation. So she said, “I have nightmares.”
She knew it was foolish to cry over the fears manufactured by her own mind, and drink herself into oblivion to find a few peaceful hours of sleep. It was stupid, weak, and reckless.
“I gathered as much.” Destonne looked her over in a way he never had before. “What sort of nightmares?” he asked, each word slow, carefully chosen.
People burning alive, their screams echoing in her ears, a city collapsing at her hands, the very scene she’d witnessed after tossing the Stone of Refraction into thekhaosflame. Losing Maela again and again, drowning then waking only to drown again. Her failing Vesper and him dying in her arms. Nathaniel’sbruising hands, the roughness in which he’d claim her, his friends taking turns. How she could never fight back.
Emmery shook her head as an answer.
Destonne nodded like he understood, as he formed his next response, shaping it into whatever he desired to gain from this night. “How long has this been happening?”
“Since my sister was murdered.” Emmery sloughed it off, though she felt like dying. ”It’s the only thing that calms me enough to sleep. Some days I—” She swallowed the shame. “I can’t move past it. Can’t get on with my day. But surely you have something like that.”
Destonne twisted his mouth to the side.
“A vice?”
He shrugged.
Come to think of it, when they’d had that dinner together, he’d poured a glass of wine but hadn’t touched it. “You don’t drink? I know you said you don’t partake in drugs, and you don’t like sweets either.”
“How very flattering of you to remember that about me.” The corner of his mouth pulled up ever so slightly. “No. I don’t have anything like that.”
A throbbing ache formed behind her eyes. “How do you cope, then?”
“I suppose … I don’t.” Another silence swelled in the dark room and they watched each other as his response drew them further apart. Clearly, he had self-control and she didn’t. How wonderful for him. She stifled the urge to laugh at her own misfortune.
He cleared his throat and continued, “I’m actually here because I couldn’t sleep. I felt guilty about earlier and came to apologize. It seems I’m doing that a lot these days.”
Unsure what to say, Emmery fiddled with a loose string on the quilt.
“I never wished to be unkind to you and I overstepped.” Destonne watched her fingers with keen interest. “I admit it’s too easy to get caught up with you sometimes. Teasing you. The way your cheeks burn and you—” He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I shouldn’t have done that. You have my sincerest apology.”
Baffled, Emmery managed to reply, “Thank you.”
A war battled in his eyes as he asked, “I have to ask, did you write what was in that binding?”
That caught her off guard. “I did.”
“It’s about his book right? But how you felt about it?”
Mortified, she bobbed her head in agreement.
Destonne worried his bottom lip with his teeth, and unable to look away, Emmery fixated on his mouth. Something came over her, maybe because he’d apologized, or maybe she could blame the darkness and seduction of night that swathed them, and how she didn’t want to feel so pathetically alone anymore. Either way, she stared.
As if he felt the tension too, he cleared his throat. “Does your Shade no longer visit your dreams?”