Page 87 of This Dark Descent
She’d fallen asleep in Damien’s bed—she didn’t remember getting up, didn’t remember walking out here. Taking a slow, controlled breath, she looked down at her nightdress.
No blood.
Relief swept through her. She checked the bottoms of her feet and found them clean. It seemed she hadn’t wandered from the house.
Then her hand went to her neck—her Saba’s necklace was gone. She spun, spotting it in a pool of moonlight on the floor by the bed. Had it come off in her sleep?
What do you want?she demanded of the voice, but only silence returned.
She went to the desk, where the Racari lay as if waiting for her. She ran her fingers along the leather cover, and the book pulled at her.Come come come, it seemed to whisper. She felt herself tipping forward, as if she might slip beneath the pages and curl up there, content with paper and ink and words that made magic.
No.
Ari seized the book and flung it across the room. It crashed into a lamp, sending it shattering against the floor.
“Arielle?” Damien’s voice sounded far away. She clung to it, letting it draw her back up like water drawn from a well. He was in the doorway, wearing only a pair of trousers. Flashes of memory coursed through her: skin against skin, his gentle hands, words whispered on a breath. She’d never been with someone before him, and she did not regret her choice.
“The storm woke me,” she said without thinking.
Damien looked from her to the lamp, then approached the hearth to stoke the fire back to life. The moonlight played silver across the smooth olive skin of his back, and the urge to run her fingers down it rolled through her.
She sat on the chaise, and Damien joined her once he had the fire going. His arm curled about her shoulders, and she let him pull her close, listening to the sound of his heartbeat in his chest.
“I’m sorry about the lamp.”
“I don’t care about the lamp,” he replied. “I do care why you broke it, though.”
Her jaw set. How could she explain when she barely understood it herself? She both loved her magic and feared it. Felt enthralled by it and furious at it. It made her strong even as it unraveled her. She might not know what was happening to her, but she knew it had to do with that book.
It felt like it was taking control of her.
“I was angry,” she said softly. It felt like a lie. It felt like the truth. It encompassed none of what she felt and all of it at once, and it had taken her so very, very long to understand.
She was angry.
Angry at her family for how they’d kept her isolated for her entire life. Angry at the secrets they kept. She was angry at herself for what she’d done, angry that she’d fled. She was angry because she was scared, and because she was not. Angry that she didn’t understand, and that even as she pulled more power from the book, it pulled from her. Because on some fundamental level, she knew that was what was happening, and yet she could not bring herself to stop.
“I’m angry,” she said again. “And I don’t want to be.”
“Why not?”
She didn’t know how to answer that. All her life, her parents had told her never to draw attention to herself. Never to let her emotions get the best of her, lest she catch someone’s eye. She understood now that this was what they had been afraid of, that somehow, they’d known.
“Because it feels like losing control,” she said at last, sitting up so that she could see his face.
Damien was quiet, one corner of his lips turning in a way she’d come to find endearing. It meant he was thinking about something that had his undivided attention.
“Rezek Kelbra was once my closest friend,” he said at last.
That wasn’t what she’d been expecting. Rezek hardly seemed the type to make friends, and Damien was no socialite.
“We met after my family became a noble house,” he continued. “Theother houses scorned us, the Kelbras included. We earned our position the same as any of them, but they still treated us as if we’d stolen it. But Rezek was kind to me. Neither of us quite fit in perfectly among our families, and we both had complicated relationships with our older brothers. And Rezek hasn’t always been so… vicious.”
It was difficult to imagine. From what Mikira had said, Rezek seemed to delight in his cruelty and control over other people’s lives.
“Something changed when I was thirteen. His family’s Ascension began, and Rezek knew he had no chance of winning. That he is not the son Eradas Kelbra wanted is the worst-kept secret in Veradell. His brother was the golden boy; Rezek was a problem.” Damien tilted back his head, staring out at the waning storm. “Their challenge was to deal the greatest blow to another house.”
The same challenge his father had set.
