Page 87 of Harbinger

“They don’t want me.” I reach into my pocket and pull out the now-crumpled letter. Unfolding it, I hand it to him. “I know what I chose, but …”

I’m too embarrassed to tell him about the accompanying package.

His lips press into a thin line as he reads it. Then he wads it up and throws it into the ocean below. I whip around like I can catch it.

“Let the past be in the past,” he says quietly but firmly.

I spin toward him. “That’s easy for you to say.”

He still has an estate, a title, a reputation. I don’t even have a shitty letter from the person I thought was my best friend.

“No, it’s not.” His voice is strained. He lifts his hand toward me and hesitates like he might stop himself, then tucks a strand of my hair back. My breath snags as his fingertip traces the shell of my ear, and I have to fight the urge to press my cheek against his palm. “Go to bed. Things will look different in the morning.”

But right now, I’m seeing things clearly. Or maybe I’m just seeing him clearly. We’re both alone because of the choices we’ve made, only some of which we’ve confessed. But maybe we’re not keeping secrets from each other. Maybe we’re just keeping them from ourselves. Maybe that’s why we’re out here in the middle of the night together—so those secrets can’t haunt us in the dark.

I reach for his hand and slip mine through it. “What if I don’t want to go to bed?”

It’s the wine talking again, but it has a point.

Bishop closes his eyes for a second, and when he opens them again, the blue of his irises looks like sparkling starlight. “Go to bed.”

Not an order. A plea.

But still a blow to my ego. “Because you’re a bishop? Because you’re above … the rest of us?”

“A bishop is still a man. We aren’t above. We’re apart,” he explains quietly, but his thumb brushes the back of my hand, stoking the fire slowly building inside me. “The title reminds us of our duty even when we’re surrounded by the temptation to forget it.”

“And that’s what I am—your duty.” I start to pull away, but he doesn’t let me go.

“No,” he whispers, finally releasing me, “you’re my temptation.”

The confession nearly knocks the air out of my lungs. My pulse stutters, then races forward, hammering in the middle of my throat. I can’t deny that I’ve wondered about the rest of him. About what he could do with that warrior’s body. About how that silver-blond hair would feel between my fingers or, better yet, between my legs.

“Go to bed, Arden,” he whispers again.

Humiliation floods through me, jolting me from the wine’s haze, and I inhale sharply. At the sound, his gaze drops to my mouth. It lingers there for a heartbeat that stretches until it aches. He isn’t noble. He’s fucking scared. Scared of me. Or whatever is happening between us.

That makes the decision for me. It is time to go to bed.

“You don’t get to call me a temptation and pretend that’s noble,” I say quietly as I shrug off his coat and toss it at him. “That’s just dressing up fear and calling it virtue.”

“Arden—”

But I’m already walking away. He’s made his choice. There’s no time to question mine. “Sleep well, Bishop,” I say, flipping him off over my shoulder as I add, “with your ghosts.”

EIGHTEEN

Iwake with a headache so precise, it feels like someone’s drilled a hole in my skull.

The only thing louder than my pulse is the patter of rain dripping from eaves and windowsills. For a minute, I lie there, trying to decide if I’m alive or being tortured in the fifth ring of hell—the one reserved for gluttons. Or maybe I’m in the third, because I’m pretty sure I wanted to fuck Bishop last night.

Not my finest hour.

The memory chases me out of bed. I dress, avoiding the clock and the mirror. I don’t want to know what time it is, and I’m too mad to look at myself. But there’s a mug of coffee already poured and cooling on the table by the time I step into the kitchen. The first sip is enough to convince me that I’m alive. The second is enough to make me wish I wasn’t.

Lenora is gone, but her touch is everywhere—dough rising under a towel, one loaf of bread already cooling on the rack, a to-do list poking out of a novel like a bookmark.

I pick it up, another fuzzy memory of last night returning: Bishop taking a book from me because I touched its cover. Because I traced its freaking title.