Page 56 of Deals & Dream Spells (The Charmed Leaf Legacy #2)

Chapter Twenty-Four

Mariselle slipped through her bedroom window, her movements as silent as she could manage despite the thundering of her heart. The cool night air clung to her skin as she carefully closed the glass pane behind her, fingers trembling so fiercely she nearly fumbled the latch.

She pressed her back against the wall, waiting for her pulse to settle, for her breath to even out, for the heat in her cheeks to subside. None of these things happened.

Her bedchamber was dark and empty. No Tilly waiting with a raised eyebrow and a knowing smile, ready to help her out of her gown and into a nightdress.

Mariselle had insisted her lady’s maid not wait up for her these past weeks, as her visits to Windsong Cottage stretched later and later into the night.

Instead, Tilly would artfully arrange pillows beneath the coverlet to create the illusion of a sleeping form before ensuring her parents had retired to their chambers and then seeking her own bed, leaving Mariselle free to slip in unnoticed.

She had never been more grateful for the solitude than tonight.

With unsteady steps, she crossed to the vanity and sank onto the cushioned stool, finally confronting her reflection in the silvered glass.

A stranger stared back at her—cheeks flushed, hair tumbling in wild disarray over her shoulders.

The tiny pegasus hairpin gleamed amid the waves, the only remaining anchor from her earlier, more composed self.

I promise to thoroughly impress you before this game is through.

It hadn’t been merely a game though. She’d known that from the moment Evryn had first pressed his lips to her skin.

His voice echoed in her mind, low and rough with desire, his words a whisper against her throat.

Her fingers rose unbidden to the spot where his lips had brushed, where she could still feel the ghost of his touch.

Tell me when to stop.

But she hadn’t wanted him to stop. That was the terrifying truth of it. If panic hadn’t overtaken her at the last moment, she would have let him continue. Would have pulled him closer. Would have surrendered completely to whatever lay between them.

She reached up and gently touched the pegasus hairpin, the delicate lumyrite wings cool beneath her fingertips. The gift he’d crafted with his own hands. For her.

“This is madness,” she whispered to her reflection. If she truly cared for him—if he truly cared for her —what did that mean for them? For this farce that was soon meant to come to a close?

Oh, darling …

A hundred ridiculous pet names, but darling … That was the one that was real. That was the one that slipped past her defenses and melted something inside her. And his voice—deep and quiet and ruinously husky. It had the power to undo her entirely.

She needed to speak to someone, needed to make sense of the chaos in her mind before it consumed her. Without another thought, she crossed to her bedside table and withdrew the small silver hand mirror.

“Petunia,” she whispered, pressing her palm flat against the glass.

The mirror’s surface rippled like disturbed water, then went dark. Mariselle waited, counting her heartbeats. When nothing happened, she pressed her palm to the glass again and began pacing the length of her room.

“Petunia,” she repeated, more insistent this time. “Wake up, Tunia, please. It’s urgent.”

The mirror remained dark for several more moments before flickering to life, revealing Petunia’s face, half-obscured by tangled hair and one cheek squashed against a lace-trimmed pillow.

Her eyes blinked blearily. “Mari?” she mumbled.

“Whaswrong? Someone better be dead for you to have woken me at this hour.”

“Tunia, I think …” Mariselle stopped pacing, her gaze focusing somewhere beyond the mirror, seeing again the liquid heat in Evryn’s gaze. “I think …”

Petunia rolled onto her back and moaned sleepily. “Could we perhaps continue this discussion at a more civilized hour when you’ve determined precisely what it is that you think ?”

Mariselle refocused on her cousin and took a breath. “I think I love him.”

Petunia blinked, sleep clearing from her expression. “Who?”

“Evryn.”

Petunia pushed herself up in a flurry of tangled hair. “You cannot be serious.”

“I’m entirely serious.”

“Oh, Mari, no!” She threw herself back onto her pillows with a groan. “I knew I should not have left the two of you alone there tonight. I could tell something was different.”

“I don’t know what to do,” Mariselle moaned, resuming her pacing.

“We’re supposed to end this entire charade soon, but now …

now I cannot stop thinking of him, and I want to be near him all the time, and I want to say things that will make him smile , and when he touches me, even just the slightest?—”

“Stop.” Petunia held up a hand. “You’ve clearly lost your mind. I suppose the kiss of the Rowanwood plague does that to a person.”

Mariselle gave her cousin a rueful smile. “There was no kiss. There was almost a kiss—and my entire body almost ignited in the process—but I left before anything more could happen.”

“Oh, thank goodness. Perhaps you still possess some sense.”

“But what am I to do? Our families … well, mine at least is determined that a Rowanwood-Brightcrest union shall never take place.”

“Mari …” Petunia sighed, shifted against her pillows, and tucked her hair behind one ear.

“You need to be sensible about this. Is it even real? I don’t want to hurt you by pointing this out, but Evryn is likely leading you on.

He has a reputation, remember? This is probably nothing more than a game to him.

He’s spent years perfecting the art of charming women into losing their composure. You’re just another conquest. ”

Mariselle slowly shook her head. “I don’t believe that’s true.

I might have agreed with you a few weeks ago, but now …

” She sighed dreamily as she lowered herself to the edge of her bed.

“You haven’t seen how he is when we’re alone.

How different he is. So … attentive, thoughtful, sincere.

Especially in my dream. You know how difficult it is to be anything but honest in a shared dreamscape. ”

Petunia shoved herself upright again, eyes widening in complete horror. “Mariselle Brightcrest! You dream shared with him?”

“It wasn’t intentional!”

“That’s even worse!” Petunia gasped. “It happened when you didn’t even intend it to? It’s … it’s … that means you didn’t even realize how much you’ve allowed yourself to trust him. Mari, you must have dropped your guard entirely with him.”

“Is that so bad?” Mariselle asked in a small voice.

“Yes! He’s a Rowanwood! You need to stop and think rationally about all of this instead of gallivanting through your subconscious with the enemy.”

“But he’s not the enemy anymore,” Mariselle whispered. “He truly isn’t. And after spending some time with his family, I don’t believe any of them are.”

Petunia groaned dramatically and flopped back onto her pillows, one arm flung across her forehead. “You’re hopeless.”

Mariselle sighed, a soft, dreamy sound, and mirrored her cousin’s action, falling back onto her own bed with one hand over her heart. “I know.”

“Completely, utterly, beyond all reasonable salvation,” Petunia continued.

“Mmm,” Mariselle hummed in absent agreement, her gaze fixed on nothing as she held the mirror loosely at her side while replaying the feeling of Evryn’s fingers threading through her hair.

“You’re not going to get over this, are you?”

Mariselle rolled onto her stomach and propped herself up on one elbow as she gazed into the mirror. “I don’t think one can just get over love, Tunia,” Mariselle replied softly.

“Your parents shall expire on the spot when you tell them you wish to go through with this,” Petunia pointed out. “Their melodrama will echo through the ages.”

“Perhaps they’ll come around,” Mariselle suggested, though her voice lacked conviction. “Once they see Dreamland, once they understand what Evryn and I have accomplished together …”

She stared past the mirror, reliving the sensation of his fingers sliding between hers. Remembering how tightly she’d held onto him, how his touch made her feel secure and safe in a way she’d rarely known.

Anticipation tightened inside her. “Oh, Tunia, I don’t know how I am to last until I can see him again tomorrow. The time feels as though it’s stretching endlessly before me.”

“Tragic indeed. I shall alert the gossip birds to spread the news: Lady slowly perishes of impatience.”

Mariselle ignored her. “And when I do see him, what then? What am I to say? Oh, Tunia, it’s the most maddening conundrum. I long to be near him, and yet I haven’t the faintest idea what I’ll say once I am.”

Petunia threw an arm over her eyes and yawned. “You could ask him about his conversational muscles,” she mumbled.

“Petunia! That isn’t remotely helpful.”

“Why? He’s clearly the sort to possess conversational muscles.”

“No, dear cousin, he possesses muscles that are very much made for lifting things.” Mariselle’s skin flushed at the memory of Evryn helping her down over the Dreamland ruins, his shoulders broad and firm beneath her hands. “I know because I have … ah … been lifted.”

Petunia lowered her arm, brows shooting upward.

“Over the Dreamland ruins!” Mariselle added hastily, her face burning.

“Yes, that definitely sounded like what you meant.”

“Petunia Dawndale!”

“Mariselle Brightcrest!”

Mariselle started laughing. “What now? Are we simply stating each other’s names until?—”

She froze, a sound reaching her ears from somewhere outside her room. Footsteps. Muffled voices.