Page 20 of The Deathless One (The Gravesinger #1)

She couldn’t see ! What had that monster done to her?

She knew better than to make deals with creatures like him.

She knew he would trick her, try to control her, do something that would ruin all this.

And when he whispered in her ear that all magic had a price, she realized she had known that, too.

Though he had tricked her, all of this was her fault.

If she had known he would take her eyes in return for seeing the past, she would have figured something else out.

But then she felt him touch her shoulders, and all the world fell away.

Suddenly she tumbled through her past, seeing the long days she’d been on the streets trying to pull herself together.

The sewer. The fall. The wedding, the moment she stood in her laboratory and wondered if she was making a horrible mistake.

“Stop,” she croaked, realizing that at least in her memories she could still see. “Stop, right there.”

There it was, the image of herself in the lab and Callum standing in the doorway. She stood to the side of herself, as though she’d just stepped out of her own body and could waltz around the room.

Eerily, everything else remained frozen. She could see Callum’s foot halfway lifted to stomp on the rat. The bubbles in the glass beakers stayed halfway up the necks, and if she squinted hard, she could even see smoke rising from the candles and the flames that no longer flickered.

It was equally strange and exhilarating. She had gone back in time, with everything else frozen around her. She walked to the door, then peered around Callum into a black hallway. Like someone had set up a diorama of what she could remember, and nothing else existed beyond it.

“How… strange,” she muttered, walking back into the room. “This is my memory?”

She didn’t know who she was asking. Certainly not the shadowy figure standing in front of her books. She couldn’t even tell if he was looking at her, although she realized he wasn’t when a dark chuckle filled the room, followed by the soft scrape of his boots as he turned.

“So it’s true you were already researching witchcraft long before you came to me?” His featureless face turned, as if looking at her, before he pointed out her books. “Some of these are quite wicked.”

She lunged forward as he pulled down a particularly devious spell book on sex magic. Grabbing it out of his hands, she glowered at him while putting it back in its place. “Keep your sticky fingers to yourself.”

“Why should I do that? Some of these books you don’t remember at all.” His dark finger trailed over a few of the titles that had only the vague impression of a name. “But you remember this one all too clearly.”

Cheeks flaming bright red, she ground her teeth together before replying, “Can we please get back to my memories?”

“We are in your memories. If you were interested in carnal magic, you should have told me.” He leaned closer, and she suddenly had the distinct realization that he smelled strongly of citrus and mint. “I would be most interested in teaching you that kind of magic.”

Planting her hands hard on his chest, and trying to ignore the muscles that flexed underneath his palm, she gave him a quick shove. At least that created a little more space between them, even if she couldn’t take her eyes off him.

He wasn’t quite the rough charcoal sketch that she was used to. At least not here. There was more of a form to him, a shape that wasn’t what she had expected. Tall, yes. But so very lean.

“I can see you better in this space,” she murmured, furrowing her brows in confusion. “You’re smaller than I thought you’d be.”

He reared back from her. “Not words men usually like to hear.”

“Not… It’s just your hands. You have really big hands. I thought…” She shrugged. “I thought you’d be larger, that’s all.”

“I don’t know whether to be insulted or flattered.”

“That you’re smaller than I thought?” She started toward the door. “Take that however you will, Deathless One.”

“I don’t appreciate the sass, nightmare.”

Trying hard to smother her smile, she stood in front of the door and waved at him. “It needs to go further. To the wedding.”

She could feel his gaze on the back of her head. But time started moving again, shifting and pushing them through the halls, and suddenly she was at the altar, standing in front of Leon as he glared down at her.

“Stop,” she said, her heart in her throat.

She knew this moment. She knew without having to hear what he was saying that Leon was asking about her witchcraft. He only asked if she was still researching black magic, but she knew that he was really asking if there were still grotesque things in her lab and if she… she…

A different memory suddenly flashed in front of this one. Leon gripped her biceps so tightly that she’d had a ring of dark bruises around it. He’d asked her about the magic then, too. He’d wanted to know the answer, and when she refused to tell him, he’d grabbed her so hard she’d cried out.

That was when she’d seen the passion in his eyes. He’d never looked at her with anything other than apathy, but in that moment, her pain had made desire burn through his core.

“Jessamine.” The voice merged with Leon’s. But that voice was more terrifying than Leon’s, wasn’t it?

There was the fear she’d felt when she had seen the desire in Leon’s eyes, but then there was another kind of fear entirely. One that crawled up from inside her very being and whispered that she stood before a predator and that she needed to run… run… run…

“Jessamine,” the voice said again, and this time she blinked to see a dark figure before her. A figure who, if she squinted hard enough, was wearing her eyes.

“What?” she croaked.

“Oh, good, I didn’t break you.” He stepped back from her, shaking his head with what was clearly disapproval. “Memories are a delicate business, nightmare. You can’t go wandering around without me.”

“I’m sorry.” Jessamine staggered away from him, trying to put some space between herself and Leon. “I didn’t mean to.”

“Don’t waste your apologies on me. I don’t care for them.” He took one step after her, almost as though he was… worried?

“I’m—”

“Don’t, nightmare.” He looked like he wanted to touch her. His hands flexed at his sides, opening and closing before he turned from her.

“Right,” she muttered, squeezing her own hands into fists. “No more apologies.”

Jessamine gathered the tattered edges of her courage and held them close to her. Nothing could happen here. Leon couldn’t kill her again; he was frozen in memory. Standing in front of her with that stupid lock of hair flopped down on his forehead. He looked so docile. So safe.

But he was not a safe person to be around, and she hated that her kingdom was at his feet.

She hated even more the expression frozen on her face. The anxiety that pinched her mouth and the resolve that wrinkled her brow. She’d be married to this man, this monster who would soon kill her, and there was nothing she could do to stop it.

“Why were you going to marry him, anyway?” the Deathless One asked as he wandered behind the image of Leon.

“It’s what the kingdom needed.”

“Was it? How do you know?”

She shrugged. “I didn’t. But the plague is getting out of control.

All of our people are either ill or risk getting sick if they stay outside for too long.

They risk their lives working, so we had to do something.

We had to convince them that we were going to bring money and a solution into the kingdom. ”

“From what I saw, plenty of people still wander the streets.”

The words made her mind stutter. He was right. The streets were thronged with townsfolk, even if there were sick people as well. Why had that been?

Frowning, she shook her head. “No, all the reports were that the city wasn’t functioning at all. That’s why my mother made the deal with the kingdom of Orenda in the first place.”

“And you trusted those reports?” The Deathless One leaned around Leon’s shoulder, his darkness looming tall above the other man. “Or were you just told that things were bad, and you believed them?”

Oh, she had no idea. As she might have if this was real, she looked down the aisle to where her mother sat. The queen always knew what to do. Always.

But this time, her mother wasn’t going to respond. Her mother was dead, and this image of her was so perfect that she could almost pretend for a few moments that she was still here. That she hadn’t faded away out of existence. Because nothing had happened yet. Not in this memory.

She took a step down the stairs, then froze in place. A single tear dripped down her cheek as she felt like her entire soul was ripped open. “She’d know what to do.”

“Who?” The Deathless One didn’t follow her down the stairs, but he looked where she was staring. “The queen?”

“She always made the right decision.”

“Not this time, it seems. After all, she died. Her daughter died. Her entire kingdom was thrown into turmoil, and it took me to save everything.” He snorted. “Of all people.”

“I’m not taking advice from a dead man.”

“Dead god,” he corrected. “And are you really done with this one?”

She glanced over her shoulder to see him pointing at Leon. “Not yet. But this is just a memory, and there’s nothing I can do about it. I can’t go back in time and change the fact that he killed me.”

“But—” He drew out the word.

“But I intend to see him dead, eventually.”

“So why not now? It’s your memory. If you want him gone, I can make him gone.

” He turned toward Leon, and she swore she saw his entire shape darken even further.

Suddenly, it was like she stared into utter darkness without a single spark of light.

“I wouldn’t mind the order if you asked me to kill him, witch. ”