Page 52 of The Midnight Arrow
And what I’d come to realize was that I didn’t know anything at all.
Veras had been right. Itwaslike a veil being pulled back from your eyes. How could you ever go back?
Before I stepped foot outside, my gaze caught on my chest near the door. I hesitated a mere moment…but then I grabbed a small dagger and hid it in the pleats of the shawl.
The chill outside was bone-numbing, but I trudged toward Lorik, my mouth set in a thin line. I didn’t know what I would say to him. I’d tried to plan it all out, but the words stuck in my brain. Like a funnel, they all got clogged up toward the end.
Lorik hadn’t taken a step forward. For a moment, I wondered about that. He was inside the barrier spell, but he hadn’t taken a step toward the cottage.
When I could make out his face in the dark, I saw that he looked tired. There was a hardness in his features—one that softened briefly when he first saw me—that hadn’t been there before. He seemed in no hurry to get inside from the rain, not that I would let him. I needed answers. I needed them tonight.
No more hiding. No more fear.
I stopped when we were a few arms’ lengths apart. The hilt of my small dagger felt hot in my palm despite the cold.
Lorik studied me. The longer he studied me, the more realization settled into the lines of his features, deepening his frown, the space between his brow growing darker when he furrowed it.
“Marion.”
I felt something crack in me at my name.
“Why can’t you take a step toward me?” I asked.
His jaw ticked. He looked down at the ground between us, and I wondered what he saw.
“Is it because what you said is true? That Peek really does protect me from Severs?”
Lorik’s head rose slowly, his eyes beginning to glow blue.
Finally, he said, “Yourbraydusdrew its own barrier here. You’ve changed your mind about me. Peek senses it and will not let me cross.”
How could I have been such a fool?
“So many things that I willfully ignored,” I said quietly. “Why? Because I was lonely? Because I was that desperate for affection and intimacy and touch?”
“Marion…” Lorik rasped, running a hand through his slick hair, combing it back away from his face. Rain shimmered across his cheekbones as moonlight filtered into the clearing.
And I didn’t know who he was at all.
Then he sighed, a rough exhale. I watched the light shift off his face. That familiar shimmering I’d only caught glimpses of, writing them off as a trick of the light. Then, with parted lips, I watched as his features changed, his body growing slightly larger, slightly taller.
Another veil dropping from my eyes.
Him.
It was that image I’d caught when we’d first made love. His features were sharper, more beautiful, more cutting. The tips of his ears were like knives, and his ethereal blue eyes glowed even brighter. His jawline widened. His skin silvered even more, practically glowing in its luminosity.
“Magicked glamour,” he explained, though his voice didn’t change. “Difficult to hold, and it takes energy. It’s why the infection took root…because I was using most of my strength to sustain the glamour, even in my sleep.”
“Who even are you?” I whispered. I feared my words would be carried away by the sudden gusting of wind, bringing in another dark cloud bank from the west.
“I’m the same as I was, Marion,” Lorik said, attempting to step forward, to reach forward…but he hit something. Peek’smagic. Peek’s barrier. He’d been telling the truth about one thing at the very least…and I’d never even known. “I swear that to you.”
“No, I never knew you,” I said, my shoulders dropping. “Lies upon lies. And maybe you didn’t outright lie to my face, Lorik. But you certainly weaved. And avoided. Anything not to tell me the truth.”
“I am bound byoath, Marion,” he insisted, a pleading note entering his tone. His face was the same, but the structure was all different. More rugged, more roughly handsome than the delicate Allavari features I’d come to know. “I cannot say things without punishment.”
I certainly understood that. But there were ways around it…and he’d never eventriedto help me understand.