Page 38 of His Darkest Desire
From the mirror, he moved on to a folding leather container. The inside was separated into several sleeves. The largest sleeve was filled with strange paper notes bearing the likeness of an unfamiliar human queen. The smaller sleeves held little cards, all of which were similar in size. Some of the cards were made of thick paper, others from a harder, though still flexible substance. Most had numbers written across them.
Vex removed a card that caught his eye—a driving licence. On the side was a tiny painting of Kinsley, stunningly detailed and realistic despite its size and lack of color. She was smiling softly, staring straight ahead.
Staring at him.
He craved that smile. Longed to have it directed at him, only at him.
He brushed his thumb across the bottom edge of the painting. It was perfectly smooth. He might have thought it was protected by a thin sheet of glass, but the card was not entirely rigid, flexing slightly when he gently bent it.
Most bewildering of all was the writing at the top. Delaney, Kinsley Wynter. Her true name.
Susceptible as they were to enchantments and charms of all sorts, humans were surprisingly resistant to compulsion through their true names. They were far less vulnerable than fae in that respect, even when they bore traces of fae blood in their veins.
Yet that did not make Kinsley’s true name any less precious a thing. It had its own sort of power, and there were ways it could be used—such as the pact Vex had made with her. Beings more powerful and knowledgeable than him could use it in potentially more sinister fashions.
Carrying this easily stolen card, with her true name plain for all to see upon its face, was foolish at best.
Magic crackled across his palm and to the tips of his fingers. The card vanished, willed away to safety behind the arcane wards in his laboratory.
Flare flickered with uncertainty, but voiced no question, leaving Vex to continue his perusal of the bag. There were tools for grooming, like the pair of tweezers in their small pink sheath, and other tools for which Vex had no name but might well have been diminutive torture devices with their curved cutting edges and hooked files. A few of the items were clearly for beautification.
Many of the objects were either made from or enclosed in that strange material he’d only encountered in this car. It was light but solid, some of it pliable, some of it rigid. Not metal, wood, or glass, not clay or crystal. An unfamiliar substance from an unfamiliar world.
He returned the items to the bag and was about to exit the car when he glimpsed something behind the seat. Grasping the headrest, he leaned farther in.
A translucent white box lay tucked on the floor behind Kinsley’s seat. He reached down and grasped the handle, shimmying the box to work it free from where it had been wedged. Stepping back so he could stand upright, he examined the new find.
The container was made of that mysterious material, though this was like fogged glass. Despite a prominent crack running down one side, it was intact and secure. Through the lid, he could see numerous compartments containing a variety of items—colorful papers, twine, thread, ribbons, pressed flowers, buttons, and more items that Vex couldn’t identify.
Flare dipped to peer into the box. “Are those butterflies real?”
“Are they dead?” Shade asked.
Vex laid the container atop the car, released the latches, and lifted the lid. Flare and Shade eased back as though expecting the tiny cluster of butterflies to suddenly take flight, but the vibrant creatures did not move.
Gently, Vex plucked one of the butterflies from its place. His brow furrowed as he gently rubbed the wing between forefinger and thumb and raised it closer to his eyes. “Parchment.”
The details were impressive. Human artistry and craftsmanship had certainly improved while he’d been imprisoned.
As he replaced the paper butterfly, his eye was drawn to another item. A leather-bound book with a tree etched on its front. Vex brushed his fingertips over the tree. There was power in this book, he could feel it, but it had naught to do with magic.
He opened the cover and slowly turned the pages. Items just like those in the clear box—and a great deal else—were present within in bursts of controlled chaos. Images, some of which were so crisp, clear, and vibrant that they were like gazing through a tiny window, mingled with bits of cloth and paper, with leaves and patches of moss, with dried flowers and lace and seals pressed into colorful wax.
There were pages about nature, about forests, plants, and animals, pages about the sun, moon, and stars. And some, which made him smirk, were about fairies, filled with dubious information and speculations about the fae folk.
But as he neared the center of the book, he reached a pair of pages that made his hand still and his breath catch. They were different than all the rest; they were the source of the vague power he’d sensed.
Both pages were covered almost completely in scribbled black lines, many of which had been made with force enough to leave grooves in the paper. A painted silver cage spanned the pages in the center. Two halves of a broken, blood-red heart lay in the cage.
Words penned in flowing, elegant script, contrasting the rest of the imagery, ran beneath the cage, white ink against solid black.
All the world will look upon you and never know the crushing weight of your broken heart.
His chest ached, and his throat tightened. He felt more than the raw emotion these pages conveyed—he felt the raw emotion with which they’d been made. The overwhelming sorrow, the grief, the anger.
The soul-deep pain.
Vex had spent his life in pursuit of his goals, driven to protect what was his, and he’d afforded little time to the emotions of others. The rage smoldering in his heart had been enough to fuel him. Never had he felt the anguish of another person so clearly as he did now. Never had he longed with such vehemence to take another soul’s pain away.