“It’s beautiful,” I whispered.
Shade caught my hand again and drew me forward. I followed him two halting steps, expecting my feet to splash into the water-but instead the soles of my feet touched something cool, firm, and smooth, like glass. I looked down: the water rippled around our feet but held our weight. So we walked to the center of a midnight lake and watched the lights swirl around us like a flock of birds.
But as lovely as it was, I could not lose myself in the sight.
“You did not clasp my knees just to show me a pretty view.” I glanced at Shade. He stared away from me, out over the water. “I would bet you risked his wrath to bring me here, too. Why?”
He turned to me then, his colorless face remote. Swiftly and firmly, he seized one of my hands and pressed it against my heart.
The breath stopped in my throat. There was no noise at all but my heartbeat.
He touched my hand over my heart, then gestured at the water around us. It was a riddle, one he was beseeching me to crack, and if only I could think beyond those blue eyes and my pulse pounding in my throat—
And I realized it was not my pulse: it was the heartbeat of a Hermetic working. I had spent hours in Father’s laboratory, finding the four hearts of countless workings, until I could do it in moments with my eyes closed. But that was different. Father’s workings had thready little pulses that hammered swiftly until they snapped, like tiny, fevered clockwork. This was a slow cycle of power, like the circulation of blood inside my body, the turning of sap within a tree.
And I knew.
My breath shuddered into me. I dropped my hand, staring at him. “This is the Heart of Water.”
He nodded fractionally.
The Heart of Water. It was the first step to defeating the Gentle Lord. It was the proof that we were right, that he could be defeated.
And in defiance of his master, Shade had shown me.
“Thank you,” I whispered. He was enslaved to Ignifex in a way I couldn’t imagine, and yet he was helping me fight him.
He was helping me. In this strange and terrible house, at the mercy of my monstrous husband, I was not alone anymore.
“Thank you,” I said again, and he smiled. It was a soft, delighted expression, as if he couldn’t quite believe he was allowed to smile. It transformed his face from a remote loveliness into something real and human, and I smiled back. It was the first time in years that I’d smiled at someone without any faking, without the least trace of resentment in my heart.
Outside this room and when daylight returned, I would be the captive wife of a monster. I would drown in my fear and hate, and Shade would only be a scrap of darkness who could not help me, and Ignifex would mock my wretchedness. But here and now, Shade seemed like the original, Ignifex the copy. Here and now, I felt like I was another girl, someone unafraid, who had never hated or deserved hatred. One who could even be forgiven if she took something that she wanted.
I remembered Ignifex’s smirk and his confident words: I can wait all I want and still have all of you.
And I thought, Here is one thing he isn’t getting.
Standing on my toes, I kissed Shade on the lips.
It was just a bump of my face against his. Despite Aunt Telomache’s lecture, I had no idea how to prolong a kiss, and his lips startled me, foreign and cool as glass. But then he caught me under the chin and gently kissed my mouth open. Though his lips were still cool, his breath was warm; as he kissed me, I breathed in time to him, until I felt like my body was only a breath of air mixing with his.
When he released me from the kiss, I didn’t pull away; I stared at the hollow of his throat, heart thumping, and fought the crazy urge to laugh. I had never dreamt I would taste a kiss from anyone but my monstrous husband, which could only be torture—and now—
“You must be careful,” said Shade.
Then I did pull away. “How—”
He smiled faintly. “Because you kissed me.”
When he said the word kissed, my whole body contracted. Suddenly I didn’t feel like a strange, free girl who could have what she wanted. I felt like Nyx Triskelion, who was supposed to guard her virtue (when she wasn’t sacrificing it) and think only of saving Arcadia. And I had just wantonly kissed a man—well, possibly he was not a man, but he was definitely not my husband—
I had just kissed somebody whose smile had faded, who was watching me now with tranquil eyes and making no least effort to bridge the little space between our bodies.
Since I couldn’t sink into the floor, I stepped back and tried to think of something else.
“You’re not part of him,” I said, watching his face. He stared back at me, reactionless. “I don’t think you’re just something he made.” A mere thing would not be able to kiss me against his maker’s will. “You’re somebody he’s cursed, aren’t you?”
Shade nodded, and that set my heart thumping. Somebody who had been cursed could be set free, and somebody who had been set free could think about—
What? Kissing me again, before I trapped myself with the Gentle Lord in his collapsing house for all eternity? It wouldn’t matter at that point if I’d had one kiss or a hundred before my doom came upon me.
And Shade wasn’t thinking of that anyway. He was just glad that he could speak, if glad was the word for someone whose face had gone still as the water beneath our feet.
“We’re both his prisoners,” I said. “You’ve already betrayed him once. That makes us allies, right?”