Memnon pulls out his phone and dials someone. He places the phone to his ear, but I can feel his eyes on me as we make our way out of the building. I can hear an automated voice placidly ask Memnon to leave a message.
The sorcerer curses and hangs up. “No one answered Lia’s number,” he says, tucking his phone in his pocket. “I’ll try to call it again later.”
But why bother? It’s likely no one will answer. Or maybe someone will. Then what? We threaten them over the phone? Tell them what they’re doing is bad and wrong? Continue to call them until they block us? It’s likely a burner phone or a temporary number or … or …
I am halfway down the marble steps outside Cauldron Hall when I decide to sit down there and then.
Memnon pauses ahead of me, then glances back.
“Selene?” he asks, concerned.
I shake my head, trying to catch my breath, though I haven’t been running. I don’t know why I’m so winded.
I hear his heavy, deliberate footfalls back up the steps. When he gets to my side, he pauses. Then he proceeds to step up next to me and sit down heavily. His leg bumps against mine.
“Please don’t.”
Don’t what? He asks down our bond.
Don’t act concerned. I press my palms to my eyes.
Despite the command, Memnon places a hand on my back. When I don’t immediately knock it off, he pulls me into his side.
I guess his concern is genuine. The realization sours my stomach, even as I lean against him, taking shameful comfort in the warm, solid feel of him.
Because of you, I have to clean up this mess. It’s such a blatant lie; Memnon might’ve taken part in moving the bodies of murdered witches, but he had nothing to do with this.
We’re going to clean it up together, he says, not bothering to call me out on the lie.
My annoyance spikes…along with a traitorous warmth that loosens the tightness in my chest.
Memnon glances out across the main lawn and toward the coven’s main entrance and the thick forest beyond.
You told me not to hurt Lauren, he says. If you lift the order, I can—
If I lift the order, I finish for him, you’ll kill her.
He’s quiet. He knows as much.
After a moment, he says, If I don’t stop her, more witches will get bonded against their will.
I pinch my eyes shut. I know.
Killing her would be convenient, but I can’t just order her death. That takes a sort of coldness that I don’t have.
I shake my head. We need to find this Lia and stop her.
She’s the puppet master pulling the strings here. It doesn’t help that she’s apparently taken a keen interest in me.
We’ll find her, Memnon promises, I was able to get her number off Lauren’s phone. I’ll see what I can do with it. Memnon’s gaze flicks down to me. But be warned, whoever Lia is, if she is truly forcing bonds on these witches and making them recruit more victims, she is probably highly evil and very dangerous.
What he means is that eventually, he will likely have to kill her. I’m glad he doesn’t voice it, because I don’t think I would stop him, and I’m not ready to deal with that awful truth on top of everything else.
Instead, I say, There’s no one worse than you.
His eyes twinkle menacingly.
Est amage, I’m counting on that.
Eventually, we make it back to my room.
Nero has also returned and has ditched his cat bed to instead sleep sprawled on my comforter, letting out adorable little huffs that I think are cat snores.
At least one of us is at peace. I’m still turning over the fact that an instructor at Henbane is luring witches to the same spell circles I was lured to. That this instructor fought me as I tried to escape with Cara, the shifter girl.
I feel Memnon’s eyes on me, and I turn to look back at him. He lingers in the doorway, a lock of his black hair hanging over his eye. Gone is the aggressive, angry man I’ve gotten so used to over the last several weeks. I can still sense his violence—that’s as much a part of him as anything else—but it’s tucked away at the moment.
Instead, I sense the sharp ache of his love through our bond. Somewhere during our evening, his eyes lost their haunted look. But now the hollowness is back.
There is a huge part of me that wants to reach out and touch him just to remove that expression from his face.
Do you want to discuss the murders now? my mate asks.
I’m tired to my bones. And hungry.
“Another night.” I’ll pick Memnon’s brain on this when I’m sharp enough to ask the right questions.
Memnon’s expression has shifted a little. Now he’s looking at me like he’s caught sight of salvation.
Tentatively, he reaches out, his knuckles a hairsbreadth from my cheeks.
“Don’t,” I say.
He swallows, his hand still extended. “I’m sorry,” he says, his voice rough.
I want to tell him that his help changes nothing. That being bound to me changes nothing. That his remorse and even his friendliness and every other disarming part of him changes nothing.
Even if it does.
Instead, I step back from him. “I’m not going home with you.”
I know staying with him would be the safer option, but Memnon is still the man who nearly killed a room full of my friends to force me to marry him, and he’s still the man who made me release my memories against my will, and I’m still rabidly angry at him. I’d sooner stay with a pack of hungry wolves than with him.
Memnon nods pensively, not bothering to fight me on this. Gone is the victorious man from the night before.
His eyes drop to my stomach, and they linger there for several long seconds. The room is so quiet that I catch a single whispered word across our bond.
Child.
I place a hand on my lower abdomen, swallowing. I don’t know what to say about that. It’s one more tragedy between us.
“I cannot believe a child—our child—existed at all,” he says softly, “and that I must simultaneously celebrate and mourn their life.”
I draw in a shuddering breath. This feels so unresolved, and a deep, ancient part of me wants to close the distance between us and grieve this loss together. But while I might’ve lived and died as Roxilana, that’s not who I am anymore, and Memnon is no longer my husband. So I wait for the moment to pass and for the sorcerer to tuck away the pain in his eyes.
Eventually the moment does pass, and Memnon turns to leave. He pauses when his eyes catch on something.
I follow his gaze to the unzipped duffel bag I took from his house. My notebooks are spilling out from it.
“You didn’t truly burn them,” I say. I can’t decide if that’s an accusation or a question.
His look softens as it returns to me. “I know I can be heartless, but even when I thought the worst of you, I never sought to destroy all that you are just to get what I want.”
The silence in the room is so, so loud.
“You could’ve fooled me,” I eventually say.
“I did fool you,” he agrees. “You believed them gone.”
“That doesn’t make you any less cruel.” He still got what he wanted.