was a gap between them that she couldn’t quite put into words, and she knew it was the time span that was the cause.
Not that during the years apart, Evariste had suddenly come to his senses about her core magic and suddenly no longer liked her. It was just that so much had happened.
And though Angelique still felt strongly for Evariste—and would fight to her death to keep the Chosen from getting him again—it almost felt like there was too much that they needed to tell each other, that it made things…awkward.
If that’s the case, then we should start talking. We need to!
Angelique drew herself up and thumped her wooden bucket on the side of her thigh—a splinter poking her straight through her trousers. “Is there some place you’d like to go—or see?”
Evariste tilted his head. “Outside,” he said.
“Very well—then let’s find ‘outside.’” She awkwardly hovered at his elbow for a moment. Typically, Evariste had been the more physically demonstrative person in their friendship before, but now Angelique had to hold herself back from grabbing his arm just to assure herself he was really there.
But do I really need to hold myself back? I don’t imagine he’d mind it if I grabbed his elbow like I used to.
Evariste was staring at Angelique with a curiously mixed expression that was a cross between bemusement and pain.
Angelique mashed her lips together hard enough to make her cheeks pucker, then she awkwardly held out her hand.
To her relief, Evariste’s smile bloomed into something larger, and he took her hand in his, intertwining their fingers.
Angelique breathed a sigh of relief—yes, he really was there—then casually swung her bucket by its rough rope handle with her free hand as she felt her magic drift off in interest. “Let’s try this direction,” Angelique said.
“Are you familiar with the palace?”
“Not really. Snow White dragged us back and forth through it today, but I have no hope of remembering anything about it,” Angelique said. “But there are more weapons this way, which likely means more guards, which also most likely means we’d be moving away from the center of the palace and to the outside.” She paused when they passed by a decorative arrangement of war axes and finely wrought daggers and briefly pulled her hand from Evariste’s so she could remove one of the daggers off the wall and toss it conveniently into her bucket.
Snow White won’t mind.
Once she finished, Evariste took her hand again. “You’ve grown quite skilled with your magic in my absence.”
Angelique cringed. “I didn’t have much of a choice. So much has happened—there have been so many near losses…”
Evariste squeezed her hand as they left the hall they’d been standing in and stepped into a corridor of some sort that was decorated in dark, emerald green tones. “I’m glad—not that you experienced such difficulties, but that you’ve gotten so skilled. Are you an enchantress, yet?”
“No—the Council wouldn’t even consider it since you were missing.” Angelique swung her bucket so it smacked her in the thigh again. “I had a lot of trouble with them. But my troubles are pretty minute compared to what you went through.”
“There’s no judging pain, Angel,” Evariste said. He’d been scanning every decoration they passed, but at Angelique’s words, he narrowed his gaze in on her. “Because there is no comparing it. Pain is pain—no matter how it occurs.”
Angelique’s smile turned dangerously misty, and she nudged her shoulder into Evariste’s. “Now I really can believe you are here.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. Because you’re sharing deep truths.” Angelique’s gaze strayed to an arrangement of jeweled flowers displayed on an end table.
It was only the tickle of her magic and her experience with Elle that made her recognize the decorative roses—and their sharpened metal stems complete with sharpened thorns—were a possible weapon. She snagged one for her bucket.
“It’s not so much that I am deep as much as Clovicus drove such principles through my skull. But in this case, it is a personal observation,” Evariste said.
Angelique paused when they walked past a tiny, closet-like room that she recognized as a guard outpost, chortling to herself when she found a handful of broken arrows. She dropped these into her bucket to add to her growing arsenal—she would be prepared if the Chosen so much as breathed in Juwel this day!
“What do you mean?” Angelique asked once she rejoined Evariste in the hallway and took his hand again—growing more comfortable with the gesture every time she did it.
“You might think I’ve physically suffered the most…and perhaps