The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue - V. E. Schwab Page 0,149
woods, croaking laughter. She turns toward the trees. There is still light left, an hour maybe until night, and yet, staring into the forest, she can feel the darkness staring back. She wades between the half-buried stones and steps into the shade beneath the trees.
A shiver slides through her.
It is like stepping through a veil.
She weaves between the trees. Once, she would have been afraid of getting lost. Now, the steps are carved into her memory. She could not lose her way even if she tried.
The air is cooler here, the night closer beneath the canopy. It is easy to see, now, how she lost track of time that day. How the line between dusk and dark became so blurred. And she wonders, would she have called out, had she known the hour?
Would she have prayed, knowing which god would answer?
She does not answer herself.
She does not need to.
She doesn’t know how long he’s been there, at her back, if he followed her some time in quiet. Only knows the moment she hears branches crack behind her.
“What a strange pilgrimage you insist on making.”
Addie smiles to herself. “Is it?”
She turns to see Luc leaning back against a tree.
It is not the first time she’s seen him since the night he reaped Beethoven’s soul. But she still hasn’t forgotten what she saw. Nor has she forgotten that he wanted her to see it, to look at him, and know the truth of his power. But it was a foolish thing to do. Like tipping a hand of cards when the highest bets are on the table.
I see you, she thinks as he straightens from the tree. I have seen your truest form. You cannot scare me now.
He steps into a shallow pool of light.
“What drives you back here?” he asks.
Addie shrugs. “Call it nostalgia.”
He lifts his chin. “I call it weakness. To only walk in circles when you could make new roads.”
Addie frowns. “How am I supposed to make a road when I cannot even raise a pile of stones? Set me free, and see then how well I fare.”
He sighs, and dissolves into the dark.
When he speaks again, he is behind her, his voice a breeze through her hair. “Adeline, Adeline,” he chides, and she knows that if she turns again, he will not be there, and so she holds her ground, keeps her eyes on the forest. Does not flinch when his hands slide over her skin. When his arm snakes around her shoulders.
Up close, he smells of oak, and leaf, and rain-soaked field.
“Aren’t you tired?” he whispers.
And she flinches at the words.
She braced for his attack, his verbal barbs, but she was not braced for that question, not braced for the almost gentle way he asks.
It has been a hundred and forty years. A century and a half, living as an echo, as a ghost. Of course she is tired.
“Wouldn’t you like to rest, my dear?”
The words drag like gossamer against her skin.
“I could bury you here, beside Estele. Plant a tree, make it grow over your bones.”
Addie closes her eyes.
Yes, she is tired.
She may not feel the years weakening her bones, her body going brittle with age, but the weariness is a physical thing, like rot, inside her soul. There are days when she mourns the prospect of another year, another decade, another century. There are nights when she cannot sleep, moments when she lies awake and dreams of dying.
But then she wakes, and sees the pink and orange dawn against the clouds, or hears the lament of a lone fiddle, the music and the melody, and remembers there is such beauty in the world.
And she does not want to miss it—any of it.
Addie turns in the circle of Luc’s arms, and looks up into his face.
She doesn’t know if it’s the creeping night, or the nature of the woods themselves, but he looks different. These last few years, she has seen him bound in velvet and lace, done up in the latest fashion. And she has seen him as the void, unbridled and violent. But here, he is neither.
Here, he is the darkness she met that night. Feral magic in a lover’s form.
His edges blur into shadow, his skin the color of moonlight, his eyes the exact shade of the moss behind him. He is wild.
But so is she.
“Tired?” she says, summoning a smile. “I am just waking up.”
She braces for his displeasure, the feral shadow, the flash of teeth.