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Surely this was the working of my own overactive imagination. Surely this was some sort of spectral shadow, some sort of recording.
Surely this wasn’t real.
“Odele.” The word tore from my throat without meaning to. She was here. The Princess of Thalassar was here, alive, in this room.
I had long given up the idea that I’d ever see her again. I never imagined our reunion. All I could imagine was the hope and relief I would feel once she was back home in this palace. How we would go back to our normal, regular routine. How my feelings would finally settle into the stillness that her absence had obliterated.
Looking at her now, I felt none of what I thought I’d feel coarse through me.
I felt only a sense of dread and confusion, as it tore out of me like the last striking of a blade set to kill. Like the soundlessness of a bomb exploding on a battlefield before chaos erupted into a cacophony of confusion, blood, and death.
A small part of me wanted to reach out and touch her, grasp her at the shoulder to make sure this was all real, that my mind wasn’t playing some cruel, ironic trick on me. I didn’t dare take a stroke forward.
I feared I’d throttle her if I did.
“You’re alive...” My eyes couldn’t seem to tear away from her figure. I should look away. My eyes should find Maisie’s, I should be giving her a smile of reassurance. One that said, All is well. I am here. But Odele was hypnotizing, keeping me focused.
“Of course I’m alive, Tiberius, don’t be ridiculous.” Nothing about her had changed. Not her voice, not the impetuous way in which she answered, she was the same.
I cringed. How had I never realized before the venom in her words, the terrible, terrible way she looked at me?
“Where have you been?” I threw the words out like the accusation that they were. “Everyone has been worried about you. I—” I broke off, all too aware of everyone staring at me. Of the Black Blade’s amusing glances drilling between my shoulder blades. I could practically hear his own accusations and mocking laughter in my mind even though the room was silent.
I reeled in my emotions, tightening everything on a steel hook and pulled them, tucking them tightly into my heart. My shock could wait a moment, and my anger could wait even longer.
Right now, I wanted answers.
“Why are you back?” I demanded tightly.
Odele’s eyebrows rose in amusement. “Well,” she pointed out sarcastically, “this is my house. And honestly, that isn’t the warm welcoming I was expecting from you.” She smiled, the type of smile that used to make my heart thump wildly and my palms itch with a burning need to touch her.
I tightened my hands into fists and whirled away from her to look at Maisie.
And for the briefest of moments, I caught a glimpse of something in her eyes. Of that confidence she’d displayed being suddenly demolished into broken little pieces, like a conch shell crumbling to dust. As she caught me looking at her, I could see the struggle it took to rebuild that structure, around her soul and around her heart.
And I couldn’t help but feel like I was on the outside looking in, and that with the return of the Princess of Thalassar, Maisie would undoubtedly lock me out.
For good.