Death of an Immortal by Eli Hinze

Author:Eli Hinze [Hinze, Eli]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Regale Press
Published: 2021-06-01T22:00:00+00:00

13

A Secret Kept

Something’s changed.

I can’t pin down what it is, but I can feel it bleed from both of us. We didn’t talk for the whole car ride, didn’t heave a single sigh. Nothing. We’d just looked straight ahead, unflinching.

It wasn’t focusing on the road that made us this way, and it’s not the extravagant decor of the room we now stand in either. Swaths of gossamer peek out from behind the heavy velvet curtains framing the window, and marble meets ruddy wood where the suite opens up to the bedroom. A chandelier catches what light the room grants us and sprays it back in kaleidoscopic patterns on the walls and our skin. Corinna clearly shelled out for this room, but I suppose money’s no object when it will soon do her no good. She can’t take money where she’s going.

Maybe that’s what’s changed. The finality of it all. Now it’s not if she finds the domukardi. It’s not if she gets the chance to kill herself. She can do it right now, at this very moment. All that’s left is for her to select the right moment, the perfect second to cast the die. If it is her own life she plans to take, that is.

The damnable box—I can’t tear my focus away from it—rests on the queen mattress’s downy duvet. I put it under the bed, out of sight for now. How did this end up in Texas of all places? How many hands did this thing pass through before it came back to her? Does it really contain Lycus’s heart instead of her own? If so, why have I been made to risk all of this to kill an unwilling man? His actions would make sense, were that the case.

I trusted her. I still do. Had she wanted to kill an innocent person, she would’ve left me behind at the mercy of his hired guns. No, there’s something I’m missing, and it’s time I learned what threads, what entire tapestries I’m unaware of.

“You never told me,” I say. My voice is pitiable, not even a whisper.

“Hm?”

She looks up from where she lounges in one of the overstuffed chairs, a dab of the tiramisu she’d ordered from room-service still on her fork. Last meal. I can’t help but think it.

“It’s not my place, I know that,” I say. “But I can’t help feeling like there’s something I’m missing.”

“From the car?”

“No, not— What I mean—” I close my eyes and stop to collect my words, letting them pool in my mouth until they’re a dam about to spill over. Looking at her will only make this harder. “I’ve only known you for a few days, and I know there are parts of your life you don’t want to share. You shouldn’t have to. And that’s fine. But we both know what you want to do and just how close you are.” I swallow. “I can’t help but feel like you know so much about me, and me— I know nothing about you.

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