Page 76 of Bedeviled

I try to grimace, but it comes out as a smile. My traitorous heart.

He sees it and presses his advantage. “You came back here of your own accord.”

I bite my lower lip, trying to suppress my growing grin as I drop most of my things. “You gave me a massive library. I had to come back.”

“Of course.” He nods, false understanding painted on his face. “That’s the only reason.”

“Well, not the only reason.” I desperately want to be near you at all hours of the day, and it’s hard to think about anything that isn’t you, which is infuriating because I have a whole life outside you, and you’re also a menace, and⁠—

“I have something I’d like you to do for me,” I say, cutting off my own fevered thoughts.

Reaching into my bag, I fish out the items I’ve gathered from Henbane, then approach my annoyingly good-looking husband.

I press the items against his chest. The charcoal, the bone needle, the blunts.

Memnon raises his eyebrows as he glances down. “What is this?”

“I want you to tattoo me.”

I hear his breath catch and sense his body go still. There’s not much that can truly throw this man off, but I think I just did.

His magic lashes out of him, and a moment later, the music clicks off.

“What?” His eyes have a gleam to them—one I can’t quite read.

I swallow and drop my gaze, my hand going to my chest. “I keep looking at the blank sections of my skin, and they’re starting to look wrong. Too bare. Now that I have my memories back, I want the panther and the slain deer on my upper arm. I want the dragon clan mark over my heart.”

He takes the bone needle, the charcoal, and the cannabis and sets all of it on a nearby side table.

“You cannot know what it means to me, that you want to wear our sigil again,” he says. Maybe I’m hearing his thoughts or reading into his expression, but I sense he’s…torn.

“I can find a man’s heart with my blade.” He grabs one of the bone needles. “I cannot do this.”

“You must’ve seen dozens of tattoo sessions.” It can’t be too difficult—a bit of fire, a bit of charcoal, and some pain.

He frowns. “Watching and doing are two very different things. I am no artist.” Even as he says this, however, I can feel his resolve wavering and his curiosity rising.

I have been drawing these images in the margins of my notebooks for years. I could easily draw the image onto my skin. It’s tattooing myself that I can’t do.

“I know you have read the mind of at least one tattooist at some point in time,” I say. “The knowledge is there, even if you’re being reluctant about it.”

He doesn’t say anything to that.

I reach out to Memnon’s neck, tracing the lines of the panther he has inked there. Beneath my touch, the sorcerer stills, and his eyes grow heated.

“Please.” I glance up at him. “I want my old ink back.” I don’t know why I’m so adamant about this, but the idea will not leave me. Maybe because the past lies trapped in my memories and there is a part of me that wants to scream that it happened—that I existed when the world looked different and it still means something to me.

Memnon carries the loving marks of his people—our people. I want them returned to my skin, and I want Memnon, who has both memory of these tattoos and an understanding of the significance of them, to be the one to give them to me.

“I swear to the gods, you will get your tattoos, est amage,” Memnon says fervently. “We will find the most skilled artist and commission it.”

I drop my hand from his neck, and the look in his eye is telling me that he does not like that he lost my touch.

“You’re going to do it,” I insist, backing away from him.

“Oh, I am?” he says, prowling forward a step, sounding both amused and skeptical.

“And I trust that it won’t look like a five-year-old’s drawing of a dragon because you are Memnon the Indomitable, Sorcerer King of Sarmatians, Unifier of the Steppe Nations.”