Page 99 of Ashen Torment

Do I have something on my face?

I lift two fingers and run them over my cheeks to check.

He swallows. He does it slowly, but I distinctly see the movement of his throat, the Adam’s apple descending and rising again.

I look away.

“Perhaps you are the one who is not well.”

“Why ever so?”

“You seem flushed, your face is red.”

I regret it instantly. I feel the heat rising in my own cheeks.

He seems... caught off guard. He runs a hand through his hair with a quick, nervous gesture and whispers something I don’t catch.

I glimpsed only a single syllable on his lips, before he can speak, however, a murmur of female voices echoes from the corridor.

More than one, and getting closer. He stiffens suddenly.

“Come!” he hisses.

He doesn’t even give me time to reply.

Dorian seizes my arm with a brutal readiness and drags me into the small library nearby. The movement shatters my balance, I misstep and nearly stumble, forced to follow him just to avoid ending up on the floor. I feel the bandages beneath my shirt prickle.

The door shuts with a sharp thud behind us. He turns toward me, still too close, still too determined to say something.

My hand instinctively finds an object on the wooden cabinet, I don’t know what it is, I simply grab it and hurl it at his forehead.

The sound is dull, a direct hit.

His eyes fly wide, he immediately brings a hand to his brow.

Between his fingers, at the root of his fair hair, a line of red slides down. The ivory of his hair is stained in an instant. My chest heaves too fast. I hear the thumping in my ears more than my own breath.

“I told you not to touch me,” I barely manage to spit out.

He says nothing for a moment, then, in a sliver of a voice: “You promised to break my fingers... not to crack my head open.”

His words hit me like a bucket of ice water.

I never meant to hurt him.

It is his own fault, he should not have touched me that way.

I look down at my hand, the object I’m clutching is a leather-bound volume, heavy.

The Hypnerotomachia Poliphili.

“This is—”

“An original,” he sighs, pressing his forehead. “Intact... or at least it was until a moment ago.”

I look at the book. The corner is bent, the impact has left its mark.

I lift it, confused. “Why?”