WAIT FOR LOVE (Lovemark #4)

15. Unity

15

Unity

“Is this what I think it is?” Dori asked Olivander as she held up a small wooden bucket with what looked like some kind of plant growing out of it.

Olivander blinked blindly at her for a moment before he shook his head and said, “Right. Yes. I forgot. I purchased it for you this morning from a farmer near the edge of the village. He thought I was crazy for asking him to put it in a bucket, but I rather liked the idea of you being able to carry it with you wherever you went.”

“I—Yes. Yes, it’s perfect,” Dori told him, her eyes welling with tears, and causing her glamour to streak off as they fell down her cheeks, slowly revealing the woman underneath. “I keep mine in pots at home, too.”

Then she plunked her potted plant on the table and sent him a brilliant smile before throwing her arms around him and giving him a big hug. “That was so incredibly sweet of you,” she said. “Thank you, Vander.”

Feeling self-consciously left out, I wrung my hands and shrank a step away, wondering what was happening here. Just how close had these two gotten in the few days they’d known each other?

Noticing my uncertainty about being present for such an intimate moment for them, Dori wiped her cheeks and sent me a sloppy smile before she pulled away from him and laughed at herself. “Sorry. I just—I told him yesterday that I had a tomato plant at home, and I got a little upset about leaving it behind. So, he—well, look what he did.”

She picked up the plant again and hugged the bucket to her chest before sending Olivander another watery grin.

I watched one of the tomatoes hanging from the leaves—small and green and not yet ripe—bob merrily as she shifted the plant to one arm. “Isn’t he just the best?”

“He is,” I murmured in total agreement as my gaze moved to Olivander. He was completely uncomfortable by Dori’s praise and gratitude, but he was throwing off emotions like nervousness and guilt that seemed unrelated to her. “That was very thoughtful of him,” I added softly.

He rubbed the back of his neck as his gaze edged hesitantly my way. But as soon as our eyes met, the shame ratcheted through him with more intensity.

It was me causing him all this unease.

When we’d been alone in here, all I’d felt was warmth, amusement, lust, and serenity oozing off him. But Dori’s presence must’ve reminded him I was not his mate and therefore not someone he should be feeling cozy and lustful contentment with.

So then I began to feel awful too, realizing what a strain this was putting on his own sense of propriety. Maybe it was wrong to keep my identity hidden.

But if he knew I was here, he’d worry about my safety, and this was not the time for him to be bothered with any kind of distractions like that. And besides, I liked knowing he himself found me attractive as a woman, not because his mark was forcing him to feel anything.

Indecision briefly whirled through me before I decided it was safer for him if I kept Unity hidden for a while longer. No matter how much I hated putting him through this turmoil, I’d do what I had to do to protect him.

“Yes, well…” Dropping his hand from his neck, he started for the doorway, saying, “I should get back to work. This curse isn’t going to break itself.”

As he brushed past Dori and departed the room, leaving us standing there alone together, she slid her gaze to me and winced. “s**t. I walked in on something, didn’t I?”

“No.” I shook my head and stepped toward her to touch her arm. “You’re fine. I’d say you arrived at just the right moment because if he’d acted on the feelings he was having, it only would’ve left him stewing in guilt. And I certainly don’t wish for him to suffer in that regard.”

Dori’s face lit with a big grin. “Oh, so he was feeling, er, friendly toward you, was he? That’s awesome. Way to go!”

She lifted her hand toward me—palm facing my way—as if she expected me to do something about it, but I didn’t know what I was supposed to do so I cleared my throat uneasily.

Smile falling, she dropped her arm. “Wait. You’re not thinking about telling him yet, are you? No, Unity. Don’t do it. One of the things he confessed to me was that he feared he wouldn’t be able to feel any passionate attraction for you since he only knew you as a child. So I think he really needs to experience a good dose of desire for a while before the truth comes out.”

“And I should just ignore the fact that it’s consuming him with guilt every time he does?”

“Trust me; he’ll get over it. And besides, I think this is what you need too. I mean, you gotta admit it’s nice to know he prefers you even without the mark telling him to.”

I blushed, mumbling, “It is nice,” right before I frowned at myself for admitting such a thing out loud. Straightening my spine, I tossed my hair over my shoulder and announced, “But that’s no reason to put him through any kind of upheaval. However, I’d already decided I agreed with you not to tell him yet because it’s safer for him not to have to worry about my protection at a time like this, so…”

Dori nodded at me. “So we’re not going to tell him,” she finished for me as she hooked her arm through mine. “Good. Now, let’s go help him solve the other ninety-nine problems he’s working on.”

“Let’s,” I agreed with a nod.

As we walked down the hall together, I shook my head and smiled over the way Dori returned her attention to the tomato plant, then shifted it higher to rub a green leaf against her cheek. “This is seriously the sweetest thing anyone’s ever done for me.”

I smiled. “That’s Olivander for you.”

He had always made sure to do small, considerate things for me. And it melted my heart to be able to see it in action again. I really had missed him.

Once we stepped out of the hallway and into the main library, I cut my gaze to him, where he was standing in front of a table and frowning down at about half a dozen scrolls that lay partially rolled open.

“So what can we do to help?” I asked, making him jump in surprise and lift his face.

“Hmm?” He glanced over, but about as soon as our gazes clashed, he jerked his attention to Dori. “Oh. Right now, I’m just trying to find some mention of Locasta Blayton in old genealogy references, since she would know how to break the Graykey curse, but I’ve found no trace of her in the HouseBlayton scroll to even find descendants of hers who maybe still have some possessions or writings of hers that would help guide us in the right direction. So now I’ve just pulled down every lineage scroll I could find.”

“I’ll take one,” I offered, picking up a random scroll that hadn’t been unrolled yet.

Noticing that the words burned into the spindles labeled it the Bjorn genealogy, I grinned. Olivander would be mentioned in this one.

“Do you mind if I read over Indigo’s journal?” Dori asked, spotting it sitting on the edge of the table. She set the tomato plant down in order to pick it up. “The way you two quote things he’s written, it seems like I need to get caught up.”

Olivander slashed his gaze toward her—worry spiking through his mark—and he hesitated a moment before nodding briefly. “That would be fine. But just skip over the genealogy section at the front. I’ve already gone over those a dozen times. The parts you’ll find most useful will probably start…” He slipped the book from her hands and frowned at it as he flipped through pieces of parchment before saying, “Here.” Then he handed the journal back and tapped his finger against safe text for her to read.

When he glanced away, his gaze accidentally caught mine. I nodded at him in approval, letting him know it’d been smart to skip Dori over the gruesome family history she’d come from. I had skipped over them myself last night, already clearly remembering them from when I’d read the journal all those years before.

Then I turned away to find a good place to read, and I was freshly awed by the space around me. It just felt so warm, and homey, and safe here.

Maybe that was because this was where Olivander spent most of his days. But I think it was something else. After being at the academy for as long as I had and growing used to studying, it felt like I was back there again, where I’d grown into myself and discovered who I was.

Realizing I’d never return to the academy again, I decided it was nice to have a new place to go that would remind me of there.

I promptly trooped back to the window seat and climbed in, lifting my knees so I could prop the scroll on them and unroll a portion of parchment.

It started with the most recent family additions and worked its way back in time.

Olivander’s brother Urban and his wife had just begotten their third child and were expecting a fourth, a fact I already knew since both Olivander and his sister-in-law, Vienne, had sent an announcement to me.

I scrolled further, finding the rest of Urban’s progeny along with Erick’s two daughters—Ipsy and Ulyssa—plus his heir, Ashe. Next was Olivander’s sister, Allera, where the text mentioned her two marriages and the upcoming expectant birth of her son, Cal.

Not long after that, I came across Olivander’s name, labeled as merely the second youngest of the Bjorn children. And then I found his cousins from Lowden—Xavier, Armenia, and Ellery—who belonged to his father’s half sister, Elda.

I blinked in surprise when I saw that King Ignatius had been married for a year to some woman named Eressa before she had died. He hadn’t mated himself to Olivander’s mother, Odette Lamascus, until three years after that.

I glanced toward my true love, wondering why he’d never mentioned this before. Hmm. It probably just hadn’t come up because he had told me about his grandfather being married twice.

Hopeful that we’d share more now that I was of age and an adult, I lifted my face toward the warmth of the sunlight beaming through the clear rock and let that soothe me for a couple of seconds.

But, wow, this was divine. Now I knew why cats like stretching out in windows and sunning themselves. Relishing the moment, I stretched a little myself, lifting my arms above my head and arching out my chest before rolling my head slowly around on my shoulders. Mm. That felt better.

When my breasts strained against the front of my dress as far as the cloth would allow, however, a sudden heat flared between my legs, causing my n*****s to tingle and thighs to quiver. The rush of lust caught me so unexpectedly that I gasped in surprise before realizing it hadn’t even originated from me.

Oh damn.

I jerked my attention toward Olivander across the room, expecting to find him watching me as if he wanted me for his last meal. But he wasn’t even looking my way. He was standing at the table with his attention on the sheets of parchment he’d picked up and was reading, and Dori was at his side, flipping through Indigo’s journal, far too close to him for my comfort.

My breath caught.

Did this mean it’d been her he’d been attracted to, then? Not me.

That didn’t sit well. Swallowing a painful lump, I went back to reading, forcing my stung feelings to get over themselves as I methodically made my way through another three generations, until I heaved out a sigh, unable to take this boring monotony a moment longer.

This was ridiculous, anyway. Indigo had said in his journal that Locasta had married Holden Graykey, son of Corandra and the first child born in the Outer Realms. That meant Locasta wasn’t going to show up here. I doubt she’d be in this genealogy at all, but especially not in 210, when Ether, the seventh King of High Cliff, had been born.

Losing my patience, I began to roll through the scroll until I reached the first Bjorn listed. If Locasta was even going to be listed at all, even as a friend of the family, it’d be in the first fifty years or so.

Oliver Bjorn. One of the original nineteen. He married Andrea Randall, also of the original nineteen, in the first year.

Now, this was more like it. I followed the line until year 68 when Avery Bjorn, great-grandson to Oliver, married a Locasta Blayton.

Wait. What?

Sucking in a breath, I looked up to tell the other two about my discovery until I shook my head. Because, no. If Locasta had married Holden Graykey—firstborn child in the Outer Realms, meaning he would’ve been born in Year One, or thereabouts—then she would’ve been roughly his age. Except this said she and Avery had a son named Ender together, who’d been born in sixty-nine. So it had to be a different Locasta Blayton because the one married to Holden would’ve been too old to have children in her fifties or sixties.

Wouldn’t she?

But I continued reading, anyway, on alert, only to learn that Locasta’s son, Ender, had two children—a son and daughter—who both went on to marry two Moast siblings.

Huh. That was interesting.

Indigo came from House Moast, and I knew that was a very small line.

Did this mean that nine or ten generations back, Olivander and Indigo had the same ancestors? With one of them named Locasta Blayton?

I lifted my face to say something. And across the room, Olivander looked up as well as if he could sense my impending question.

“What is it?” he asked, beginning to rise just as Dori slapped Indigo’s journal down and sat back in her chair, blurting, “So wait. This Nalini woman that both of you just interacted with this week is actually a Graykey?”

“Corandra Graykey, yes.” Olivander nodded. “She’s the creator of this entire world before the curse made the name evil, so she’s not afflicted by it. But she’s the one who brought the original nineteen here from Earth, where she was named Bridget, I believe. And she’s also gone by the name Mydera here in the Outer Realms, where she lived in the Far Shore woods for about a decade.”

Dori blinked. “So just how old is she?”

Olivander shrugged. “Older than anyone I’ve ever met.”

“But she looks the same age as me,” I put in. “She can change everything about herself with each new identity she assumes.”

“New identities?”

“It sounds like she just grows bored of being one person and then…” I shrugged. “She becomes someone new entirely.”

“But how?” Dori shook her head in total confusion. “And how was she able to leave Earth to create all this?”

She looked around the library, frowning. “None of this makes any sense, and besides, if she’s this all-powerful being and still kicking around here on this planet, why doesn’t she just break the curse? I mean, it’s her family line that’s been besmirched by all this.”

“I don’t think she is all-powerful,” Olivander said carefully. “That’s the problem. She keeps a soothsayer with her to help her see bits of the future because she obviously can’t see it herself. And when she tried to tell me what she could about the curse, blood started to gush from her eyes, nose, and mouth, so something is keeping her bound from breaking it herself. Or at least from talking about it.”

“Well, damn,” Dori murmured. “I guess she’s no help, then.”

“But you’d think someone from her line would know something,” I spoke up. “Because this scouring of genealogy after genealogy sounds like a pointless—ooh! I know just the scroll that might help.”

I’d seen a Graykey mark on the flat, bottom part of the spool that a scroll was wrapped around. If anything could tell us about Graykey lore, that thing should. But when I hurried to it and stepped up onto my tiptoes to reach out, Olivander appeared at my side, grabbing my wrist.

“What do you think you’re doing?” he snapped angrily as he jerked my hand back, making me gasp.

I pulled my wrist free and gaped up at him before curling my own fingers across the flesh he’d touched. It didn’t hurt at all, as he hadn’t grabbed me with any kind of force or pressure. But my skin tingled nonetheless. I started to step back because he was scowling at me as if he were mad, but then I felt the fear and concern waft off him.

He was scared.

“I—I saw the Graykey mark on that scroll earlier when I was browsing the shelves,” I started to explain, trying to make sense of what had worried him. “So I thought—”

“So you thought it was perfectly acceptable to touch?” he snapped, still glaring.

“Well, I—”

“Did the sign of the curse on it not give you any kind of pause at all?”

“No,” I answered honestly. “Apparently not.” It was just a scroll. Why should I fear a scroll?

“I did not put that scroll there,” Olivander explained, taking my arm and pulling me another few steps away from the entire shelf. “No one knows how it came to be on that shelf. It just appeared one day not long after the library was built. And sometimes, it disappears completely, only to reappear again a short while later.”

I blinked, confounded by such a notion. “And you never thought to open it?”

“One of my scribes did.” Olivander slid his gaze toward the scroll. “He reached up and grabbed it, only to fall dead at my feet the moment his fingers merely brushed it.”

My eyes flared with shock. “Oh.” I curled my hand to my chest, suddenly glad he’d prevented me from touching it.

“Yeah. Oh,” he murmured severely, narrowing his eyes slightly as he turned back to me. “And the second person who tried to touch it? Also dead. I’ve lost three scribes now because of that bloody scroll. It’s why I’ve yet to hire another. That thing is a Graykey grimoire, my lady. I advise that we leave it be.”

My gaze returned to the scroll. “Yes,” I murmured vaguely, unable to take my attention off it. “You’re probably right.” And yet I believed even more so now that it contained all the answers we were currently trying to seek.

“You should have a warning label or something, though,” I said suddenly, stiffening my spine.

Because really. How could he leave such a dangerous artifact just sitting around to kill anyone who passed by?

“I did,” Olivander answered dryly. “After the first scribe died. But the sign only seemed to bring more attention to it and dare more people to try to get their hands on it.”

“Hmm.” That would be a problem, I suppose. But still, it seemed all too harmful to leave there, as it was, for just any unsuspecting person to come along and accidentally touch it.

“I apologize for not warning you about it when you first arrived. But frankly…” He hissed out a breath and shook his head. “There’s been so much going on, I completely forgot about it.”

Feeling his mental exhaustion, I reached out, hoping to ease his suffering.

But Dori’s voice from across the room caused me to jump and jerk my hand back as she gurgled out a horrified, “Oh my God!”