"What are these?" Destan asks when he arrives at my studio the following morning.

My brows push together. "What do you mean?"

He retreats into the hall and returns with a small, flat package wrapped in thick brown paper.

"I don't—" It takes a second for me to realize they are Morel's final paintings. "Wait!"

I dash into the hall and find five more flat packages in varying sizes propped against the wall outside my door. The largest is almost as tall as I am. "Help me bring these inside."

Destan takes the largest of them and we transfer them to my bedchamber.

"These are Morel's last paintings," I say when he looks at me nervously. "Lafayette hid them away when Morel died."

Destan's gaze shifts to the packages. "Why would Lafayette hide them away?"

"He thought they were strange, and from what little I saw, he was correct. They do not resemble his work in the least."

"May I see?"

My pulse races, and I don't know why. I'm not sure whether I don't want to look at the other paintings, or if I don't want Destan too see them.

"Unless you would rather I don't—" Destan offers.

"No." I push the flutter aside and tear the paper away from the smallest of the packages. "I don't mind. I just..."

The painting inside is perhaps stranger than the one Lafayette showed me in the attic. It is a similar color palette of golds and dark greens and inky blues, but instead, they weave in and out of each other like waves.

"You want to preserve his legacy," Destan says, and it hits me how right he is.

I want Morel to be remembered as I remember him. Brilliant and fastidious. A master artist with an unparalleled eye for beauty. I don't want him to be remembered as a madman, chasing shadows across the gardens or painting wavy lines on his last canvases.

I run my fingers over the painting to feel the think ridges of paint from his brushstrokes. "It just doesn't feel like him," I whisper through a lump in my throat.

Destan's shoulder brushes mine as he moves to stand in front of the painting. He smells like fresh-baked bread and something sugary like buttery Madeleines. "Sorry," he mutters absently when my head snaps to look at him.

He doesn't meet my gaze, his attention fixed on the canvas before us. "You think this isn't finished?"

"What?" Finished? "Of course not."

Destan leans in closer, then takes a step back. "There's something interesting about it. The gold makes your eye jump around the painting. It makes me wonder if there is something intentional to the composition."

I examine the painting to see what he means. It takes a while, but I start to see a balance in the colors and a movement to the undulating waves. "Perhaps it was an accident," I say and tear open one of the larger packages.

It's the one I saw in the attic.

Destan moves nearer to me as he inspects the new piece. "Now, this looks unfinished." He points to the gaps of paint that reveal raw canvas. "But..."

"What?"

"It reminds me of something." He takes the painting and rushes off to the studio.

I follow him and he stops in front of Morel's painting of me where I have it propped up on a table against the wall.

Destan stands the large glowing circle beside it. "Look at the brush strokes — the colors." He gestures to the glow Morel painted behind me.

Warm in the middle. Dark at the edges. There is an eerie similarity between the two paintings, but it's subtle.

"How did you even make that connection?"

Destan's glance at the black swatch of fabric on the floor betrays him. "There's not much to look at when I'm lying on your floor."

He's right, and once again he impresses me with his eye for art. "Maybe," I concede. "I just don't know — I don't like having to relearn his work."

His eyes shift between my portrait and me, but I sense there's something else on his mind. "Can I ask you a question?"

"You can ask me anything." My words tumble free before I can stop myself and my stomach knots at the idea.

"You're protective of his legacy," Destan says as a matter of fact. It's not a question; we both know it's true.

"I suppose I am." I wonder what Destan thinks of this. To me, it seems perfectly natural, but a sliver of guilt turns my stomach sour and I don't know why.

Destan's face is unreadable. "Were you in love with him?"

The question knocks the air out of my chest. I don't want to say yes, but there is no denying I was in love with Edmond Morel. Not to myself and not to Destan. "I loved him in many different ways," I answer.

"What do you mean?"

My face heats when I think of all the stolen glances and all the times I prayed he'd open his eyes and see me in a new light. "He was all I had, and he made me the artist I am today. For that, I will always love him. I loved his work, I still do, but there was a time I wanted more. I fell in love with him, but he never loved me the way I loved him so it never grew beyond infatuation. It was a curiosity that kept me hungry and desperate to please him — to earn his gaze. But with nothing to sustain them, my feelings for him burned out."

Destan's eyes search me for something. "Did he know?"

"I believe he suspected, but he never let on that he knew anything." Except once. I don't tell Destan that Morel kissed me the last time I saw him. I'm not sure why I don't want Destan to know, but a blush threatens to give me away.

"Thank you," Destan says and heads towards the privacy screen. "We should get to work."

My hands shake a little after the intimate turn in our conversation. I prepare my palette with paints while Destan changes into his costume and I wonder why I'd even told him the things I did. I've never told anyone these things. My stomach drops when I wonder if his Fae powers pull the words out of me.

Destan emerges from behind the divider all muscle and scars and takes his place on the floor. I self-consciously arrange the vines based on the previous day's sketch. While he settles into his position, I step up to my easel.

When I look down at Destan, a smile plays on the corner of his lips. "You can ask me anything. You've earned it."

"What?"

"You're right. I don't trust anyone — not at first anyway. I think you've earned it; you didn't have to be so honest with me about Morel. I owe you the answer to one question."

An olive branch. "Anything?" I raise my brows.

"Within reason," he adds when he sneaks a glance at me.

"Now you want to add rules? I thought you trusted me."  I pin him with a glare.

"Is that your question?"

"No," I snap. My pulse flutters when a full smile curves his lips. "I need time to think."

I begin to tone the canvas and my mind keeps going back to one thing. "Strange, feral instincts aside, what other powers do the Fae have, besides the Glamour."

"A good question," Destan says. "We Fae are very much like humans, but what we call the "Elegant Blood," gives us unnaturally perceptive reflexes and predatory instincts. And immortality for those fully Fae. I can hear things your ears can't pick up, and see things you can't."

I hang on his every word until I remember I'm supposed to be brushing a light wash of umber paint onto the canvas. "Like the attack on the palace?"

"Exactly."

"But that was so far away."

He looks at me. "Not particularly."

"So you could hear a whisper all the way across a room?"

"And the change in your pulse when your heart races."

His eyes meet mine and as if on cue, my heart stumbles. "That's not fair," I say with a smirk.

He shrugs. "The heart races for many reasons. Fear, surprise, excitement, love, lust, lies. I can't always tell which."

I turn my focus back to the campus. "Yes, but your abilities must make you a great spy."

"It has its uses."

"So that's it? Those are all your powers?"

"All the ones I have."

For two more days, Destan and I work on his portrait until there isn't light left to see by. While I paint, he tells me more about what it's like to be half-Fae. More than just a spy, his instincts made him a great soldier. Judging by the stories, his preternatural abilities have saved him and many others at the front. I know he is aware of this fact, but he doesn't mention it.

"Can I see it?" Destan rises haltingly from the floor. He brings a hand across his chest to massage a knot in his shoulder.

"Of course." I move my stool aside so he can stand in front of it. I can't imagine he has been comfortable lying on my floor for three days. He hasn't complained, but at least his part in it has finished.

My stomach clenches as I watch him examine days worth of work. A line forms between his dark brows and I try to calm my racing heart. In the silent studio, I know he can hear it, but knowing only makes my pulse beat even faster.

"Well?" I nudge his elbow with mine. "Is it terrible?"

Destan looks at me, eyes wide with excitement. "You've completely forsaken the academy's style."

"Yes, but is it too bold?"

"Absolutely," Destan says, but I don't understand why he isn't mad. I half expect him to call off the plan. "It's stunning. Don't change a thing."

If my heart was racing, now it stops altogether. "What?" The colors are too dark, the subject too strange, and the mood too somber. I know I should have reigned in my emotions as I created it, but instead, I leaned into them. The result is a painting that feels strangely intimate and still wholly mine. Dark and tangled and trapped.

Destan finally turns away from the painting to look more fully at me. "You have created something worth looking at, and people will look. They should look."

His words hit me with more force than I'm expecting. A lump forms in my throat and I think I may cry out of happiness. "But will they just see a beautiful man?"

"Some will, but others will see the message we have left for them."

"Good," I reply.

"And if anyone has any sense, they will see a masterpiece."

My pulse flutters. "Wow. I take it you like this portrayal better than my last portrait of you?"

Destan takes my hand. "Even if this has been in service to The Order, Florette." my name sends a shiver down my spine. "It has been an honor." He bows low and places a soft kiss to my knuckles. When he straightens, I pull my hand away and clutch it to my chest. My skin burns with heat where his lips brushed against my hand, but I can't seem to rub away the sensation.

Speechless, I clumsily tidy up my paints while Destan changes back into his clothes. When he is fully dressed, he stops to take one more look at the painting. He smiles and shakes his head at me. "I'm going to make sure you get the patron work like this deserves."

"Thank you," I reply, still giddy with joy at his reaction to the painting. "Who do you have in mind?"

His grin turns playful as he backs towards the door. "You'll see."

He leaves and I'm certain he must hear the thudding of my heart through the door.

***

Hope you guys enjoyed this super intense chapter! Thanks so much for reading!