“Adeline.”
And then Luc is there. His arms fold around her shoulders, and she leans back against his chest. They do fit together. They always have, though she wonders, even now, if it’s simply the nature of what he is, smoke expanding to fill whatever space it is given.
His eyes drop to the book in her hands. Her name splashed across the cover.
“How clever you are,” he says, murmuring the words into her skin. But he does not seem angry.
“They can have the story,” he says. “So long as I have you.”
She twists in his arms to look at him.
Luc is beautiful when he is gloating.
He shouldn’t be, of course. Arrogance is an unattractive trait, but Luc wears it with all the comfort of a tailored suit. He glows with the light of his own work. He is so used to being right. To being in control.
His eyes are a bright, triumphant green.
Three hundred years she’s had to learn the color of his moods. She knows them all by now, the meaning of every shade, knows his temper, wants, and thoughts, just by studying those eyes.
She marvels, that in the same amount of time, he never learned to read her own.
Or perhaps he saw only what he expected: a woman’s anger, and her need, her fear and hope and lust, all the simpler, more transparent things.
But he never learned to read her cunning, or her cleverness, never learned to read the nuances of her actions, the subtle rhythms of her speech.
And as she looks at him, she thinks of all the things her eyes would say.
That he has made a grand mistake.
That the devil is in the details, and he has overlooked a crucial one.
That semantics may seem small, but he taught her once that words were everything. And when she carved the terms of her new deal, when she traded her soul for herself, she did not say forever, but as long as you want me by your side.
And those are not the same at all.
If her eyes could speak, they would laugh.
They would say that he is a fickle god, and long before he loved her, he hated her, he drove her mad, and with her flawless memory, she became a student of his machinations, a scholar of his cruelty. She has had three hundred years to study, and she will make a masterpiece of his regret.
Perhaps it will take twenty years.
Perhaps it will take a hundred.
But he is not capable of love, and she will prove it.
She will ruin him. Ruin his idea of them.
She will break his heart, and he will come to hate her once again.
She will drive him mad, drive him away.
And then, he will cast her off.
And she will finally be free.
Addie dreams of telling Luc these things, just to see the shade it turns his eyes, the green of being bested. The green of forfeit, and of losing.
But if he’s taught her anything, it’s patience.
So Addie says nothing of the new game, the new rules, the new battle that’s begun.
She only smiles, and sets the book back on its shelf.
And follows him out into the dark.
Acknowledgments
Anyone who follows me online knows I have a rather fraught relationship with stories.
Or rather, with bringing them to life. With holding up the whole messy beast until my arms shake and my head hurts and I know if I drop it now, before it’s ready, it will shatter, and I’ll have to sweep it up, and I’ll lose at least a few of the pieces along the way.
And so, while I held up Addie’s story, so many people held up me.
Without them, there would be no book.
This is where I’m supposed to acknowledge them all.
(I hate acknowledgments.)
(Or rather, I hate Acknowledgments. I have a terrible memory. My mind, I think, has been burrowed full of holes by all these books, so when it comes to thanking the people who helped this book come into being, I freeze up, certain that I’ll forget.)
(I know I’ll forget.)
(I am always forgetting.)
(I think that’s why I write, to try and catch the ideas before they slip away and leave me staring off into space wondering why I walked into this room, or why I opened that browser tab, or what I was looking for in the fridge.)
(It’s ironic, of course, given the theme of this book.)
(This book, which lived in my head for so long, and took up so much space, it’s responsible for at least some of the forgetting.)
So, this will serve as an incomplete list.
This book is for my dad, who walked the streets of our East Nashville neighborhood and listened while I first spelled out the idea growing in my head.
For my mum, who followed me down every winding road, and never let me get lost.
For my sister, Jenna, who knew exactly when I needed to write, and when I needed to stop writing and go get a fancy cocktail instead.
For my agent, Holly, who has dragged me through so many fire swamps, and never once let me get singed or drowned or eaten by ROUSes.
For my editor, Miriam, who was with me every step of the long and winding way.
For my publicist, Kristin, who’s become my knight, my champion, and my friend.
For Lucille, Sarah, Eileen, and the rest of my incredible team at Tor, who believed in this story when it was an idea, cheered me on when it was a draft, championed it when it was a finished book, and made me feel, at every step, like I could let go, and you would catch me.
For my friends—you know who you are—who dragged me through the dark, and ran away with me in search of words (and roast chicken).
For Al Mare, and Red Kite, for giving me a place to think, and write, and supplying me with ample pots of tea.
For Danielle, Ilda, Britt, and Dan, for your passion, and for sliding pizza under the door.
For every bookseller who has kept me on shelves this long.
For every reader who told me they couldn’t wait, while promising they would.
Tor books by V. E. Schwab
Vicious
Vengeful
A Darker Shade of Magic
A Gathering of Shadows
A Conjuring of Light
About the author
VICTORIA “V. E.” SCHWAB is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of more than a dozen books, including the acclaimed Shades of Magic series, the Villains series, and the Monsters of Verity duology. Her work has received critical acclaim; been featured in The New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, The Washington Post, and more; been translated into more than a dozen languages; and been optioned for television and film. When she’s not haunting Paris streets or trudging up English hillsides, she lives in Edinburgh, Scotland, and is usually tucked in the corner of a coffee shop, dreaming up monsters.
Twitter: @veschwab
Instagram: veschwab
Website: veschwab.com, or sign up for email updates here.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THE INVISIBLE LIFE OF ADDIE LARUE
Copyright © 2020 by Victoria Schwab
All rights reserved.
Cover art by Will Staehle
Edited by Miriam Weinberg
Interior illustrations by Jennifer Hanover
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates
120 Broadway