Monarch

6. Elena

6

ELENA

B y the time three o’clock rolls around, I’m kind of wishing I had more time with Ivy. She’s a surprisingly peaceful presence, while I feel nervous at the idea of another long car ride with Lorne.

I spent almost two hours out in the garden with his daughter that didn’t feel long at all, bundled up in coats and scarves, crunching over grass bleached white with frost. That was what made the rose garden so beautiful even without any blooms: the lacelike patterns of frost printed onto the leaves and stems like tattoos.

Each pattern was different. Pressing our thumbs against the frost and melting it away to the green beneath was endlessly satisfying.

I talked a little but not too much at once, which seemed to suit us both. Ivy never spoke at all. Twice she touched my arm to show me something. And once, when a rabbit dashed across our path, she made a sound of happy surprise that gave me more warmth and amusement than the rabbit itself.

Snow began to fall, impossibly light and dry little flakes that dusted down on us like cool icing sugar. I worried if it got any thicker, I’d lose Ivy entirely, already a ghost child on the frosty grass in her white coat.

“We’re snow angels!” I said, grabbing her hands, spinning us both around.

I had on Mina’s white fur coat. Faux fur, of course, a little dirty from all the times Mina threw it on the floor.

The fur didn’t look dirty outside. Out in the garden with Ivy, in her fancy white wool coat, it was easy to imagine that we were mother and daughter and I was wearing chinchilla.

Aside from both being blond, Ivy and I don’t actually look alike. But it’s still more than she resembles Lorne, her actual dad. When we’re all a family, a real family, nobody will know that it didn’t start the typical way.

That was the first moment, spinning around with Ivy in the icy rose garden, that the reality of having a daughter finally hit me. I guess I’d imagined myself more like a cool aunt or older sister. The fact that Lorne’s daughter was already nine years old made me think she’d be well on her way to grown.

But when I met Ivy and saw how small she was, how shy and how vulnerable, I realized this is very much a little girl still in need of a mother. And I’m the one she’s going to get. So I’d better do a damn good job.

It wasn’t a bad feeling. It was more like standing at the bottom of a mountain, realizing it was taller and steeper than I thought, but feeling ready for the climb.

Ivy seemed a lot more relaxed without Mrs. Cross around. I wonder if I should say anything to Lorne about those marks on Ivy’s arm. He’s told me what an incredible employee Mrs. Cross is, how she’s indispensable to him, practically a second mother…

But he also told me how much Mrs. Cross adores Ivy, how close they supposedly are. In reality…there’s a lot more tension than I was expecting.

I don’t want to overstep, but I feel like I should say something.

Which is part of what’s making me so nervous right now, waiting for Lorne.

At least I can tell him that I started one of his novels. I’m only a few pages in, but it’s already scaring the shit out of me, which I think is the point.

I’ve got to finish it because I don’t want to admit to Lorne that I’m a bit of a baby. The scariest books I read are fantasy novels, and romantic fantasy at that, where the most terrifying thing you’re likely to encounter is a villainous fairy prince who turns out to be secretly sexy or, at worst, some dragon penis.

Lorne’s book is about a girl being stalked by a serial killer, but it’s from the serial killer’s perspective. It’s creeping me out, stepping inside that guy’s head.

I took Ivy along to the bookstore with me, only six shops down from the hotel. I was amused when we arrived because I’d asked Amy where to find it and she’d taken the time to write down instructions, which turned out to basically be, Walk out the front door and turn left.

As I’d hoped, the tiny shop had an entire table dedicated to local celebrity Lorne Ronson. His glossy dark thrillers seemed especially intimidating in towering piles almost as tall as me, with lurid images of bloody daggers, peering eyes, and sinister houses splashed across the covers.

It seemed like the height of assholery to swipe Lorne’s credit card to pay for his own books, but buying all seven would have wiped out most of my cash. If I don’t use my fiancé’s money, I’ll soon have none left.

After I pushed Ivy to pick out a couple books for herself, she disappeared so long I got worried, finally returning with a stack she could hardly see over.

“Is your dad okay with this?” I pulled Stephen King’s Firestarter off the pile.

Ivy slid her eyes toward the gruesome covers of Lorne’s thrillers just one table away.

I laughed. “Fair point.”

But now, I’m not sure if Lorne will see it that way. I should probably ask him on the drive to the house. Before or after I mention Mrs. Cross and her nasty pinching fingers?

Ugh. What’s the right way to do this?

I’m waiting out front of the hotel after returning Ivy to Mrs. Cross. Lorne texted me twenty minutes ago to come down, but he hasn’t arrived yet himself.

It’s a little chilly. I wrap my arms around myself, wishing Mina’s coat was made of a polar bear pelt.

And then…I feel Atlas behind me.

It’s surprising how quietly he moves for someone so massive. He’s good at slipping through the shadows of this place. He practically gave me a heart attack last night, the way he melted out of the darkness.

One moment I’m alone, and the next his looming bulk is right behind me. I must have been waiting for him, because now that he’s here, I relax.

I turn my head only enough to see a slice of his dark-suited shoulder, still watching the road. Lorne will pull up any moment.

“You’re not going to sneak up on me this time,” I say.

Atlas makes a sound too deep to be a laugh. “If I want to sneak up on you, you won’t know a thing about it.”

The thrill that runs up my spine is part terror, part something too outrageous to be named.

I’ve often felt there’s another Elena…a sneaky little shadow who lives inside my head. She likes all sorts of things she’s not supposed to like and whispers terrible thoughts.

That Elena wants to be chased through a dark hotel by Atlas. She wants to feel those huge hands seize her body and wrap around her throat.

Which is wrong on many levels.

Starting with, I’m engaged. Even if I don’t have a ring.

So, I face forward again, straightening my shoulders, eyes trained on the road. “I’m waiting for Lorne.”

Atlas’ irritation is a storm cloud over my shoulder. Softly, he sneers, “Is he taking you to see his castle?”

His disdain confuses me, as does his word choice.

Castle?

No time to ask—Lorne’s car pulls up to the curb, jerking to a stop as he hits the brakes too hard.

“There she is!”

Lorne jumps out of the car, leaving his door hanging wide. He jogs around to kiss me, sweeping me into his arms and lifting me off my feet. It’s very romantic. The grunting sound he makes is slightly less romantic. Guys always underestimate how much I weigh.

He kisses me anyway, a long kiss, holding me up with his hands cupped under my ass.

It’s a lot more enthusiasm than I expected, more than he showed when he picked me up at the airport. It kind of feels like he might be doing this because he saw Atlas talking to me as he drove up.

By the time he stops kissing me and sets me down, I’m sure Atlas is long gone.

I hope he is. But I can’t bring myself to check.

Leaving the town of Grimstone takes mere minutes before we’re swallowed by deep, dark forest. Hundred-foot pines tower on either side of the two-lane road, providing a narrow view of the sky that winds like a river overhead.

I can’t shake this fairy-tale feeling. It’s the German Gothic style of Grimstone itself and the sudden and magical way I met Lorne, of course…but also, this pervasive sense of something darker and more dangerous beneath the surface.

I look at Lorne, at his lean, handsome face, his hand dangling over the wheel. Soft hands. Writer’s hands.

This is a good man. He’s not dangerous.

It’s got to be something else nagging at me, and I should talk to Lorne about it. He’s going to be my husband. We should be able to talk about anything.

“Lorne?”

“Yeah?” He turns, already smiling.

Which issue to broach first?

Cowardly, I pick the easier one.

“Do you have rules for what you let Ivy read or watch?” When Lorne blinks at me, I say, “Because I took her to the bookstore today and told her she could pick out some things.” I confess the worst in a rush. “I let her buy a Stephen King novel.”

I can’t tell if Lorne is mad. His expression goes blank while he thinks.

“She picked out books?”

“Yeah, a whole stack.”

“Huh,” he says, frowning slightly.

“Is…that okay?”

He shrugs, his smile bursting back. “Sure. Why wouldn’t it be?”

I don’t know how to say this without sounding sanctimonious, since I’m the one who bought her the book.

“She’s only nine. I thought it might be too scary for her…”

“If she even reads it.” Lorne shrugs like he thinks she won’t. “Besides, there’s nothing wrong with being scared.” He glances at me sideways, lowering his voice. “Don’t you like to be scared?”

Is he flirting?

Fuck, I’m so bad at this.

My laugh is nervous. “Sometimes.”

“What scares you the most?”

Lorne’s voice is soft, caressing, even. It sounds like he’s flirting. But his eyes are cool, darker than usual in the gloom of the pine trees all around. He’s not touching my thigh like he did before in the car. Both his hands grip the wheel.

I press my cold hands between my knees.

Arm across my throat, pressed against the metal wall of a tiny box, that old sweat smell…

I crush the thought like a bug under my heel.

“Small spaces,” I say. “I hate them.”

A light kindles in Lorne’s eyes, hot like a blue gas flame. “What happens?”

“W-what do you mean?”

“What happens when you’re trapped in a small space?”

My throat tightens and my skin goes cold just thinking about it. “My heart beats faster and faster. And…I start to sweat. But I’m cold. Shivering.”

“When did that start?” Lorne is keenly interested. He almost sounds excited.

I’m feeling more and more uncomfortable. “I…it’s always been that way.”

He studies my face, dissatisfied. Like he knows I’m holding back.

I know it’s important to be honest with the people you love. And I will be. Over time.

But this is probably the last thing I’ll tell Lorne, when we’re eighty years old together in bed. When it will be so long ago and far away it won’t even matter.

I haven’t even told Mina what happened.

Nobody knows. And maybe, maybe…nobody ever has to.

“What’s your biggest fear?” I say instead, trying to keep the fun, getting-to-know-you vibe going.

“Mm…” Lorne sounds careless. “Being naked, I suppose—onstage or something.”

He shrugs like it’s not something he considers often. Which is funny, because his whole job is thinking up terrifying situations.

I can never quite seem to predict what Lorne will say in conversation. For all the time we’ve spent talking, I wouldn’t say I know him extremely well. Not yet.

If Lorne would have said, My greatest fear is something happening to Ivy, then I would have had a really useful segue for what I need to bring up next.

But he didn’t say that. So I fidget around a bit while he’s messing with the music and then mention, as casually as I can, “I spent some more time with Ivy today.”

“Oh yeah?” Lorne looks up, so pleased that I hate to sour it.

“Yes. And it was nice, really nice. We played in the garden, went to the bookstore—I told you that…” Hating myself for stalling, I force out, “I noticed some, ah, bruises. On Ivy’s arm?”

Lorne’s face has gone still and blank again. Impossible to read.

My mother always told me, in difficult conversations, state the facts, not interpretations.

“Mrs. Cross grabbed Ivy by the arm at breakfast. And I noticed there were bruises already. In the same place.”

Now Lorne reacts, but only by squinting and pouting his lips slightly, which doesn’t tell me much.

Driven to soften the blow, I continue, “I’m not saying she meant to hurt Ivy. But maybe when Mrs. Cross is angry or frustrated…”

“Well,” Lorne slips smoothly into the conversation, “she can be very frustrating.”

I pause. “Ivy?”

“Yeah.” Catching the look on my face, he says, “I mean, maybe not today. I’m glad if she was good with you. But sometimes she’s a fucking nightmare, I’ll be honest. We’re lucky to have Mrs. Cross.”

The road grows steeper, winding higher into the mountains. The sky’s already darkening though it’s not even four o’clock, thick gray clouds blotting out any hint of sunset color.

Lorne does not seem concerned by what I just told him. So, I guess I shouldn’t be, either.

I know people who spank their kids. But those people also adore their kids. With Mrs. Cross it was more like…animosity. She seems to dislike Ivy.

And in a small way, it appears that Lorne…finds that understandable?

“What’s wrong?” He’s watching my expression, not the road.

“Nothing.” My hands twist in my lap.

He grabs them, unknots my grip, twines his fingers with mine. “Come on, tell me.”

His grip is tight.

I should drop this.

No, not quite yet.

I try once more.

“If Mrs. Cross gets stressed with all the things she has to do, I could watch Ivy.”

Lorne tilts his head, a tiny movement like a ticking clock. “You really liked hanging out with her, huh?”

“Yes, I did.”

It’s true. My hours in the garden with Ivy were the most peaceful I’ve spent since I boarded the plane. I don’t mind that she doesn’t talk. I’d rather not talk half the time, either. She has other ways of communicating—a glance, a happy chirping sound, a ghostly little hand plucking at my sleeve.

“Okay. If you don’t mind.” Now Lorne’s tone sounds like, You have no idea what you’re getting yourself into.

I hope I’m not making a huge mistake.

Grinning that bright white grin, my fiancé says, “So, are you excited to see our new house or what?”

Our new house…

I’d been thinking of it as Lorne’s house. But he said our house so naturally, like that’s how it always is in his head.

Excitement expands in my chest scarily fast.

I really want a house.

Of all the things I drooled over in storybooks, nothing captured my imagination more than big, beautiful, private houses.

Nobody I know owns their own house, let alone the type of house that populates the pages of fiction, with a ballroom, a library, an attic, hidden passageways, secret compartments, a hedge maze or a private garden…

A house like that is its own world tucked away inside the real world, separate and safe in a way an apartment could never be.

That’s what I fantasize about in the deepest chamber of my heart, even more than I wished for a Prince Charming. A place I can make completely my own. Where I feel safe and happy, away from the world.

When we turn the last bend up the winding mountain road, I see that Lorne isn’t just my Prince Charming.

He comes with an actual full-size castle.

Lorne is loving my reaction.

I’m stunned. Like, “somebody just hit me on the back of the head with a baseball bat” stunned.

I can’t believe he’s building a castle…

A huge castle. With turrets and ramparts and towers. Everything but a drawbridge, really.

It’s too much. This can’t be real.

“You doing okay there?” Lorne grabs my arm to steady me.

We’re crossing the churned-up patch of land that stands between us and the massive stone entryway. Planks have been laid across the mud, but it’s still not the smoothest journey, the slushy making the wooden boards slippery.

Plus, I’m completely freaking out again.

I can’t believe he has a castle.

“So…do you like it?” Lorne watches me, hands stuffed in his pockets, waiting for the good part of my reaction. Because he just gave me the best surprise ever. I should be so excited.

“ O Bozhe ,” I say softly, because that’s all I can manage. “You didn’t describe it like this.”

“You had to see it for yourself,” Lorne says with satisfaction.

The immense stone castle stands in the forest like it’s stood there for a thousand years. The parts of it that aren’t quite finished only add to that effect, like the west tower is crumbling instead of half-constructed. The soot-black walls and pointed Gothic archways are faintly familiar—I suppose it resembles all the oldest buildings in Grimstone, that old-world aesthetic.

Dracula’s castle…

Actually, it looks a bit like the Monarch. I wonder if that’s what inspired Lorne. He must have seen the hotel every time he drove down Main Street, long before he stayed there himself.

But something holds me back from asking. Maybe I don’t want to mention Atlas, or maybe I’m worried it might offend Lorne in some way. I’m sure he wants to think of his castle as completely unique.

There are no other houses around. Nobody to see or hear us for miles on either side.

I shiver, wrapping my arms around myself. It’s pretty lonely out here. I wanted to be away from the world, but this is really far away…

But that’s okay. I won’t be alone. I’ll have Lorne and Ivy and, sometimes, (sigh ) Mrs. Cross.

He’s still waiting for my response.

“I’m stunned.”

Lorne smirks. “Clearly.”

He takes my hand, leading me up wide stone steps into an entryway that yawns like a mouth.

“No electricity yet,” he says, hitting the flashlight on his phone. “That’s the main reason we can’t move in. The rest of it is getting pretty close!”

He sounds a lot more pleased talking about it today than he did yesterday. Maybe the contractor had good news. Or maybe it’s just impossible not to beam with happiness when you walk inside your very own castle.

I’m sure I’ll feel that way, too. Eventually.

Right now, I feel like someone took out all my bones and filled me with air. I’m light and floating but highly unstable. I have no idea where the wind will blow me next.

This is too surreal.

Lorne’s flashlight sweeps across the entryway. This one room alone is bigger than my uncle and aunt’s entire apartment in Lviv. The light glints off a plastic-wrapped niche partway up the wall, too small to be a closet—a space for a statue, perhaps?

It’s hard to see anything in the gloom. The piles of boards and ladders and paint cans are difficult to navigate.

Lorne leads me through cavernous room after room, only a small circle of the tantalizing space illuminated by his phone. He’s describing everything around us—“This will be the formal dining room, up here is Ivy’s room,”—but mostly I have to take his word for it. All I see are shadowy pillars, fireplaces that might be doorways and doorways that might be fireplaces, and my own image jumping out at me from unexpected mirrors.

“I should have brought a real flashlight,” Lorne says. “I forgot how dark it is in here. The workers have a generator…it must be out of gas.”

“Where is everyone?” I ask timidly, not wanting to poke a sore subject all over again.

Lorne scowls. “They stop working every time it rains.”

“Even inside?” I glance up at the roof, confused. It seems intact. Most of the castle is close to complete; some of the rooms are even furnished, though in a jumbled, plastic-wrapped way.

“Oh, they think there’s some flood risk here.” Lorne waves his hand dismissively. “Don’t worry about it; it’s all total bullshit made up by the last contractor I fired. He’s half the reason the work’s not done—he’s been spreading rumors around, trying to scare away my workers.”

“What kind of rumors?”

“Ridiculous nonsense.” When I pause, waiting, Lorne says, “That accidents happened, the site is haunted, the castle is cursed… You wouldn’t think grown men would believe that horseshit. And most of them didn’t, so now he’s come up with the flooding bullshit.”

“…Okay.”

I believe Lorne. But I wish he hadn’t put the image in my head. My mother was a geotechnical engineer, so I have a great respect for flooding and landslides.

And the weather in Grimstone is mercurial. I don’t think I’ve seen a scrap of sunshine since we arrived. Rain is spattering down from iron-colored clouds that boil across the sky.

Inside the castle, the dark is even deeper, the walls thick and the windows high and narrow. I know that’s a feature of Gothic architecture, but I wish Lorne weren’t being quite so authentic. It makes me feel shrunk to a doll’s size, looking up at those small patches of sky.

Lorne seems to know his way, even in the dark. He must come here often to check on the work. Confidently, he leads me down a long hallway with curved walls like a tunnel. Here, there’s no windows at all, and I’m starting to get nervous. Our feet thud dully over the unfinished floor.

At last, we reach a pair of double doors that Lorne throws wide.

“The marital suite.”

He pulls me into the center of a near-circular room. I realize we must be at the base of the unfinished tower—that was the windowless hallway, passing from the main body of the castle into here.

The space feels enormous, the floor under my feet even more hollow. Lorne turns me around, the cell phone flashlight making shadows rear up on the walls like wild horses. I spy yet another fireplace, which I’m sure will come in handy this winter, and a distant bathroom with a glint of a tub. Also, an extremely large bed.

Lorne doesn’t say anything and neither do I, but we’re staring at the mattress where I’ll have sex for the first time in a few short weeks.

With Lorne.

Right now, the bed is wrapped in plastic to protect it from dust. Even the headboard and footboard are wrapped, giving the whole thing a ghostly shroud. It’s…a little creepy.

To me, at least. Lorne grabs me and kisses me with an unexpected amount of tongue, pressing my face between his hands so I can’t move as his wet tongue delves in and out of my mouth.

When he pulls back, my chin feels moist. I kind of want to wipe it off, but that would be rude.

“Does this make you excited to move in?” Lorne says, low and husky.

Uhh…

I look into Lorne’s eyes, dark and flickering in the unsteady light.

Over his shoulder, a void yawns, larger and darker than the fireplace, an inky black deeper than all the black around it.

“What’s that?”

“That,” Lorne says softly, his hands dropping down on my shoulders, “will be your brand-new walk-in closet.”

He propels me closer, steering me like a ship until we’re all the way up to the blank, empty space.

“Want to take a look?”

Lorne’s fingers dig into my shoulders. He’s still holding his phone, too, but pressed against my arm, so it’s not illuminating inside the closet. I can’t tell how large it is inside. Or if it has any shelves.

“Next time.” I swallow. “We need a proper flashlight.”

Lorne’s still holding me by the shoulders. For one sickening moment, it feels like he’s going to shove me inside that ink-black space. My brain plays tricks on me, telling me it’s not a closet at all but an elevator shaft with an endless fall down, down, into the earth…

But that’s ridiculous.

It’s just a closet.

And my fiancé isn’t going to push me inside. He drops his hands to his sides.

“You’re right. Let’s head back.”

Lorne starts striding for the door. He’s still holding his cell phone, pointed at the floor, the light swinging back and forth with his arms. I have to hustle to keep up with him as he cuts a straight path back through the house. I mean, castle.

It’s hard to keep pace with him in the dark, especially as we weave through tarps and ladders, piles of lumber and cans of paint.

Lorne never hesitates.

He seems to know his new home very well.