Chapter 13 #2
But he didn’t reach in. Instead, he let the cauldron settle back and straightened, his attention drifting across the cluttered surface of her worktable. Bottles. Jars. Dried herbs hanging from the rafters. Scrolls. Notes. A mortar and pestle stained with something green.
And one small bottle, sitting unremarkably among a dozen others.
She couldn’t breathe.
His hand passed over it. Hovered. Moved on.
She let out a breath so carefully controlled it barely fogged the air.
“Your home is a disaster,” he said, and the disdain in his voice was almost comforting in its familiarity.
“It’s called organized chaos. Everything has a place. The place just happens to look like a hurricane hit it.” She folded her arms across her chest, careful not to disturb the cut along her collarbone. “You came here to find them, not to critique my housekeeping.”
“I came here because you did not come to me.” He turned to face her, and even without a visible expression, the weight of his displeasure was staggering. “Three summons, witch. I have called for you three times. Each time, silence.”
“I was busy.”
“Doing what?”
Making the thing that’s going to kill your real self.
“Living my life? Tending my garden? Not everything revolves around you, you know. I realize that might be a shocking revelation.”
She watched him process that. It was always a strange thing, watching a fictional entity of near-infinite power try to reconcile the fact that his wife simply didn’t want to be around him all the time.
The concept of being told no was so foreign to him that he had to take a beat every single time it happened, as though his brain—or whatever passed for one—needed to reboot.
Or maybe he was just hurt.
Which also made her hurt.
Which she didn’t want to process.
“You are being deliberately difficult.”
“Absolutely. It’s one of my better qualities.” She smirked at him. “You married me knowing full well what you were getting into.”
Another silence. Longer this time. She could feel something shifting in the room—a subtle change in the temperature, in the quality of the darkness that clung to him. It was the thing she could never quite pin down. The thing that kept her awake at night.
Was it anger? Was it something else?
When he spoke, his voice had dropped to something quieter. Softer. Almost human. “I worry for you.”
Don’t. Don’t you dare do this to me right now.
“Well, you can stop.” She turned away from him, heading to the cabinet where she kept her bandages. It gave her a reason not to look at him. Not to feel the pull of whatever this was that existed between them. “I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself.”
“Your door would suggest otherwise.”
“My door was fine until he kicked it in. I didn’t exactly have time to reinforce it with enchantments designed to withstand a six-foot-something golden idiot with a magic sword.
” She pulled a strip of linen from the cabinet and pressed it to the cut on her collarbone.
It stung. Good. The pain kept her sharp.
Kept her from sinking into the dangerous comfort of his presence.
She felt him behind her before she heard him. The air shifted—warmed—and then his hands were on her shoulders, turning her around to face him. She flinched at the contact, not out of fear, but out of something much worse.
Longing.
God damn it, Sasha.
His clawed hand took the linen from her fingers and pressed it gently against the wound himself. The gesture was so unexpectedly tender that it made her chest ache in a way the cut never could.
“You are still bleeding.”
“It’s a scratch.”
“It is on your skin. That makes it significant.” The way he said it—the absolute, unwavering certainty of it—made her want to either punch him or kiss him. Possibly both. Probably in that order.
But she did neither. Because under her feet, two people were counting on her to keep her composure. To not fall apart. To not give in to whatever this thing was between her and the monster she’d fictionally married.
The monster who was currently dabbing at a self-inflicted wound with all the care of a man who genuinely believed he was helping.
“Thornfield,” she said, gently taking the linen back from him. “The old bridge. East, through the marsh. If you go now, you can cut them off.”
There was no bridge at Thornfield. There was no Thornfield.
Well, at least there hadn’t been. She’d made it up on the spot and could only hope the fiction was strong enough to manifest it.
In a world made of stories, sometimes that was all it took.
Say something with enough conviction and the world bent to accommodate it.
He studied her. Even without visible eyes, she could feel the weight of his gaze like a physical thing. Pressing. Searching. Probing for the cracks in her composure.
“You want me to leave.” It wasn’t a question.
“I want to clean my wound, fix my door, and remake my ruined tea. In that order.” She raised an eyebrow at him. “Unless you’d like to stay and help me with the door. I could use someone to hold it up while I screw it onto the hinges.”
She was betting everything—everything—on the fact that the Dark King would not lower himself to basic bitch carpentry.
The disdain that radiated from him was palpable. She almost laughed. Almost.
“When this is done,” he said, “you will come to the mountain.”
“We’ll see.”
“It was not a request.”
“And it wasn’t an answer.” She met his eyeless gaze without flinching. She’d gotten better at that, too. “Go catch your hero, husband. Leave your witch to her mess.”
A pulse of darkness. A beat where his presence pressed against her like the tide against the shore.
And then, he was gone.
Somehow, Sasha knew…that in that moment, she had sealed her fate. But she knew that was a lie. That she’d just set into motion a series of events that she could no longer change.
“Dundle. Come here, sweetie. I need you for a minute.”
Her little pet rustled out of the rafters with a curious “srrkktch?”
But all of this was a lie. All of it.
She just had to keep telling herself that.
Or else she was going to lose her damn mind, once and for all.