Chapter Five #4
He sighed. ‘I am not so divorced from the feelings of mortals that I can’t see you’re having second thoughts. If you would like a way out, I’m willing to strike a deal with you.’
I narrowed my eyes. I’d be a fool to agree outright. Bargains with the devil always end in his favour, regardless of the outcome. ‘Why?’
‘Because I want you to want me.’ He stepped closer and raised his hand to my throat. One icy finger trailed upwards along my artery. My pulse thundered against his touch. ‘Whatever is the point of an unwilling bride?’
‘I’ll never want you.’
‘Give it time.’ For a moment I thought he might kiss me, but he stepped around me, bracing his hands upon my shoulders.
I felt him bow his head, his lips a hair’s breadth from my neck.
His breath tickled my skin. I hadn’t expected him to breathe.
The dead weren’t supposed to breathe. ‘We have nothing but time.’ He did kiss me then, a chaste, light press of his lips to the edge of my throat.
There was little passion to it, and yet my body was aflame.
Rage, disgust, violation. Horror at what that kiss promised if only I would surrender everything to him.
‘I’d sooner die.’
‘Well, yes, that’s the offer.’
My heart stopped, his words falling into place. ‘You’re planning to …’ I couldn’t say it. Couldn’t comprehend it. I couldn’t— he wouldn’t—
This is what marriage meant to him. It was suddenly so obvious.
A vampire would not take a human bride. Why would they need to?
An affair would suffice to indulge the fleeting beauty of youth without needing to contend with the inevitable inconvenience of ageing.
All this time I had been worried that my life was about to end, while he was making plans for an eternity of darkness.
Raleigh studied me for a long moment. ‘You didn’t know.’ He finally released me, not seeming to notice as I pulled away, putting as much distance between us as I could.
‘I can’t imagine anything worse.’
‘Nor should you. But you’re still young and beautiful. We’ll see how you feel when that starts to slip away.’
He said it so carelessly that I was caught off guard.
I’d never thought of myself as beautiful.
Yann was the only one who had ever told me I was, but he’d only said it when the mood was right.
When time was slow and there was nothing but us and a love so overwhelming it consumed all reason.
Raleigh didn’t say it for flattery. He wasn’t being romantic, or trying to coax me into bed.
He said it like a fact, plain and simple.
One that – as was clear from his expression – he hadn’t thought could possibly have an impact on me. But I was struck rigid.
He spoke again. ‘I do understand your hesitation, of course. Which brings me to our deal.’
‘I’m not making a deal with you.’
‘You should hear my offer first,’ he said, eyes glistening. ‘Unless you’d prefer to marry me tomorrow.’
I ground my teeth. ‘What do you propose?’
Raleigh took a long time to reply. His lips formed words that never left him, again and again until he found the right shape he wanted to use. ‘I’ve grown tired of the restrictions of my curse.’
I frowned. ‘You don’t wish to be a vampire?’
‘What good does it do me? Strength is a virtue for a soldier, but battles are fought in daylight. I have immortal life, but I’ll burn if I ever feel the sun’s warmth. I am beautiful, but I cannot see my reflection. Don’t make that face. Do you deny it?’
I couldn’t. He was beautiful. I’d simply never heard a man describe himself that way.
‘Unfortunately I’m unaware of any feasible cure for one in my predicament. So here is my proposition. Help me find a cure before the year is out and I will give you your freedom. However, if I am still afflicted on the eve of the new year, we shall wed and be united forever.’
‘Why not step into the sun and save us both the effort?’
‘I don’t want to die,’ he said. ‘I want to live, even if that means dying in time. So long as I am cursed, I can never truly be free.’
‘You want to be free to live as you wish?’ I asked dryly. ‘Goodness, I can’t imagine how that would feel.’
To my surprise Raleigh stilled. For the first time it felt like he was really looking at me, not as a mouse on a string but as a woman.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, and in those words I caught a glimpse of the man behind the prince.
He vanished as soon as the last syllable left his lips, and then the Raleigh I knew returned. ‘Let me make this worth your while.’
‘You cannot,’ I said. ‘If I live with you for a year – a week – I’ll be disgraced.’
‘Please, Clara,’ Raleigh scoffed, ‘you’ve been disgraced for years.’
I flushed. ‘It’s a different disgrace to share a bed with a monster.’
‘You’re not sharing my bed.’ I didn’t know whether to be grateful for or appalled by his disgust. ‘But do you really think your baker would care either way?’
No, I didn’t. Or I hoped he wouldn’t. Yann had made it clear enough he would stand by me come what may, but I didn’t want to test him by spending – in his view – the best part of a year in bed with the devil who’d made him an orphan.
Raleigh mistook my silence for agreement. ‘If he’s truly that fickle, he should be reminded that he’s a baker, not a duke. But you need not worry. When this is over I’ll set you up with whatever you need to live comfortably, husband or no husband.’
‘Those means no longer exist in the valley.’
‘My reach goes beyond the valley.’ He held my gaze a moment, then tore it away. ‘Five thousand gulden a year.’
I blinked. ‘What?’
‘Your reward, if you free me from the curse. I know I’ve shattered your prospects if the baker’s boy doesn’t wait, but maybe this will help. You don’t have to stay here. It’s enough to set yourself up anywhere.’
Five thousand gulden. It wouldn’t buy me a palace, but I would be more than comfortable with that sort of money. I could rent the home I dreamed of in Salzburg, and there would be enough left over for books if I so chose – assuming there was no husband for Father to pay out my dowry to.
‘Those are my terms,’ Raleigh said. ‘Free me of my curse before the end of the year and you will not only be free but you’ll want for nothing for the rest of your days. Fail and you become my bride and pledge yourself to me for eternity. Do you accept?’
I was under no illusions that his offer of immortality would be a gift. Everyone dreamed of eternal youth, but the immortal before me spoke of it as a curse. I would never starve again, my face frozen in time, and I would never again walk under the sun. Never again be reunited with those I’d lost.
He wasn’t giving me a choice, just as before. He had me regardless. So what was the point of all of this? Was he really offering freedom, or was this simply a distraction meant to placate me?
‘Why not a full year?’ I counted the remaining months on my fingers. ‘Eight months is barely any time at all.’
‘The end of this year marks fifteen years since I returned to the valley, but more importantly the end of the century, and that comes with … certain obligations I don’t expect you to understand.
’ I could tell he was skirting around the full truth.
‘I would very much like a bride at my side when that time comes.’
‘And you expect me to agree to eternity with you just because you’d “very much like a bride”? You don’t even know me.’
‘I expect you to find me a cure,’ Raleigh said with a smile that was far too forced to be charming. ‘Whether or not you succeed is up to you.’
He had no intention of explaining himself any further, that much was clear.
I couldn’t think what could possibly happen on the anniversary of his return to Rostenburg that would justify forcing eternal life on me.
Unless that was simply an excuse. From the start, I’d understood that our ‘betrothal’ was some sort of punishment for my father.
Maybe that was all this was, and having a bride on his arm at his anniversary was a happy coincidence Raleigh wanted to take advantage of.
No. He was smarter than that. I was smarter than that. All of this tied together somehow, but he was never going to give me enough rope to allow the ends to meet.
Did it matter? Eight months was time enough for me to think of a real plan. And slim as my chances were, if I really could cure him, no one else would have to die by Raleigh’s hand. We would never again have to worry about the prince on the hill.
But that wouldn’t be enough to save the people I loved.
I was in a position that no one in Orlfen had found themselves in for the last fourteen years.
For the first time, I had something Raleigh von Rostenburg would give anything for.
Why he was so desperate for a bride didn’t matter to me.
What mattered was that he seemed to be willing to trade anything to have me.
Five thousand gulden a year was enticing, but Father had money. What we needed was water.
‘If I agree to this, I want something from you now.’
‘Anything,’ Raleigh said.
I took a breath. ‘Destroy the dam. If you do it now, there might still be time to sow the ground before summer.’
Raleigh hesitated. ‘I can’t reach Orlfen without the dam. I’d have to take the mountain road, but if the glacier is melting—’
‘I don’t care. That’s my condition. If you destroy the dam I will do what I can to save you, and if I fail, you have my word that I will be your bride. But unless you do that, I will never accept you as a husband.’
Raleigh squeezed his eyes shut. ‘All right,’ he said, wincing at his own words. ‘I’ll destroy the dam. And on the final day of the year, we will be wed or I’ll be human.’
Furious with myself, I held my hand out to him. ‘It’s a deal.’