Chapter 20 #3
And from the shock on Raleigh’s face, I knew the conversation was over.
I rolled onto my knees and began heaving armfuls of pillows off the bed until there was space to lie down properly, glad for the excuse to hide the crimson seeping into my cheeks at my boldness.
The blankets were another issue altogether.
There were so many layered, one on top of the other, that I thought I might suffocate if I somehow found myself submerged in them.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Going to sleep.’ I peeled away the topmost layers and folded them neatly on the settee beside Raleigh. He tracked my every movement, like a deer about to run. ‘The sun will be up soon, and I’d like at least some sleep tonight.’
‘Just like that?’
‘I wouldn’t want you to have to keep up the pretence any longer,’ I said, not bothering to keep the venom out of my voice.
Raleigh clutched the blanket and said nothing.
‘Goodnight, Raleigh.’
I slipped between his sheets, nestled against his pillow and fell to darkness so quickly I never heard his reply.
I jerked awake some hours later, my pulse racing as though I’d had a nightmare, but the dream faded into obscurity the moment consciousness drifted back.
Under the stifling heat of Raleigh’s blankets I let the events of last night wash over me, the clarity of morning making me feel sticky with regret.
I should never have tried to tell Raleigh how I felt. He was three hundred years old; if he was capable of love, how could I be deluded enough to think the brief time we’d known each other was long enough for him to feel anything?
Raleigh hadn’t moved from the settee, but he had fallen asleep.
His left arm draped down, fingers skimming the floor.
It looked wrong. There was no peace painted across his sleeping face, nor the slight frown of a man beset by troubling dreams of recent regrets.
His expression was blank, lifeless, and his chest lay still. He wasn’t breathing.
Suddenly, I was sixteen years old again, waking in my aunt’s cold bed.
I was ten years old, too stubborn to tell my mother I loved her.
Raleigh was dead. And I knew that, I’d always known that, but I’d never really processed it before.
When he was awake and animated he looked like any other man – if a peculiarly beautiful one – down to the steady rise and fall of his chest. He didn’t need to breathe; he’d told me before he only did so out of habit.
In sleep there was no need. No air passed through his lips.
I rolled onto my back, trying to ignore the corpse. It was just Raleigh. This was normal for his kind. No one had stolen up here to slay him in the night. But every time I stole a glance in his direction I saw my aunt.
‘So you really are undead?’ I mused. He didn’t respond, dead to the world in every sense of the word.
If I checked his pulse, what would I find?
It had never come up in all the books I’d read – his heart had long since stopped beating – but I knew he could bleed.
Surely there would be something, the slightest flicker, a tremor, something to suggest that there might be life dwelling within.
Something to remind myself this wasn’t like the other times.
I swung both legs free of the bedcovers and tiptoed to Raleigh’s side.
My fingers found his throat and nothing more.
His skin was smooth but cold, with no life pulsing beneath.
I readjusted my fingers, searching in vain for the faintest flicker.
There was nothing; no life in him at all.
Just cold, dead flesh. Until he inhaled sharply.
His arm darted out like a snake, his nails digging hard into my hand. For a moment he was a wild thing: unrecognisable from the unflappable prince I’d come to know. With a jolt I realised he still wasn’t breathing normally, but not because he was asleep, nor because of his condition.
Recognition glimmered. He held tight, staring intensely as sense crawled back into his eyes. Then his fingers uncurled from around my wrist. His breath returned, and he turned his head away. ‘Get off me,’ he echoed.
I snatched my hand away, heat searing across my cheeks. ‘I had no intention of—’
‘After last night, you of all people—’
‘I thought you were dead!’
If I’d thought he looked dead before, it was nothing compared to how still he went then. ‘I am,’ he said.
My cheeks began to burn. ‘I know. But I’d never seen you like that before and you …’ I took a steadying breath. ‘I’ve lost too many people not to double-check.’
He shuffled into a sitting position and reached for my hand again, his thumb tracing a searching line across my knuckles. Eyes locked with mine, he raised my fingers to his neck once more, this time allowing me to feel for the pulse I knew wasn’t there. ‘What do you feel?’
I could feel the vibrations as he spoke, the subtle shifting of muscles tensing and deliberately unfolding. But there was no pulse. There didn’t need to be.
‘Life,’ I said. I let my hand drop.
He didn’t let go. ‘At court …’ he started.
Stopped. His fingers twitched. ‘Forgive me if I’m in the habit of anticipating the worst.’ His words had a sharp bite to them, but his tone had softened, his voice once more lilting in the sardonic way that had so irritated me when we first met.
It shocked me how relieved I was to see that tone return.
‘What happened to you, Raleigh?’ I pressed.
He removed his hand from mine.
‘You have to tell me.’
‘I’d rather you hate me for keeping secrets than pity me for telling the truth.’
‘Then I’ll find somebody who will,’ I said. I knew I was in the wrong here, but I no longer cared. I’d nearly died last night, and if I didn’t know what to expect at court, I wouldn’t be so lucky next time. I stood, hoping that would be enough to sway him.
He remained where he was, stubbornly barring my exit. ‘Moira won’t tell you, and Enrique doesn’t know.’
‘Lukas does,’ I said, holding his stare.
‘Lukas tried to kill you.’
‘He made an offer first,’ I said, ‘and I imagine it would still be on the table if I came to him willingly.’
‘Oh, stop it,’ Raleigh snapped. ‘We both know you’re not going to bargain with Lukas, and you can save me the condescension of thinking I’d believe you would.’
‘Then just tell me,’ I cried. ‘How could you think I would pity you? You abducted me. You stole me from my fiancé. You started a famine that turned my father into a monster. You killed my mother, no matter how good your reasoning was. And after all of that I still want to help you.’ My whole body shook against the urge to cry.
‘Surely there can be nothing so pitiable as that.’
Raleigh’s silence stretched on eternally.
‘Tell me, Raleigh,’ I said, one final time.
Raleigh braced himself. ‘Sit down,’ he said. And when I did, he began to speak.