Chapter 29
Twenty-Nine
WE DEPARTED BEFORE DAWN on stolen horses.
It was Moira’s idea. The real owners, she said, were probably dead and had no need of fresh horses.
I was too drained to argue. Raleigh retired to his coffin before the sun had begun to glimmer on the horizon.
He said it was to preserve strength, but he wouldn’t look at me as he spoke.
‘It’s not you,’ Moira told me. We were pressed side by side on the driver’s seat as the horses rattled along.
The winking sun glittered on the cusp of the mountains, sending streaks of pink through the dim sky.
Moira picked at a bundle of pastries she’d stolen on the way out.
The sugar was doing wonders for restoring her strength.
‘This whole situation is hard for him. He needs time to process.’
I knew she was right, but I still couldn’t shake the idea he was annoyed with me.
‘What was all that about a vial before?’ she asked.
I groaned and explained everything. The wall of blood, the control the Queen had over the court. Moira listened until I was finished, then stayed uncharacteristically silent while she thought.
‘I don’t think that’s how it works,’ she said after a time. ‘She’s his sire. Can’t she control him anyway?’
‘That’s what she told Raleigh.’
‘And you trust her?’
I hated that I couldn’t refute her.
‘What are you planning to do with it?’
‘I already threw it away,’ I lied. ‘I thought it might throw her off our scent.’
Moira snorted. ‘Well, that worked.’
We stopped shortly after daybreak to let the horses drink from a stream and to attend to our various human necessities.
I kept to the shade. It was a cold, clear day, teetering on the cusp of winter and the way the chill in the air mingled with the harsh sunlight made me feel feverish.
Moira offered me the last of the pastries, but I refused.
My stomach was still twisted in knots after the events of last night, and the thought of eating made me feel ill.
Enrique emerged groggily from the carriage.
I offered the next shift to Moira, who flatly refused.
She would never have admitted it, but I knew she was too on edge to sleep.
Despite the glaring sunlight, she had refused to disarm herself and was clinking with more silver weaponry than a Linford prince at his investiture.
‘Go sort out whatever’s going on with you and Raleigh.’
‘I’m fairly certain he’s asleep.’
‘Wake him up, then.’
I should have protested harder; she needed to rest more than I did. We might have had matching wounds, but I was suffering none of the effects that plagued Moira. Secretly, I was glad she was well enough to turn down a sleeping shift.
By the time we started moving again I was wedged on the seat beside Raleigh’s casket, blinking rapidly to adjust to the dark.
If he was awake he didn’t show it. The lid of his coffin remained stubbornly closed, though the carriage was so dark it would have been perfectly safe to come out.
After a time I lowered myself to the ground and lay down beside him, curling up against the solid wood.
‘What are you doing?’ Raleigh’s voice was muffled from within.
I took a page out of his book and ignored him until he rose from the coffin to glare down at me. ‘I can’t sleep when you’re brushing against the chest like that.’
‘Don’t sleep, then,’ I said, echoing Moira. I sat up. ‘I want to talk to you.’
‘Can’t it wait?’
‘I don’t want to die with you angry at me.’
He reeled back, stunned. ‘I’m not angry at you.’
I raised my brows. ‘Aren’t you?’
He opened his mouth. Closed it. He sighed. ‘I don’t understand why you’re so determined to die for me.’
This was why he was avoiding me? I wanted to laugh in relief.
‘Do you really not realise?’
‘Realise what?’ he asked. ‘You stole from the Queen, Clara. You must have known she’d kill you for that when she found out.’
Of course I did, but it hadn’t mattered in the moment. Now it mattered even less. ‘She wanted me dead anyway. At least this way she can’t control you.’
‘What makes you think my freedom could possibly be worth more than your life?’ The trace of loathing in his voice wasn’t aimed at me, and it made my heart ache to know he held such hatred for one I held so dear.
‘I told you at court.’ I rolled onto my knees and steadied myself against the rim of the coffin.
He didn’t move, peering down at me through his lashes, his lips gently parted. ‘What did you tell me?’
‘I meant it.’ I took a breath. ‘I never lied to the Queen.’
I leant forward, and when Raleigh didn’t pull away I closed the rest of the distance between us.
A muffled noise escaped his throat as our lips met.
He cupped my chin, drawing me closer, until a sudden jolt in the carriage broke us apart.
Even then his hands remained, thumbs tracing my cheekbones, staring as though he was trying to burn the scene into his retinas to hold for eternity.
‘Do you really mean that?’
‘The Queen pulled the flimsiest excuse out of thin air to make sure you couldn’t uphold your deal with her. Do you really think she would have bothered if she thought I was lying?’
He screwed his eyes shut, then pressed our foreheads together. ‘I meant what I said too. More than anything.’
My heart clenched. ‘You meant what you said when?’
He pulled back, confusion marring his features. ‘At court,’ he said. ‘What are you thinking of?’
I rolled away from him, pressing my palms to my eyes. ‘I don’t understand you at all.’
He laid one hand on my shoulder. ‘I need you to understand, my rejection of your advances has had nothing to do with my feelings for you.’
‘I don’t mean that,’ I said. I understood that much. I certainly couldn’t fault him for rebuffing my advances knowing what he’d been through at court. ‘But you said yourself that even when we are alone this is all an act.’
‘Clara—’ He faltered. ‘I’ve been in love with you for months.’
I forgot how to move. ‘What?’ I didn’t know how to process this surge of emotion. ‘When?’
‘When you chose to come back with me in Orlfen,’ Raleigh said.
‘Or at least, that’s when I realised. When we first met I was so taken with the lengths you went to protect your baker, I would have given anything for someone to feel the same way about me.
Then I wanted it to be you who felt that about me.
’ He splayed his hands. ‘And then it actually happened.’
‘Then why did you— That night in your tower. Why did you say you would pretend to love me when we were alone?’
‘I panicked. I realised there was nothing I could do to protect you and it was the last thing I could think to do that might drive you away.’ He blinked. ‘I thought you knew that.’
‘No,’ I choked. ‘What about after that? You told me you had to lie to the Queen.’
‘I never said that.’
‘You did.’
‘I’m fairly sure I didn’t say anything.’
I ground my teeth together. He was right. He hadn’t said anything. He’d stayed silent and let me fill in the gaps, only I’d filled them incorrectly. His silence hadn’t meant she couldn’t tell that he was lying. It meant he wouldn’t be lying.
I had never met anybody as infuriatingly terrible at communicating as him.
‘Why didn’t you tell me the truth?’
He clenched his teeth. Looked away. ‘No one’s ever stayed after I told them how I felt. After everything I did to push you away, I didn’t want my love to be the reason you left.’
The desperate ache that had been brewing inside me welled to the surface. He was mine, as I had always been his. He was mine. And he always had been.
I felt like I had everything in the world, except for time.
‘How long does it take for vampire venom to leave a human’s system?’ I asked.
Raleigh tensed. ‘A few hours. If you didn’t sleep it off, it’ll be out of your system by now. Why, what’s brought this on?’
‘Because I still want to touch you.’
He laughed, and the sound was perfect. He captured my lips in reply. My mind was whole now and there was no one to pretend for. We could worry about the Queen catching up to us later. For now, there was only me and him, and the time we had left.
I tangled my fingers in his hair and kissed him with the full intensity of my emotion.
This time there was nothing soft about it.
Another noise spilt from his throat, something small and needy that sent my whole body aflame.
I broke away only long enough to climb into his lap, my knees pushing up against the padded sides of the casket, our chests flush against each other.
He drew me back to him and kissed me like I was the only thing tethering him to the earth.
The carriage jolted again, jerking his hips up into mine, allowing me to feel the full reality of his desire against my burning core. It was my turn to cry out. I rocked back against him, searching for friction while his roving hands sought out the ties binding me into my dress.
Fabric pooled into the coffin. We climbed out and onto the floor where there was more room for two.
And then we were together again. I ran my hands down his chest, trying to memorise every moment.
The way his stomach hitched when my fingers grazed his nipple, the breath that pushed past his lips when my hands roamed ever further. The groan he made as my palm met flesh.
‘Enrique can probably hear us,’ Raleigh whispered against the dip of my collarbone. I could feel the brush of his fangs as he spoke.
‘Then let’s give him something to hear.’ I gave him a light squeeze and he went still, his whole body growing taut beneath me. His eyes looked past me, staring deep into somewhere no longer in this time.
I froze. ‘Raleigh?’ I whispered.
He blinked himself back into reality, then gave a shaky smile.
‘We can stop,’ I said.
‘I don’t want to stop.’ He guided my hands away and kissed my knuckles softly. ‘I just … I think I need to lead.’
My heart jolted. Of course. After every lewd jab hurled his way by the court, I should have realised what this moment would mean for him.
I climbed off him and let him lower me onto the floor in his place.
The carriage lurched again and suddenly we were both on the floor, his full weight pinning me down.
‘You really couldn’t have waited to confess somewhere that wasn’t moving?’
I didn’t reply. There was no use stating the obvious; he seemed to realise it himself when my hand cupped his cheek. How could I wait when there was no guarantee we would live past nightfall?
He dipped his head and kissed me until I’d forgotten we were on borrowed time. The carriage melted away around us. There was only us, the feel of his lips, his skin. His searching hand as it roamed ever lower, touching, searching.
‘May I touch you?’ he whispered. He said it with a teasing smile, but I knew he needed the answer.
‘Touch me however you want.’ I pushed his fringe away from his eyes. ‘And stop whenever you need to.’
The sudden chill of his fingers made me gasp, then groan when I realised he wasn’t going to make this easy.
He drew light teasing circles of torment with his fingertips, never pressing hard enough to give me what I needed.
I writhed, trying to increase the friction, but he anticipated my every movement.
My mind was already slipping. I knew I wouldn’t last long when he made real contact. But I needed this. I needed him to be my undoing.
‘Raleigh,’ I groaned.
‘What do you need?’ His voice was low, every syllable dripping with a hunger that betrayed his feigned innocence.
I closed my eyes, humiliated that he would make me say it. ‘Touch me properly.’
‘How?’ I could hear the smirk in his tone, feel the ghosting of his fingers. I bucked my hips, grinding against his hand in protest, eliciting a deep sound of amusement.
‘Tell me,’ he murmured. ‘How do you want me? Like this?’ He slid one long finger inside, warmed from my own slickness. I gasped at the suddenness of it, the rightness of it. At the unbearable pleasure of knowing it was him. ‘Or do you want all of me?’
A second joined the first and they curled as one, pressing into my walls, coaxing me ever closer to oblivion.
‘You,’ I gasped. ‘Always you.’
Raleigh withdrew slowly, leaving me empty and desperate, then positioned himself.
He lingered there, eyes roving my undone form, looking like the devil himself carved from marble.
I searched him for the hesitation from before, but he was fully present this time, the evidence of his enjoyment pressing firmly against me.
He caught me looking and kissed me again, swallowing the question he knew I’d ask, then swallowing my moan as he inched his way inside.
‘You’re so warm,’ he whispered.
He was not. I could feel the full coldness of him with every movement, as if he were made of glass instead of flesh.
But I was the one who was made of glass.
With every stroke of his hips, I felt fractures spreading out under my skin.
His elegant, terrible hands pressed spirals into my mound, shattering my hold on reality.
I could feel him crumbling too in the growing pace of his thrusts, the way he stopped breathing as my own breath grew erratic.
His whole body trembled. My name fell from his lips, so that when his eyes fluttered shut I knew it was me he saw behind his lids.
‘Raleigh,’ I whispered back. I took his face in both hands, ‘I love you.’
His expression was enough to make me shatter around him. He let out a strangled cry, meeting me at the peak of my pleasure. On the edge of my consciousness I could hear him whispering an echo of my own words again and again, staccato cries punctuated by each wave of his pleasure.
He buried his face into the crook of my neck and was lost.
We stayed tangled in each other for some time, me catching my breath, him catching his sanity. When he finally peeled himself away, Raleigh looked drunk. His red lips and mussed-up hair sent a ripple through me I didn’t have the stamina to match.
‘I wouldn’t have waited so long if I’d known it would be like that.’
I shoved his shoulder playfully. ‘You wanted me to hate you.’
‘I still can’t believe you don’t.’
I ached with the loss of his weight, but he was only gone long enough to extract my shift from the pool of long-forgotten clothing.
‘Here,’ he said, pushing it into my arms. ‘You’ll catch your death of cold.’
I didn’t feel cold, though it was barely warmer than freezing outside. All I wanted was to sleep. I laid back on the floor, drowsiness taking me, and wanted to cry when Raleigh laid down beside me, a protective arm coaxing me into his chest.
‘Are you comfortable?’ he asked.
‘Not even slightly.’ But the last thing I wanted to do was move. I buried my face in his chest, warmed by his presence despite the chill of his skin, and let the carriage rock me into a sleep like death.