Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
I don’t know how much time passes.
At first, I wander the room, hunting for something I can fashion into a lockpick, or for a forgotten, hidden passageway that might grant me an escape.
But beneath the gilt and gaudiness, the chamber proves oddly sterile, the furnishings restricted to a bed and wardrobe and table. And a chamberpot, which is inconveniently fashioned from ceramic and therefore useless for trying to smash open the door with.
Every drawer I search is empty. Aside from the wedding dress, the wardrobe proves bare, too. It’s as if the place was scoured clean before being repurposed as a prison. Probably by Ramses himself, because anything that might grant my luck a foothold has been removed.
Only another Charm could find every last bauble and leave me with no advantage. His luck has clashed with mine and emerged victorious.
I manage to sleep a little, dreaming fitfully. Some time later—it’s morning again, I suppose—the duke strides in. When he sees me hunkered in the corner, still in my yellow dress, he shakes his head and promises to check again tomorrow.
I turn my face away as the door closes. My throat burns. Time stretches, endless and taunting.
After another hour or five, I try the door. I jiggle the handle a thousand times, until someone on the other side shouts at me to give it a rest. I have a guard, apparently, which comes as no surprise—even with four deadbolts keeping me in, I am a Charm.
But my luck can’t conjure opportunity from nothing, and no matter how many times I wrench the door handle, it refuses to give. I throw my body against the wood until bruises bloom on my shoulders.
That doesn’t work, either.
Briefly, I consider using the candle to torch the place, but without any windows, I can’t see how I’ll get out of here alive. I’ll probably asphyxiate before anyone even smells smoke.
So I retreat to the bed, where I huddle among the sheets and think about Weston. I consider how close I came, how my outstretched fingers brushed against happiness, if only for a moment, before losing hold again.
The agony of it nearly stops my heart. Yet thoughts of him are the only comfort I have. My throat is a fiery chasm, begging for relief, and to distract myself, I weave stories in my mind. I construct scenes from some imagined life together, an alternate reality in which Weston and I never had triquetras.
If only it were real. If only we’d come into this world unMarked.
Then I could’ve been happy. I could’ve been ordinary .
I could’ve been married by now .
As the hours swell and my body drains of moisture, desperation hatches inside me, then grows like a monster. First, it gobbles down the stories I spin. Then, my dreams. Lastly, it swallows any hope that Weston might come.
He’ll try, maybe, but his curse will keep him from succeeding. He’ll only have a chance if he gets close enough to this room to cancel his curse, which is probably impossible, for a Null.
My stomach gnaws on itself. My throat ignites, and my threadbare hope burns to ash in the fire.
The second time the duke visits, his brows crinkle. He’s...frowning, I think. I try to piece together why, but my brain has grown sluggish, my body unresponsive. I lay sideways on the bed and stare, unable to find the wherewithal to lift my head.
“Hmm,” he says. “Tomorrow’s probably your last chance. I suggest you think long and hard about whether your pride is worth dying for.”
He leaves me alone.
I drift.
Some time later—a minute or a year—a woman slips into the room. At first, she appears in stolen snatches, stalking around the edges of my vision. Every time I turn my head, she disappears.
But soon, she grows bolder. She pads through the shadows on quiet feet, licking her lips and crooning about escape. She promises freedom from this room, from the body that’s rapidly failing me. From my very existence.
Death, I finally realize. That’s her name.
I angle my face away. “Leave me alone.”
She chuckles from the shadows, sultry and knowing .
I sleep, and when I wake, I’m alone again. Alverton’s command fills the silence, spreading like an inkstain on my mind. I fall into endless ruminations about what I’d die for, whether it’s worth never seeing my family again. Weston.
Fortuna help me, Weston.
His name is a scar across my heart. Because if I don’t give in, I’ll die here, in this room. In this bed. I’ll have already laid eyes on him for the final time.
But if I do surrender, I’ll have a chance, at least. I might spot a head of golden hair from a distance, maybe even run into Weston in town.
At the realization, my resolve wobbles. I’m dangling from a cliff by my fingernails, and one by one, my desolation pries them loose.
Because I’m not him, to look death in the face and snarl in welcome. I’m just me. Bria Radcliffe. The Charm, soft and coddled and delicate.
And now, as I lay dying, I prove it by capitulating. Inch by inch, I yield.
I break.
Fortuna help me, I don’t want to die.
With my last shreds of strength, I haul myself from bed. My legs barely work and my arms weigh more than the rest of me combined, and I fall three times on my way to the dress. Everything hurts. I can barely tell up from down.
I crawl the last few feet. My half-dead fingers snag the dress’s hem.
Finally, a bit of luck, because the gown slides from the hanger as if leaping into my hands.
I manage to get my yellow dress off. That takes an hour. I put the wedding dress on. That takes two .
I pass out.
When I regain consciousness, panic sets in. Maybe I’ve missed my chance. I have no idea what time it is, what day it is...
What if the duke has come and gone again?
A sob rips from my abused throat. More follow on its heels, but my tortured body produces no tears. I don’t have the water for it. I barely have enough energy to drag myself to the door, where I collapse in a tangle of white brocade and nerveless limbs.
Another year crawls by.
I wait. I float. I fade. I fall.
At long last, the door cracks open. I squeeze my eyes shut, recoiling from the hallway’s too-bright light.
The duke’s boots scuff against the carpet.
“Please,” I say. My plea comes out brittle and cracked, like a dry branch breaking in the heat of summer. “I’ll marry you. I want to.”
“I know,” he says. “Even if you didn’t, I would’ve come for you anyway, Birdie.”