Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
T hat voice.
I open my eyes. Or try. My dried-out lids stick to my eyeballs, and I have to force the movement. On the third attempt, my lashes part with reluctance.
I find myself face-to-face with black boots.
I roll onto my back, my gaze traveling up over black-clad legs. Next comes a black shirt that laces at the neck. Then a mask—black fabric, framing amber eyes that slowly fill with horror.
The most beautiful eyes I’ve ever seen.
“Jack,” I croak. “It’s you.”
“Birdie?” he bleats. “What happened to you?”
Such a surplus of emotion crushes my insides that I pass out again.
When I come to, it’s in snatches. Weston is carrying me, I think, because my head lolls and my ankles bob. The world flickers. I glimpse a door with four stout deadbolts, a keyring jammed into its bottom lock. A long, decadent hallway. A man lying on the carpet, beaten senseless, his face too bloodied to be recognizable—my guard, probably. Whoever he was.
Then we’re in a dim, cramped stairwell, some back passage intended for staff to use.
“What did he do to you?” someone is saying, over and over again. The voice sounds enraged, and yet it’s safety. It’s love. It’s home.
“Starved me,” I say. “No water.”
Darkness comes for me again.
Only—no, we’ve just gone outside, because when I blink, stars hover overhead, peering at me with concern.
“I’ll kill him.” A world of fire roars inside Weston’s words. “He’ll die for this.”
“No, don’t. He’ll...” Fortuna, every syllable strips my throat raw. “Just leave it alone. Your curse. He’ll hurt you.”
Weston swears, then sets me gently in the gravel and disappears into the darkness. I cry out and reach for him, but he’s already back, propping me up, setting something against my lips. Cool, sweet life trickles into my mouth.
I gasp. Then gulp. I guzzle every last drop and ask for more.
“We have to get out of here,” he says, low and hurried. “And that’s all the water I have, but we’ll get you more. Can you stand?”
I try. I fail.
“It’s okay, it’s okay.” I think he’s crying now. Someone is. Maybe me. Then I’m being hoisted and gripped, maneuvered into a saddle. I slump, devoid the strength to hold myself up, but in another moment, he’s behind me, clamping me close.
We’re moving. Thank Fortuna. My eyes flutter closed.
When I open them again some time later, something has changed. Some hint of vitality glows at the crux of me, planted there by the water I swallowed. When I flex my fingers, they obey. I wiggle my toes. Those work, too.
I’m...alive, it seems. I’m still here.
The steady rhythm of hooves beats beneath me. A comforting wall of muscle buttresses my back, and I lean into it, mindful, even now, not to touch him directly.
Weston’s arm flexes tighter around my waist. His lips press against my hair. “I have you. I’m not letting go. You’re safe.”
“How long?” I rasp.
“Two and a half days.” His breath feathers against my ear. “The worst two and a half days of my life. And that’s saying something.”
A choked sound jams in my throat. A laugh or a sob—I can’t tell. “What time is it?”
“Two o’clock in the morning.”
The night smears past, a chilly tableau of blue shadows and pulsing stars. Pines whisper to one another, but nothing seems as real as Weston does. He spurs the horse onward, eventually swerving off the road and into the woods. Branches glide from the darkness as he guides our mount through the underbrush.
Before long, we emerge into a clearing. A pool shimmers in the moonlight, as round and shining as a fallen coin.
An exultant cry builds inside me. Water. All the water I could possibly hold. My whole body strains, every inch of me curving toward it. Reaching.
Weston slides from the saddle and lifts me down, his grip strong and sure at my waist.
No sooner have my feet touched earth than I’m staggering toward the pool. When I reach it, I splash straight in .
“Birdie, wait.”
I don’t. It’s bitterly cold but I don’t care—I cup my hands and drink. Icy liquid cascades down my throat. It pours over my chin and chest, soaking my dress, rejuvenating my senses.
Weston crashes into the pool with me, his grip catching me around the middle just as I sag. He lets me drink until I’m sated, then hauls me back to shore. We collapse on the grassy bank, where he pulls me across his lap, careful to keep his acres of black fabric between us. He hugs me to his chest and rocks me.
I cry.
I break to pieces and let him catch me, because it all pours out at once—the horror, the fear, the utter helplessness of being locked up and treated as chattel. As less than human.
As a thing.
“I’m sorry,” Weston whispers fiercely. His gloved hand strokes my hair while sobs wrack my body. “Curses, I’m so sorry. I should’ve gotten to you sooner. I tried to, Birdie, I swear it. I tried and tried and tried. So many things went wrong, but I just kept going, because I knew that once I got to you, it’d be all right. Only it isn’t, is it? Not really.”
“You came, though,” I choke out between tears. “You’re here. We’re together.”
“I know, but...if I’d been any later, if my curse had interfered any more than it did, you might’ve?—”
He cuts himself off, as sharply as if he’s chopped the sentence short with a cleaver. After a long moment, he says, “Alverton didn’t hurt you in...other ways, did he? Touch you?”
I know what he’s asking. “No. Nothing like that.” My tears soak his shirtfront. I sniffle and lift my head, my emotional outpouring finally at a close .
The necessary layers separate us, but he’s so near, this bulwark of grit and security. His hair curves down over his forehead, as pale as spun gold in the moonlight. As I gaze up, he tugs off his mask and tosses it into the grass, then sets a gloved hand against my cheek. “I’ve never wanted to kiss you more than I do right now.”
Goddess, I wish he could. But I know he can’t, and I’m so drained that I just lie in his arms, soaking up the promise of his embrace.
His eyes never leave mine. “Do you have any idea what you mean to me?”
“No,” I whisper. “Tell me.”
He sucks in a raggedy breath. “Do you remember the day we met?”
“Of course.” I could never forget. “I was in the library. Reading.”
“Yes.” He forces a grim smile, and I crush the urge to reach for him. I have to be content with this, with being held like this. I promised him.
“You were in the armchair,” he says, “with a book. Sitting sideways, with your feet kicked over the arm. No shoes. It was the chair in front of the window, I think, because sunlight was pouring in, collecting in this pool around you. It was like the world was sending me a message. Lighting you up. Demanding I pay attention.”
I search his face. I don’t remember that. The day we met was gray and rainy, I’m sure of it. I’d only taken refuge in the library because my usual reading spot, the one out on the back terrace, was too waterlogged and drippy to use.
“The funny thing is,” Weston continues, “I walked into that room hating you. ”
He must feel me stiffen, because he makes a soothing sound. “I know, I know, but hear me out. I walked into that room hating you, because Brendan had warned me in advance that he had a Charm for a sister. And I figured I knew you. The whole time he and I were walking out to your house, I couldn’t stop thinking about how easy you’d had it. How life was just one big party for you, while I was stuck with the bits no one wanted. You were about to be the only Charm I’d ever met, and I felt like you’d stolen something from me, on some personal level. Like Fortuna had taken my luck and given it to you, before we were even born.”
A squeak emerges, the front end of a protest, but Weston shushes me. “I know. I was an idiot. Because when I walked into that library and saw you, my whole world came undone. You probably don’t remember, but you swung your feet down onto the carpet and sat up straight and looked at me. And I’d worn my collar open that day. I’d made sure to, because I wanted you to know, right away. I wanted you to look at my Mark and see how dangerous I was and hate me the same way I hated you. Only it didn’t happen like that. You looked at my triquetra, and then at my face, and you... smiled . This big, open thing. And...” Feeling chokes his voice. “Fortuna’s curses, no one had ever done that before. Smiled at me like that. It was as if you were glad to see me. Like you’d been waiting , only nobody had ever waited for me, not with joy. Not with welcome. I didn’t even know what that felt like until you smiled and some side of myself I’d never even touched before just...burst into existence. And that was it. I was yours. I fell in love with you in less time than it took you to blink. Even though I knew from that first moment that I could never have you. ”
A fresh volley of tears pricks at my eyes, even though I’ve cried them all out. The smile I gave him, I do remember, because I had been waiting. I just hadn’t known it until I laid eyes on him and a jolt of recognition ran through every cell. I’d glimpsed my future in the starkly beautiful lines of that face, and even his Mark had made perfect sense to me. Because of course Fortuna would send me someone who would grant my deepest, most private wish. It would be just my luck.
Only later had I realized it wouldn’t be that easy.
“The point is,” he says, “I would’ve done anything for you right then, and it’s still true now. And...I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I didn’t get to you sooner. I’m sorry I didn’t stop you from getting taken in the first place.”
Air carves deep into my lungs. I want to tell him none of this is his fault, but I know he won’t believe me, and I don’t have it in me to argue right now. So I just stare up, waiting for whatever comes next.
“He’ll come after you again, won’t he?” he says quietly.
“Alverton?”
“Yes. No matter where I take you.”
A despairing sound rises in my chest, but I shove it back down. “Yes. He had a Charm. A man he hired to find me. Someone whose luck outmatches mine. It might take a day or two, but he’ll track me down again.”
His jaw hardens. “Then I’ll marry you. Right now. Tonight. Alverton’ll have no choice but to give up his claim.”
I grimace. “He won’t, though. He said he’d come for me regardless. That I was bought and paid for. Because it’s my Mark he wants, really. Not a wife.”
Weston goes quiet, his eyes slicing shut, his whole body quivering with some repressed emotion. When he looks at me again, he’s calculating. I can sense his accountant’s mind juggling probabilities, slotting them into place, coming up with some answer only he can see.
“Then I’m taking you home,” he says.
“What? To Pine’s End? Brendan will only?—”
“No.” The word is final. Steel-cut. “Home. Our home. The cabin.”
Wonder wakens somewhere inside me. Our home . “But the duke.”
“It’s all right. It’s going to be all right. I’ll make it all right.”
I don’t dare ask what he means. I just breathe, strength seeping into me as the water in my belly finds its way into my desiccated limbs. “Okay,” I whisper.
In another moment, he’s gathering me up. I tuck my head against his shirtfront, breathing him in as he carries me back to the horse, which stands tall and patient in the moonlight.
Goddess, Weston smells like everything I thought I’d lost. Amber and warmth and... safety.
Without a word, he helps me up into the saddle. This time, I actually manage to swing my leg over, and then he’s behind me, his thighs bracketing mine as he wheels the horse around. His arm settles around my waist, pulling me against his layers of fabric.
When we reach the road again, Weston turns north. Pines sprawl in every direction, but even in the starlight, I recognize a few of the landmarks we passed the day he stole the duke’s carriage.
Three boulders, heaped together in a mimicry of a sleeping ogre. A tree, split down the middle by some long-ago lightning crack .
Two bushes that look like foraging chickens.
Weston guides the horse between them. On the other side, a dirt track awaits, which leads us to the same clearing he stopped the carriage in.
A light appears through the trees, beckoning.
As we draw nearer, Weston crushes me close, squeezing the breath from my body. Or maybe that’s just my own anticipation, because something is about to happen. I can feel it looming.
Once that door closes behind us, everything will change.
And I don’t ever want to go back, once it does.