Chapter Twenty-Eight #3
Looking caught in a dream, he lifts a wet lock of my hair from my forehead.
A spark seems to travel from his touch down my spine.
The blanket slips off one of my shoulders, leaving my collarbone bare.
I could easily pull it up again, but I don’t.
I watch his eyes fall to the raindrops glistening on my bare skin.
My mind is a hopeless snarl of threads, nothing making sense.
“You come in here like a summer storm,” he says softly, “and you change everything. Why? What drives you?”
“I can only be what I am.”
“And what are you?”
Traitor. Spy. Puppet. The acidic truth tingles on my tongue.
Conrad is but a touch away. A tilt of the head.
A lean. A raised hand. He could be mine.
I feel it in this moment, as surely as I have ever felt anything.
But if I close that distance between us, giving us what I can no longer deny we both want .
. . and then, when he finds out all the secrets I’ve been keeping and sees me for what I truly am . . .
His hand drops from my hair, instead trailing up my sleeve, then, hesitantly, his fingertips brush the bare skin of my shoulder. A shiver of heat runs down my back, and I gasp a little. That small touch threatens to set fire to every ounce of resistance in my body.
So what if I have secrets? a traitorous whisper asks from the back of my mind. So what if he learns them? Let the future sort itself. Live for this moment.
He waits, as if wondering how I will react. If I will pull away or tell him to stop.
I don’t.
Instead, I tilt my head, my cheek brushing the back of his hand. My eyes never waver from his. I wait for him to make the decision I am too terrified to make, knowing if he does, I will be helpless to resist.
“Rose,” he breathes warningly, as if he weren’t the one who started this.
He was the one who kissed me, down in the realm of faeries.
Thinking of that night brings a flush of heat to my middle, and my gaze lowers to his mouth.
My reason unravels more quickly than I can gather it up.
My guilt gives way to longing. The need to touch him pulses through my body, a physical, primal ache so strong it makes my chest hurt in a way no spell ever has.
“Well?” I whisper. “What is it you want, Conrad?”
He doesn’t have to speak. His hungry eyes say everything. He leans forward and brushes his lips against my throat, and my breath, my heart, my very thoughts all stop—
“By the Fates!” squeals a voice.
We rip apart. I hadn’t realized how close we’d been until Mrs. MacDougal bursts from the kitchen, a lantern swinging in her hand.
“Look at you! Come inside at once! You’ll catch your deaths of pneumonia. Mad, mad creatures!”
Before either of us can speak, she tugs us into the house, shutting the door. Then she pulls me further away, her hand too tight for me to believe she is merely concerned about my health.
“Now you go upstairs, lass,” she says, her eyes boring into mine, “and dry yourself off. Then straight to bed, lest you catch cold. Riding off into a storm, what nonsense! Ach!”
“Good night, Rose,” Conrad says, his voice ragged. He is flushed and wide-eyed, watching me with an intent expression.
With another warm shiver, I plod up the steps, thinking the best thing for me now would be a dash of cold water to my burning face, and I hope the basin in my room isn’t empty. But then whispering from the kitchen catches my ear. I stop where I am, holding my breath.
“. . . is not your concern, Mrs. MacDougal.” Conrad’s voice is as brittle as ice.
“I’m trying to help you, lad. That girl is trouble. I don’t trust her. Something about her just doesn’t add up. She disturbed the peace of this house, as if she had a right to it. I have it on authority she broke a vase and hid it in a bureau!”
“A vase? Really? That’s what all this is about?”
“Someone has to shake some sense into you! What are you doing, lad? You can’t get distracted. Not now, with the Briar King rattling the windows.”
“You think I don’t know that?” Conrad’s tone is hard. “I’ll do what I must, as I always have. But when do I get to be happy?”
The ensuing silence stretches so long I begin to pull back, fearing they suspect me of eavesdropping.
But then Mrs. MacDougal says in a low, weary voice, “I know your passions are getting the better of you, just as I know she is the cause of it. Remember where your duties lie, and remember—no one from the outside can be trusted.”
“Aye, I know where my duties lie, and I know I’ll never experience anything of the world beyond this moor.
I’ve accepted that, with all the misery and frustration that goes with it.
But I want to do what brings me joy, just for once, and maybe Rose makes me happy.
In any case, it’s not your decision to make, ye ken? ”
The kitchen door slams shut; I can hear Conrad’s heavy footsteps as he storms away, off to his wing of the house. Mrs. MacDougal sighs and begins moving toward the stairs. I gather my skirts and flee as silently as I can, my cheeks burning.
That girl is trouble.
And the worst of all, the words which had pricked my heart like poisoned thorns: Maybe Rose makes me happy.
Back in my room at last, I sink onto the chair by the low, flickering fire and wrap my arms around my knees. My heart is tumbling against my ribs, and my skin is feverishly hot.
I hear his footsteps as he walks down the hallway, and I hold my breath, heart pounding, when he pauses at my door. Will he knock? What will I do if he does? Invite him in?
Don’t knock, I think. Then, No, please do.
But he moves on, footsteps receding, and I press a pillow to my face and scream into it.
Closing my eyes, I feel the hungry warmth of his lips on my neck; I envision his eyes poring into me, heat and energy rolling off his skin and crackling through my hair.
I’m falling in love with him.
My cheeks flush, the heat of the room suddenly too much to bear. I go to the window and throw it open, pushing my face into the cool night air. I draw in the rain-washed scent of the moors and stare at the glimmering stars marching across the horizon.
On the edge of the windowsill, crimson as blood, rests a single strawberry.
I pick it up with trembling fingers and turn it over. A bite has been taken out of it, and the wound leaks red juice onto my fingertips.
I hurl it outside, watch it disappear into the darkness, then lean weakly on the sill.
“Just a coincidence,” I whisper. “He doesn’t know.”
But I can’t make myself believe it. Does Lachlan have some way of watching me? Did he see me moments ago, ready to surrender to my treacherous desires? To become the trap he meant me to be?
Lachlan sent me here to be Conrad’s undoing; and even knowing that, I’ve let myself fall for the laird. I thought I was so careful, so clever, and all the while, my heart was betraying me.
I can’t do this anymore.
I’m tired of sacrificing more and more of my soul just to keep my magic.
I thought I could complete my task and leave Conrad out of it, that somehow I could still keep separate these two threads.
But what a fool I’ve been; for all this time, they’ve been tangled together, and every time I looked at him, heard his voice, that knot only pulled tighter.
Despite all the lies I told myself, I cannot possibly pay my debt to Lachlan and protect Conrad.
I have to choose one or the other.
Another storm is rolling in. The sky to the east is as black as spilled ink, and I hear another sweep of rain approaching, like a herd of wild horses thundering over the moor.
I grip the stone windowsill and shut my eyes, feeling the vanguard wind howl through my hair and grip my dress in its teeth.
I know then, in that cold wind with the shadows prowling the room behind me, what I must do, what I should have done from the beginning, the very moment I first felt a spark flicker within me when Conrad fixed me in his tiger gaze.
It’s the only thing I can do, and the only way I possibly walk away from this with my soul still intact.
I must leave this place and never return.
I must break my contract with the faerie king.