Page 26 of Ravished By the Revenant

Aldric crosses the room, plants one scarred hand flat on my open notebook, and looks down at me with the unbending expression of a man who has commanded armies.

“Enough. You require air that does not taste of dust, and light that does not come from tallow. You will walk in the garden while the sun remains. Then you will help me prepare dinner.”

I lean back and cross my arms. “Is that an order, my lord?”

“Yes.” No hesitation. Not even a flicker. Then his lips press together, and he blinks. “It is an order I am… requesting. You may refuse. But if you refuse, I will stand here describing in detail everything I intend to cook, and I am told my voice does things.”

My mouth falls open. “Who told you that?”

“You did. Last night.” He pauses, and something wicked passes over his ruined, gorgeous face. “You talk in your sleep, little intruder.”

Every drop of blood in my body relocates to my face at once. He knows something. Does he know? He can’t know. He thinks I was asleep. He has to think I was asleep, because the alternative is that we both know, and I am not emotionally prepared for mutual knowledge.

“I don’t remember my dreams,” I say, with the steadiness of a woman lying under oath.

“Mm.” He straightens, collecting my lunch plate, and heads for the door, and I absolutely do not watch him go. “The garden, Clara. Ten minutes. Wear your boots. Then the kitchen. You are learning to fillet a fish tonight.”

“I know how to fillet a fish,” I call after him.

I do not know how to fillet a fish.

His voice floats back down the corridor, warm and dark and insufferable.

“Then you may demonstrate, and I will watch.”

I look at Shmoo. Shmoo looks at me.

“Not one word,” I tell him and go find my boots.

17

ALDRIC

The garden is gold with late-afternoon sun when Clara emerges, boots laced, hair braided over one shoulder like a rope of spun silver. Schmetterling stations himself between us at once, tail high, the self-appointed chaperone of Blackthorn Keep.

“Ten minutes, you said.” She squints against the light and wrinkles her nose. “That was a lie. This is a whole itinerary, isn’t it? You have a route.”

“I have a route.” I set off down the gravel path between the cabbages. “The grounds require inspection. The fence by the orchard, the beehives, the barn. You’ll accompany me because the alternative is you returning to the library and going blind before supper.”

“So thoughtful. So bossy.” But she falls into step beside me, and the evening breeze carries her scent to me, driving me insane with more success than all these years of loneliness had.

We walk in silence past the potato field, and the urge to hear her speak becomes too strong to fight.

“Tell me about your life.”

She trips over nothing. “Wow. Straight in. No warm-up. What happened to talking about the weather?”

“The weather has been identical for seven hundred years. Tell me about your life, Clara. Before the forest. Before this Marco you keep mentioning.”

She plucks a bean pod off the trellis as we pass, cracks it open, eats the beans one at a time. Buying herself time. I let her have it. Sieges have taught me the value of patience, and she is a walled city if ever I saw one.

“There’s not much to tell,” she says at last. “I never knew my parents. I grew up in foster care. That’s, um… That’s when a child is placed with strangers who get paid to house them. Some of them are wonderful. Some of them treat you like furniture that eats.” She shrugs, but the gesture isn’t smooth, her usual grace missing. “I moved around a lot. Eleven homes by the time I aged out. You learn to pack fast and not get attached to anything you can’t carry.”

My chest tightens around the beating blue shard housed there. I know what it is to watch every attachment leave. I didn’t know a living woman of twenty-some years could already carry the same knowledge.

“And then?” I prompt, hungry for more.

“Then I waited tables in Bern. It’s honest work, decent tips if you can smile at people who don’t deserve it, and I’m an excellent liar with my face.” She flicks the empty bean pod into the compost heap without breaking stride. “Marco came into the restaurant one night. Big party, back room, some ‘business meeting.’” She hooks her fingers into the air around the words, making invisible quotes. “He tipped like a lunatic and looked at me like I was the only thing on the menu, and I know how that sounds, but when nobody’s ever—” She stops and takes a deep breath. “It was flattering. Flowers at my apartment. A car. Trips. I got swept up in it. It felt like being chosen, and I’d never been chosen for anything.”