Page 27 of Ravished By the Revenant

Schmetterling weaves between her ankles, and she nearly falls into the rosemary. I catch her elbow but release it the moment she’s steady. Her terms. My hand aches with the memory of her anyway.

“Did you love him?” I make myself ask.

“No.” No hesitation. “I never loved him. I told myself I would, eventually, like love was a package that got delayed in shipping. And by the time he proposed, there were people around us, and his mother had already picked the venue, and everyone was clapping, and I realized saying no wasn’t—” She clenches her teeth. “It wasn’t on the menu. So I said yes and felt sick about it every single day after. The regret just kept chewing on me. And then he brought me here, to Germany, for another ‘business meeting,’ and I climbed out of a bathroom window. And then I ran until I found your castle.”

We have reached the orchard fence. I brace my hand on the top rail and test it, though the rail needs no testing. I simply require something to grip that is not this woman or the throat of a villain I cannot reach.

“He asked you to be his wife with witnesses,” I say slowly. “To ensure your answer.”

She breathes out through her nose. “Yeah.”

“In my day, we called that a hostage negotiation.”

Clara laughs—a short, surprised bark of laughter. “That’s what I called it too, actually.” Then she looks at me sideways, wary and warm at once. “You’re not going to say something possessive now, are you? Something like no man will ever pressure you again, for you are mine?” She drops her voice an octave for the impression. It is not flattering. It is not entirely inaccurate.

“I was going to say he is a fool who mistook a wolf for a doll.” I push off the fence and continue toward the hives. “But now I will say nothing, since I am apparently a caricature.”

“You do talk like that, though.”

“I talk like a man educated by monks and murderers. Consider the material I had to work with.”

She laughs again, freer this time, and jogs a step to keep pace with me. Schmetterling trots ahead and leaps onto the low stone wall by the hives, supervising.

“Okay, your turn,” Clara says. “Fair’s fair. Tell me about your childhood. Baby Aldric. Tiny warlord. Did you conquer the nursery?”

I check the nearest hive, listen to the drowsy hum within, and consider the question. It’s like being asked to describe a country I visited once, briefly, in fog.

“It was seven hundred years ago, Clara.”

She blinks. “So? You remember the witch. You remember the start of your curse.”

“I remember it the way you remember a knife going in.” I straighten and look out over the orchard, apples blushing on the boughs I have pruned for centuries. “My childhood is… a haze. I recall a wet nurse’s song, but not the words. A gray horse. My father’s hand, though whether it was raised in blessing or blow, I could not tell you. Likely both, and often. The rest wore away.” I shrug, and I realize a moment too late that I mimicked her fake casualness. “It’s not important. The boy died long before the man did. Neither is worth excavating.”

Clara watches me with those violet eyes, and she doesn’t push, which is somehow worse than pushing.

“Fine,” she says after a moment. “Then answer me this one, because it’s been driving me insane.” She points at the wall. At Schmetterling, who pauses mid-wash, one leg extended above his head like an indecent ballerina. “Him. He was in a kid’s drawing from—what, a hundred years ago? You said he started collecting his fish tax from you in 1740. Cats live, like, fifteen years, Aldric. Twenty if they’re spiteful. How is Shmoo immortal?”

“Ah.” I look at the cat. The cat looks at me with the insolence of a creature who has outlived every last thread of my patience. “The goblet.”

“The goblet,” Clara echoes.

“The one the witch poisoned. Laced with souldust.” I lean against the wall beside the beast, and he deigns to bump his skull against my knuckles, once, before returning to his leg. “After that night, I could not bear to look at it, but neither could I bring myself to destroy it. Evidence, I suppose, or penance. It has been locked in the cellar stores with the dregs still in it. One day, a kitten appeared in the keep. No one knew whose. He was found in the cellar, in the stores, sitting beside the goblet, cleaning his whiskers and looking profoundly pleased with himself.”

Clara’s mouth falls open. “He licked it?”

“We can only presume. The residue was gone, the kitten was there, and the kitten—” I gesture at him, “—remained. And remained. The servants aged, and he did not. It was the only explanation any of us could conceive. Believe me, we conceived many. Konrad’s grandfather was convinced for a decade that the cat was the witch herself, returned to gloat. He crossed himself every time Schmetterling entered a room.”

“Was he? Is he?” Clara peers at Shmoo with sudden suspicion. Shmoo yawns at her, enormous and entirely unbothered.

“If he is, then the witch has spent hundreds of years demanding trout and sleeping on my clean shirts, and I confess the vengeance is effective,” I say dryly.

Clara laughs so hard she has to sit down on the wall, and Schmetterling, offended by the seismic activity, pours himself off it and stalks toward the keep. She wipes her eyes.

“So he’s a revenant cat. He’s your curse-brother. You have a soul-bonded familiar and you named him Butterfly.”

“I did not name him. A servant girl named him, when she was six, because he chased one across the entire garden and fell into the well.” I offer Clara my hand without thinking. She looks at it, then takes it, and lets me pull her to her feet, and neither of us mentions the terms, and neither of us lets go quickly. “Come. The light is failing, and you owe me a demonstration.”

Her face scrunches up. “A demon—oh. The fish.”