Page 29 of Ravished By the Revenant

“Don’t tell him,” I warn Shmoo, who’s draped over the good chair like a discarded fur stole. “He’ll do the smug eyebrow. I can’t survive the smug eyebrow.”

The worst part isn’t the dead end. The worst part is that somewhere between the fish lessons and the tea with forget-me-not cups and the notes signed —A, I stopped counting days. Yesterday I caught myself humming while setting the table. Setting his table. Like a woman with a routine. Like a woman who lives here.

I shove back from the desk hard enough to make Shmoo’s ears rotate. There’s one thing in this castle I haven’t examined, and it’s the actual scene of the crime.

The goblet.

I find Aldric in the kitchen garden, shirtsleeves rolled, tying tomato vines to stakes with twine, and I ignore the forearm situation on principle.

“I want to see the goblet.”

He doesn’t even look up. “No.”

I cross my arms. “That’s it? No?”

“Shall I say it in Latin? You’ve been studying.” He knots the twine and moves to the next vine. “Non.”

“Aldric.” I plant myself in the row, between him and his tomatoes. “It’s the only physical evidence of the curse. The witch touched it. The souldust was in it. If there’s a clue anywhere in this entire castle, it’s in that cellar, and I’ve read everything else.”

“Then you have finished reading, and there is nothing more to find.” His jaw works. “The goblet is not safe.”

“It’s a cup.”

“It is the cup that unmade me.” Now he straightens, and his full height is such that it blocks out the sun. “Schmetterling licked its dregs and has been a menace for three hundred years. I drank from it and became this.” He turns his palm up, showing me the naked fingerbones, the missing flesh, like a merchant displaying wares. “The dust could still be in the goblet. I will not have you breathing it, touching it, standing in the same room while it decides what it wants from you.”

“I’m not going to drink from it, I’m going to look at it⁠—”

“No.” He steps around me and crouches at the next vine. Conversation over, apparently. Court dismissed.

Something hot crawls up the back of my neck.

“You know what I think?” My voice comes out level, which surprises me. “I think you don’t want me anywhere near the one object that might actually explain how I got in here, because if I figure it out, I figure out how to leave.”

His hands stop on the twine.

“Careful,” he says, his voice low.

“Or what? You’ll confine me to the castle? Oh wait.” I spread my arms at the garden, the walls, the whole gorgeous terrarium. “Every time I find a thread, you cut it. The gate, no. The curse, hopeless. The goblet, forbidden. You keep saying you won’t force me, but you don’t have to force me, do you? You just have to make sure every door stays a wall.”

“I am protecting you⁠—”

“You’re keeping me.” My voice becomes shriller with every word. “Honestly? You’d probably love it if that thing turned me. One lick of witch dust and boom, matching revenants. I could rot right here next to you forever. Problem solved.”

The garden goes silent. Even the bees seem to stop flying around us.

Aldric rises slowly, and the look on his face... Not angry. Wiped clean of any expression. For a moment, the only movement is the glint of the shard in its socket, and when he speaks, his voice is so quiet it makes my heart ache.

“You believe I would wish this on you.” Not a question. “This body. This… permanence.”

While a part of me wishes I could take the words back, the bigger part, the cornered-animal part, doubles down.

“I believe you’d take me any way you could get me. Isn’t that what I want everything from you means?”

“Clara—”

“Forget it.” I’m already moving, my boots crunching over gravel, my throat tight and scratchy. “Enjoy your tomatoes.”

I make it through the garden door, down the hallway, up the grand staircase, past the smug 1817 portrait, my pulse hammering the whole way, when I hear him behind me. He’s not running, because warlords don’t run, but those long strides eat distance like it’s on a two-for-one sale. I reach the master bedroom door with my hand on the iron latch when his fingers close around my arm.