Page 77 of Bloodgrove

“You are smiling as though nothing happened,” he said as he followed her. Perhaps he should speak to her about the attack or the Red Hand, but he couldn’t resist the pull inside his chest or the fever in his cheeks. He longed for a few unblemished minutes.

“I love snow.” Elodie gathered up her red velvet skirts with their white pearl embroidery. She looked as though winter were overtaking the blood, or—as Will realized with a pang—as though it were making way for a wedding gown. As though she were washing away the blood and would emerge beneath it pure, white, and innocent.

They reached the bridge, broad and solid as it spanned a narrow inlet of the sea, connecting the castle to the mainland. The ocean roared softly below, and although darkness seemed to surround it, the path remained easy to see. Snowy nights were never truly dark.

Elodie tipped back her head, extended her tongue, and closed her eyes. She knew exactly how she looked. Snowflakes melted upon her pale skin and caught in her black lashes. Her tongue beckoned, pink and pointed, twitching slightly whenever ice landed upon it. Will’s pulse quickened, and his fingers dug into his pockets. Hesitantly, he took several steps toward her. Snow crunched beneath his boots, and his breath formed white clouds.

“Oh, Will,” she sighed, opening her eyes and turning their silver upon him. “That was the final ball before everything ends.”

“Is it all worth it?”

“We will discover that in the end.”

Will twisted his mouth. With a glance over his shoulder toward the castle, he kept his distance, perhaps because of unwanted observers or because he did not trust himself. He wanted too badly to reach for her, draw her back to him, and hold her as he had before. He loved it when she was this relaxed.

“Thank you for saving me,” he said instead. Even what he had done tonight would not repay that debt for a long time.

Elodie was the one who crossed the distance between them and stopped before him, gazing up with glittering eyes. “I am not finished with you yet, William Frank.”

Carefully, he lifted a hand and brushed a snowflake from her cheek. “Do not look at me with those eyes…”

“How should I look at you?”

A spatter of blood still clung to her eyebrow. She was an iridescent creature he could never entirely grasp, whose depths remained hidden from him. Yet he longed for the reckless adventure of discovering another facet of her every day.

“I dream of you,” Elodie whispered. The thick snowfall softened the roar of the waves. “Sometimes I feel so lost, and then I ask myself, what would Will do? As though you were my compass.”

Will swallowed. They stood so close that the clouds of their breath mingled.

He should have warned her that he had never found his own true north, that he drifted just as aimlessly as she did. But for someone like Elodie, perhaps his small star in the sky was enough.

Her brows drew together as she wrestled with her own dark thoughts. “Hold me. Only for a little while.”

“Here?” Again, he looked over his shoulder, but the snow hung like a curtain between them and the lights.

It was too risky. Her fiancé was somewhere inside the castle and could appear at any moment. But Will could not resist. Over the months he had spent in Bloodgrove, his moral compass had rusted beyond repair.

Carefully, Will placed his hands upon her narrow waist, the velvet seeming almost to strangle it. His thumb moved in small circles, and he gently drew her closer until she wrapped her arms around his neck.

“Elodie, you should not think of me as your compass. All my thoughts lead in forbidden directions.”

She smiled. “Perhaps you are right. Ever since I saw you hanging half-dead in those chains, I have wondered whether rejecting you was a mistake. Whether the ending is worth denying myself the time we have before it comes.”

Will frowned. “But you are getting married…”

“And still, you were the one who came to help me. My little clan.” She smiled wistfully.

She could not know what those words did to his heart. They were the wind filling his sails and carrying him out onto dangerous waters. Yet he was more at home there. For a rejected child, it was more than he had ever allowed himself to hope for.

“Elodie…”

“Thank you, Will. For everything.” She nestled more closely against him. “But I mean it. I should have realized it after the harbor district, but when I saw you walking through the crowd tonight… coming to save me…” She pressed her lips together as though trying to hold back the rest of the words. “Did you not say there was so much you could show me without endangering my virginity?”

“So, another evening of mistakes?” he whispered.

She smiled, and nothing of the stern duchess remained in her gaze. “Let us begin with one evening. Then another, and another, until the full moon rises again.”

Will swallowed his disbelief. Was this not what he had hoped for? He could ask for no more when he would return to the Capitol after the New Year’s ball. This was already far more time than he had dared to dream of. He did not look back toward the castle or toward the narrow bridge high above them between the towers.