Page 75 of Enthralled

I close the book gently, unwilling to share it and its contents just now. Instead I smile and tip my head to receive his kiss on my cheek. “Just remembering,” I say.

“Remembering what?” He perches on the edge of my desk and sets aside the plate.

“Not what.Who.” I sigh and look from the cubicle about the open library. “They all feel so near tonight. Nelle Silveri and her wyvern. Andreas and Thaddeus Creakle. Vervain and Umog Grush. Ilusine and Danny and . . . and . . .”

“Oscar,” my husband finishes for me. He takes my hand, his thumb running back and forth over my knuckles. “I know you miss him.”

I sniff and nod. “I do and I . . . I don’t. I miss my brother, the boy I knew. I miss what we once were to each other. I don’t miss the man he became. But I don’t love him any less.” I stroke our child’s sleeping head and release a small sigh. “I wish he could have known little Oscar. I wish he could know that the cycle is broken, that Edgar’s hold on our lives is no more.” I look up at Castien, tears blurring the edges of my vision. “Sometimes I can’t quite recall his face. When I think of him, it’s our little boy I see instead. As though our Oscar has somehow taken over the space my brother once held in my heart. I don’t know if that’s good or bad. It simply is.”

Castien nods his understanding. Strains of distant music sing lightly through the open door, silver and bright, as though written for the stars themselves. Hearing it, my heart lifts once more.

“Dance with me,” my husband says suddenly, holding out his hand.

My lips quirk to one side. “Am Iobligatedto dance?”

He snorts. “When have I obligated you to do anything?”

“Oh, I can think of an occasion or two!” I reply but take his hand. He pulls me up from my chair, wraps his other hand around my waist, and draws me and our sleeping child close to him. Oscar’s fat little rump and my own swollen belly prevent him from pressing me as close as he might like. But he looks into my eyes and smiles a smile that shoots warmth all the way to the deepest places of my soul. I blush and drop my gaze. Then blink in surprise. “Castien!”

“Yes?” he asks with perfect innocence.

“I know I did up every single one of those buttons before we set out this evening. How in the world have they all come undone?”

“Oh my.” He looks down, blinking in mild consternation. “I wonder how that happened? Perhaps I’m cursed.”

“Cursed to perpetual button-slips?”

“Yes. Someone must have gone and bargained something dire indeed to lay such a curse upon me. But what’s to be done?” He catches my eye. “I suppose you’ll just have to suffer it, Clara, my Darling. Do you think you can bear to?”

I roll my eyes. “I suppose I’ll have to find a way.”

He laughs then, his voice echoing up and down the many levels of the library, and whirls me away in the rhythm of that song. If any of the Noswraiths hear him and wake, they watch silently from between the covers of their grimoires and make no move to interfere. For there’s no room for nightmares in this little sphere of existence that holds the three of us. Only dreams.

THE END

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