Page 19 of Enthralled

“No!” He grips me again, squeezing harder, as though afraid I’m going to slip away from him then and there. “It wouldn’t be a lie, Clara. It would be the truth as it was always meant to be.”

“So you were going to marry me. Knowing I did not remember. Knowing the version of me you married wasn’t me anymore at all.”

“She was the version of you I wanted all along. The woman I longed for. The woman who didn’t remember . . .him.”

At those words, I wrench my shoulders, twist my torso. To my relief, Danny lets me go, and I back into the shadowed room, resting one hand on my abdomen. “And my child?” I ask softly, though everything in me wants to scream in his face. “Did you know?”

His stricken gaze drops momentarily to my hand. The corset may have cinched my waist, but it cannot fully disguise the distinct thickening already beginning to reshape my body. “I . . . suspected,” he admits. Then he drags his gaze back to mine again. “I thought if I married you, no one would know. You could live your life without that shame, without that burden around your neck.”

My throat thickens. I turn away, press my knuckles hard against my teeth.

“Clara,” Danny persists at my back, his voice painfully gentle. “Clara, it doesn’t make a difference to me. I know how seductive the fae can be. I know what life in Eledria does to a person. I don’t blame you, I don’t judge you. And I swear I will do everything in my power to . . . to love the child. Like my own.” But he cannot disguise the disgust underlying every word. He will never forgive my child for being half-fae. For being Castien’s instead of his.

I wrap my arms around myself, shivering and exposed. Then, setting my jaw, I turn again and face him. Determined to look in his eyes when I speak my next words. “I cannot marry you, Doctor Gale.”

He takes a half-step back. One would think I’d struck him. For a moment we simply stare at one another, the finality of my words heavy in the air between us. Then his lips pull back from his teeth, a dangerous expression. “Don’t say that, Clara,” he says, his voice rough and broken. “What else are you going to do? Move back here and live with Oscar?”

Tears spring to my eyes. I draw my shoulders back. “I cannot marry you, Doctor Gale, for I am already married.”

“What?”

The single word knifes from his lips, sharp and cutting. But I refuse to back down. “I am the wife of Prince Castien Lodírith of Aurelis, bound to him by cords of fate as ordained by the gods themselves. So long as he lives, I am his and he is mine. I cannot and will not take another husband.”

Danny stands rigid before me. Coldness ripples from his very soul, like he’s transformed to stone on the spot. Then he lunges. I catch a breath, raising a hand to defend myself, but he grips it tight in both of his, pressing hard, drawing me toward him. “Give this up, Clara. I beg of you. The gates are broken, aren’t they? That’s what he promised, your Prince. There’s no way back. What does it matter if you are married? He’s an entire world away! What gods would doom you to such a bond? You are here, and you must survive, somehow. I can help you. I can give you more than mere survival. I can give you a place, a purpose, a home. And love. Because I love you, Clara. Now and always, just as I promised from the start. No one will ever know the difference, and—”

“I would know.”

But Danny isn’t about to back down. “It’s not a real marriage! These fae-bindings, they’re nothing but trickery and spells. It’s not real, it’s notchoice.”

Shaking my head I pull my hand free of his and back farther into the room. “You’re wrong. I choose Castien. I choose him now and forever. I will die and be buried in a pauper’s grave before I let you or anyone else make me forget him. Not again. Never again.”

The desperation in Danny’s face breaks into anger like a crumbling mask. “And how will you care for that child of yours? What will you do? Write your little stories? Struggle for publishers? Follow in your father’s footsteps?”

Worthless.

Like a murder of crows erupting in a flurry of feathers, so too do the voices burst in my head.

Worthless.

Useless.

Guilty.

I close my eyes tight, press my fists against my temples. But in the darkness of my head, I see the Hollow Man again, looming so great, his massive chest burst open to reveal the empty darkness within.

You are nothing.

You were always nothing.

I’m coming for you.

I’m coming . . .

. . . coming . . .

“Clara?” Danny’s voice cuts through the storm, sharp enough to draw me back. “Have you heard a word I’ve said?”

I drag a breath into my lungs, lower my hands, and face him once more. “I’ll find a way,” I say, loud enough to drown out the echoes of the Noswraith in my head. “I’ll find a way. I’ll do whatever I must.”

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