Page 34 of Bride of the Fae Duke

‘Yes,’ she managed, feeling like someone else was speaking the words. Her eyes would not leave his face – that sculpted face, chiselled lips and cheekbones, an inhuman arrangement so beautiful it almost hurt to look at it. ‘I know. I promise I know.’

‘Good,’ he said hoarsely, and then again, ‘Good.’

Her breath was quickening. His throat bobbed, but he did not speak again, did not avert his eyes from hers – watching her like a man possessed as the quiet deepened around them, like a starving beggar regarding the bread he couldn’t have.

He should not be looking at her like that.

It took a moment too long for the alarm bells to start ringing, even her panic muffled beneath the roar in her ears. Sweet divines, he shouldnotbe looking at her like that, and she should not have spoken a single word to him, should not have invited him here in the first place …

His hand came up, as if to reach for her.

‘Don’t!’ she gasped.

His fingers froze in midair.

A moment of motionless deadlock as they stared at each other, opposing forces tugging at that hand – the need for his skin on hers against the ghosts of six dead women whispering at them from every corner in this hall, reminding him of their fates, of every life cut short. Just a moment, and then he jerked back his arm, the ice closing in over his face again.

As it should.

She felt the cold of his expression in the pit of her stomach all the same.

‘I should go,’ he said, voice choked as he rose. ‘I’ll see you. Later. Elsewhere. I … I …’

No, her heart screamed.

‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘Yes, you should.’

He’d already started walking.

A dozen long strides, not a word or glance of goodbye. Then the door of the hall shut behind him with a soft, utterly restrained click, and he was gone from the room – leaving her alone with their unfinished meal, his mother’s porcelain, and the weight of that bloody curse pressing down upon her like a shroud.

Nellie sat frozen, staring at the place from which he’d vanished a moment before.

And slowly, very slowly, a decision began to take shape in her mind.

Chapter 12

‘Anne?Anne?’

A dismal groan emerged from beneath the rumpled blankets.

‘Anne, wakeup.’ Nellie yanked the down and linen aside, to be rewarded with an even more miserable wail and an elbow almost hitting her in the face. ‘I have a question for you. It’s too important to wait.’

One bleary eye blinked open, glaring at her with the fury of a thousand hells in the pale morning light. With a tormented groan, her little sister pulled her pillow over her head and garbled something from which Nellie could only make out the wordsawayandmiddle of the bloody night.

‘Watch your language,’ she snapped, tugging the pillow away as well, ‘and it’s clearlynotthe middle of the night, seeing as we’re minutes away from sunrise. Now—’

‘It’s midsummer day, Nell,’ Anne grumbled, finally opening her second eye. In her rumpled nightgown, blonde hair fuzzy around her head, she vaguely resembled a cranky lady’s cat whohad been petted at the wrong moment. ‘Sunriseispretty much the middle of the night.’

‘You’re exaggerating.’ Nellie plopped down on the edge of the mattress, folding her arms. ‘And either way, you’re awake now, so you might as well answer my questions. How does one break a curse?’

Anne stared at her.

‘Come on –you’rethe one who knows all the fairytales.’ It took an effort not to shake her sister. It had taken an even more monumental effort to wait until the first light of day at all; she’d slept maybe two hours, and she was buzzing with energy all the same, with the irrepressible need toact. ‘If someone created that curse, shouldn’t we be able to remove it, too? Pragmatically speaking?’

‘Have you gone mad?’ Anne cautiously enquired.

‘I feel like I’m the only sane person in this household,’ she retorted. Even thewallsseemed to be buzzing. ‘They’ve all been tiptoeing around the matter so much they’ve forgotten to solve it. Can curses be broken? What do the fairytales say?’

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