“Yes,” he confirms and his face twists in anguish. The look on his face is at odds with how handsome he is yet somehow he still makes it look pretty. He’s the model for broody and sexy, the tortured soul, or whatever it was that I was reading about in a book last week. Jaak makes any fictional hero seem woefully inadequate.
“I don’t see the problem here,” I tell him.
His eyes cut to me and he shakes his head. “Meadow, no. That can never happen. I told you before.”
“And I told you before, I want you exactly the way you are.” I reach up and run my fingers through his hair and then along his jaw before I cup his face. “I don’t care how it is. Monster. Man. You’re mine just as much as I’m yours. I might be your anchor but you’ve been that for me for years.”
His hand comes up to cover mine. “That was different.”
“Not really. I was lost in a hellscape of memories that I couldn’t escape and you kept me sane. How is that any different than what we have going on right now?”
He smiles, the lift of his mouth makes his lips brush the corner of my hand. It’s such a gentle touch. It ignites the hunger and need in me that already existed before the potion made its debut.
I move my hand so I can brush my thumb across his bottom lip. “I want you without this glamour you put on for me. I want the real you.”
He shakes his head the way I know he’s going to so I lean forward and kiss him before he can tell me why what I’m askingfor is a bad idea. It’s a slow and sweet kiss. Not at all like what we had on the bench yet somehow the sweetness of it makes me want him that much more. I smile at him when we break apart and then turn back to my meal.
“You can say that it’s not a smart idea all you want but it’s inevitable,” I tell him, cutting into my chicken and spearing a potato.
“You are stubborn,” Jaak says.
“Don’t I know it.” We eat in companionable silence for a few minutes and I look around the kitchen keeping an eye out for any more surprises it might have in store for us. “When you said the house might have thought it was being helpful by giving us the potion, what did you mean?”
Jaak pauses, his potato laden fork right near his lips and without missing a beat says, “We are newlyweds. The house may have interpreted our lack of consummation as something that needed to be remedied.” My mouth drops open but Jaak doesn't notice. He eats his potato and keeps on talking. “The magic here is old, it also doesn’t feel like anything the mages used to summon me. It may be from a tradition that pushed it to intervene.”
“Intervene so we’d…” my voice trails off and I grab my water glass, not to take a sip but to press it against my forehead.
“Yes,” Jaak says. “Consummate the marriage. Intimacy is vital.”
I nod and press the glass to my neck. I’m getting hotter by the second. This damned potion is making my body go haywire, and right in the middle of my seduction plan, too. “I wouldn’t know, but I’ve heard,” I say as I reach into my glass for an ice cube. I press it to the back of my neck and drop my head forward with a relieved moan.
“Oh, that’s so much better.Yessss.”
There’s a cracking sound beside me and I lift my head to look around. “Did you hear that? I think the house is back at it again.”
“It wasn’t the house,” Jaak grits out.
“What do you mean? How are you sure?” I put my glass down and move to get out of my seat. I think I just saw the door move. Maybe the house is up to mischief in the hallway? “I think the house is scheming again. Stay there I’ll go-”
“It was me. Not the house.” Jaak’s words sound pained, slow, like he barely managed to get them out.
I freeze. There's a shift in the air that feels dangerous. It reminds me of when I went to the Founders’ Circle on my wedding night and realized everything had been a terrible lie, but that night was supposed to be my undoing with Roy taking my life. I swallow hard as the ghost of the knife he held to my neck comes to life, it burns hot and sharp, it feels like Roy cutting me all over again. The cut he managed to get on me is healed over, but it's still there. Tender to the touch when I press my fingers to it when I’m alone. I don’t know why I do that, it can’t be normal.
I know it’s not normal.
I do it to remind myself it happened. That I’m still alive and breathing and this isn’t just some fairytale dream my brain conjured up in my dying moments. It could happen. As much as Charlie swears I don’t use my phone for anything useful, I do. I read about what could happen to the brain in the last moments of life, how it releases chemicals to make dying easier. Sometimes people hallucinate from it. Given my track record, why wouldn’t my brain make up a reality like this?
Instead of letting me just die, I’m trapped in a waking dream that could end at any moment when my brain finally stops firing. My hands shake and my legs feel weak. Is that what’s happening right now? Why everything feels weighty and dangerous?
“Meadow.”
I jerk at the sound of my name. It doesn’t sound beautiful anymore. Fear spikes in my chest. I freeze when Jaak and I make eye contact. He’s not sitting anymore, he’s standing and in his hand there’s a broken piece of ceramic.
“What-” I start to ask where in the blazes did the ceramic come from when I see the corner of the island counter beside him is…gone. I look from the counter to the ceramic in Jaak’s hand. “Why did you break it?”
“Listen to me very carefully, Meadow.” Jaak’s hand shakes and he drops the ceramic. It hits the ground and cracks into a dozen pieces that skitter across the floor. I take a step back when one hits my shoe.
“Jaak, are you okay?”
