EIGHT DOGS STOOD PANTING IN THE SNOW OUTSIDE THE PALACE gates. They
were as large as wolves but thicker, their coats a fluffy white beneath the heavy leather harnesses that strapped them not only to one another but to a strange iron contraption.
“Is that a sled?” Blythe’s voice was breathy as she approached it. A few of the dogs snuffed at her legs, and she gave one a gentle pat on a head that was larger than her hand, before it resumed its panting.
“It’s the same idea as a carriage,” Aris answered, taking Blythe’s wrist and steering her inside. “Only this one is pulled by dogs bred to withstand the snow. I’ve been meaning to bring you, though we never had the right excuse.”
“I’ve never seen such a thing,” said Elijah as he circled the contraption, inspecting it while Aris observed with an easy slant to his shoulders.
“My family has been practicing the sport for ages,” Aris told them both. “We’ll be perfectly safe.”
Blythe hardly cared for such assurances. Even if he told her that there was an accident on this sled just yesterday, that wouldn’t have quelled the excitement buzzing through her. She gripped the sled’s edges, wondering how to control these hounds—and where Aris’s sled was—when she felt the press of his body behind her. She startled as she felt each and every line of him against her. The hardness of his chest. The steadiness of his thighs against her hips, bracing her.
Good God, why couldn’t she breathe? She tossed her head to steal a sideways glance at him, wishing at once that she could stomp on his foot
when she saw the upward slope of his lips.
“Relax,” he whispered as several servants checked the sled over, taking great precaution as they strapped the two into one tiny, hopelessly cramped sled that had them pressed even closer by the time the servants were done. Blythe wasn’t sure how that was physically possible, but even breathing felt scandalous.
“You could at least act like my touch doesn’t repulse you,” Aris whispered against her ear, raising gooseflesh across her skin. “We’re married. There isn’t a single person here who doesn’t believe that you and I have been significantly closer than this.”
Oh, how she wished she could curse the blasted stuttering of her heart. She managed to grit a sharp “Is this necessary?” between her teeth, whispering so that her father would not overhear.
“Only if you care to have your father see that I am an exceptionally caring husband who shows his daughter a delightful time.” He curled his fingers around her hips, so close that Blythe felt each of his words hot against her skin. “Do not sabotage our agreement. Act like you like me, or you’ll ruin everything.”
Was it her imagination, or was his voice huskier than normal? Probably it was her imagination, for her mind was in another place entirely when she felt the press of his fingertips against her hips, stirring particular… feelings inside her. She swallowed the lump in her throat, certain that she was flushed from head to toe as she offered her father a quick wave.
“Are you certain you wouldn’t like to join us?” she asked out of desperation, biting back a groan when her father nodded, that curious glint still in his eyes.
“I’m certain that it’s time for me to retire,” Elijah told her. “But I’ll be eager to hear about it over breakfast.”
This time when her father walked into the palace, he looked so much more at ease than when they’d left it earlier that day. Aris sent the attendants with him, which left just the two of them and a choir of panting dogs beneath the glow of a rising moon.
When they were alone, Aris reached around Blythe to simultaneously grab the reins and toss a thick blanket around their shoulders. Then he pulled out two pairs of the most absurd goggles and ignored her protests as he forced a pair onto her eyes before slipping on his own.
“You look ridiculous.” She scowled, readjusting the eyewear.
“Be quiet and hold on to the blanket,” he commanded, and Blythe barely had the chance to grab hold while hissing at him not to tell her what to do before he gave the reins a snap.
The dogs shot to attention, tongues lolling and their excitement close to bursting as they took off at a sprint. Blythe slid back from the jolt of it, though given how cramped the space was, there was nowhere for her to go but against Aris’s chest.
Icy wind whipped across her cheeks and stung her skin, and though they obscured her vision, she was grateful for the goggles. She was grateful, too, for the warmth of Aris’s body as she found herself leaning into him. Delighted laughter bubbled in her throat as the hounds twisted around the palace, headed toward the thicket of evergreens that towered behind it. Aris didn’t echo the sound, but his grip on her tightened as they picked up pace, expertly gliding over the snowy trail as if the hounds had traversed them a hundred times before.
She opened her mouth to speak, only to end up choking as some foul insect hit the wall of her throat.
“I told you to be quiet.” Aris did laugh then, the low timbre rumbling against her back. She hissed a few choice words at him, though the sound of his laughter had warmed her skin in a way she didn’t care to acknowledge. A way that made her vision tunnel, the snow slipping away as her mind stirred up a strange image.
She saw a flash of the same daydream that had been plaguing her for the past several months, ever since the night that Signa had saved Eliza. It was a glimpse of a man from the neck down. His skin was bare and hot, and the world around them was hazy as he laughed. It wasn’t a delighted sound like Aris’s, but a dark, pleased sound before the man pulled her into his lap, tucking her body around his. His lips were on hers as he hiked her up by the hips, and there was nothing soft about him or his touch.
Blythe knew what happened next from too many late nights spent lingering indulgently on the memory, and nearly sputtered as she forced the imagery away before things progressed. She gripped on to the steel bars of the sled, telling her treacherous mind to behave itself.
She hadn’t the faintest clue why her brain had taken to producing such dreams, but they came at least once a week and never failed to leave her
tossing in her sheets, flushed and wanting and exploratory since she could not rip the thoughts from her mind.
She was roused into awareness when the world slowed and Aris yelled something behind her in a murky voice that sounded as though she was underwater. The dogs were coming to a halt beside a blanket that had been laid out beneath the bend of a tree. A lantern hung from one of its branches and Blythe stared at it, then at Aris as she removed her goggles. He was already undoing the sled’s fastenings, slipping out, and offering her a hand.
It was so dark that the woods were nearly black, their tree lit only by the lantern and a rising moon whose light filtered in through the occasional thicket of branches. Still, even if Blythe couldn’t see a thing, the dogs were relaxed enough for her to know that there were no servants around. No Verena residents. And certainly not her father. There was no one to impress, and yet Aris led her to the blanket with a tightness in his jaw.
“Why are we here?” It wasn’t an accusation, but genuine curiosity that had Blythe asking. “We could just turn around and sneak back into Verena. My father would be none the wiser.”
“A grand idea, if I believed he was actually sleeping.”
She took a seat when he did, noticing with delight that there was a basket atop the blanket. She’d had never been on a late-night picnic before, let alone one in the snow.
Blythe pulled the blanket around her shoulders closer as Aris fetched a jug of hot chocolate from the basket. Magically, it was still steaming. He divided it into two cups and then retrieved a bottle of something that smelled distinctly like liquor and poured some into each. Then he handed one to her, flipping over the basket lid to show a plethora of other delights: jams, cookies, meats, cheeses.
Blythe held her cup close as he doled it onto plates, taking a deep swig and sighing as the chocolate warmed her from the inside out.
“Your father is a deeply suspicious man.” Aris leaned back on one hand and drank deeply from his own cup.
“He has every right to be,” Blythe said simply. “Please continue to be kind to him, Aris. I know you’ve got it in you.”
He grunted as he turned toward the trees, the angles of his face softened by the lamplight’s dim glow. “I don’t understand why you care so much about what he thinks. Children marry and leave their nests all the time. It’s
nature.”
“Perhaps that wouldn’t have been so awful, had I not been leaving him entirely on his own.” Blythe stared into her mug, breathing so deeply that she blew steam upon her face. “I think something has happened back at home, and my father won’t tell me what it is. Were it anything serious, I worry no one would help him. Society is full of vultures who pick you apart and would sooner peel your skin from their teeth than raise a hand to assist you. They judge and they ridicule, and my marrying you certainly did not help with that.”
Aris retracted his neck with a look of disbelief. “What’s wrong with marrying me? If anything, your society should treat him better knowing that he’s connected to royalty.”
“Royalty,” she scoffed. “You strutting about like a peacock has not helped me. It’s only opened my family up to more criticism. Whether you and I show up to gatherings, or how much you smile when I dance with you, it will all be ridiculed. If I visit home alone, or whether you come with me… they watch everything. It’s taxing enough when you have someone to share the burden with. But my father has no one. All I want is for him to live in peace.”
Aris frowned and took another swig of his drink. Clearly, he hadn’t considered this nearly as much as Blythe. “I will give them no reason to fault your father,” he said at last, the words as soft as a promise. “I have no quarrel with him. Elijah will be spared any burdens of our arrangement, you have my word.”
It was a good word. One that took Blythe by surprise, and that she was immediately grateful for. But as she opened her mouth to tell Aris as much, she was struck by a sudden sneeze. She barely had time to turn her head away, taken by a small fit of them. By the time they stopped her eyes were red and bleary, and she sniffed.
Aris’s bottom lip curled under. “You’re repulsive.”
“I’m afraid I might be getting a cold,” she told him, admittedly happy to realize as much. If she was getting sick, then perhaps that explained the prior night’s strange hallucinations. “I’m sure the snow isn’t helping me any.”
Aris did not look half as pleased by this realization as Blythe did. “You should have told me when you first noticed you were ill. Neither of us may
ever like it, but we’re bonded now. We can spend our years bickering and being miserable. We can keep secrets and argue and never leave Wisteria because we hate each other. Or I can travel freely and live the life that I want to live while allowing you to leech onto it like a warm and healthy parasite. That, to me, is the best answer.”
She forced back a scoff because Aris was right about one thing—if they were to spend the rest of their lives together, it would be a hell of a lot better not to do it as enemies. That didn’t mean they had to like each other, necessarily. He could still call her whatever foul name he wanted; she rather enjoyed his creativity. But if a tolerance between them meant that she could travel—if it meant that her days would be spent touring marvelous cities and her nights eating delicious food in a wintry forest without a single care or worry in the world—then who was she to pass up such a grand opportunity?
“If I feel like keeling over, you’ll be the first to know.” She leaned forward to fetch a plate and silverware from the basket, wiping her nose on her sleeve. “As much as I’ve begun to enjoy our bickering, I agree with you. So long as you give me a proper bed and fix up Wisteria for whenever we are at the manor—and so long as you do not go back on your word about allowing me access to Thorn Grove—then I will… attempt civility. At the very least, I promise not to plot your murder while you sleep.”
“It sounds like I’m getting quite the bargain.” His smile truly was a wondrous thing, a beauty wasted on the likes of him. “Very well. I agree to those terms.”
“Then we have ourselves a deal.” Satisfied, Blythe turned her attention to the food and took hold of a biscuit as her vessel for the most vibrant orange marmalade. As she spread it on the biscuit, however, she moved too quickly in the darkness and cut clean through to her palm.
Blythe dropped the knife as she yelled profanities that would put a sailor to shame. She clutched her hand tight as the blood welled, nausea rolling in her stomach.
Aris was crouched before her in an instant, grabbing hold of her wrist. Though Blythe’s instinct was to keep her hand tucked close and wallow in her pain, there was enough authority in his body language that she couldn’t refuse him.
“I’m going to need a doctor,” she said pathetically. “It’ll need stitches,
probably dozens of them.”
“My needlework is better than any doctor’s.” Aris pried her fingers one by one from where they pressed protectively over her wound. “Now let me see—” He stilled, staring at her open palm. Blythe practically withered into the ground.
“What is it?” she moaned. “Is it horrible? Will I lose the hand?”
Aris’s brow furrowed as he tossed her wrist to the side. “You devilish girl. Are you always this dramatic?”
“Have some delicacy, I’m wounded!” She brought her hand back to her lap, nursing it. “Sometimes I wonder whether you walked straight off the pages of a fairy tale.”
“Because of my princely charm, I’m aware.” Aris rose to his feet.
“No, because you’re as beastly as a troll.” Blythe unclenched her hand, expecting that he was undermining the severity of her wounds. What she didn’t expect was for her palm to be perfectly smooth, not even a line of pink to show for the injury. There was no blood. No cut. Only a pulse of phantom pain, and a few remnants of orange marmalade that Aris brushed away before licking his finger.
Surely she couldn’t have been imagining such gut-wrenching pain. She skimmed her thumb down the length of her palm, searching the blanket and the nearby snow for any sign of blood. And yet when she looked around, she saw only the tiniest bit of green grass at the base of a nearby tree, so bright in its color as it poked upward through the snow.
Fresh grass in December. Such a peculiar sight that she wondered if perhaps she was once again seeing things. Dizziness plagued her, and Blythe’s vision became fuzzy from the quickness of her breathing.
“Perhaps I am being dramatic,” Blythe whispered at last, though she didn’t believe those words. Not when it was one more item on her list of oddities, like when she’d seen her previous maid’s haunted reflection in the mirror months ago, or had seen Eliza Wakefield lying in her bed with sunken flesh and protruding bones like the dead reawakened.
And now there was pain with no injuries. Visions of a man and the echoes of music at all hours of the day. A white-haired woman roaming Wisteria’s halls, always lingering just out of view.
Her body grew cold, an inescapable chill permeating her bones.
Blythe curled her hand into her chest, making a fist. She felt like a
child’s used doll, fraying open at the seams. Her mind was a foreign place these days, stuffed full of oddities and unfamiliar memories.
She took hold of her drink, downing the rest in a single gulp in an effort to ease her disquieted mind and the pulse of pain that still thrummed in her palm. Aris observed all the while, spine drawing straight when she finished. “Are you well?” he asked, and Blythe could hardly bite back her laugh,
for she found that she had no answer to his question.
Was she well? It was impossible to say.
The blanket did little to calm the shivers that wracked her body. She tried to stand, to clear her mind, but the moment she got to her feet, a pounding headache hit her with such force it felt as though the ground was collapsing beneath her.
Aris caught her before she could fall, and Blythe was just aware enough to realize that his arms were around her, pulling her against his chest as he stood. “Don’t you dare fall asleep,” he ordered, his voice sharp enough to jolt her into squinting up at him. “This isn’t one of your fairy tales, and I have no interest in rescuing a damsel in distress.” In her blurred vision, Aris seemed to have three faces, all of them scowling with the same expert precision.
She tried to speak, though it took a moment before she managed. “The trolls are never the ones who save the damsels.” At least that’s what she thought she said. Admittedly the words came out garbled.
Aris blew out a sigh. “You are a thorn in my side.” Sharp as his words were, the tension in his body relaxed. “Where’s the pain?”
“There isn’t any,” she told him, ignoring the sear of her palm. “It’s a dizzy spell. They happen occasionally, ever since the belladonna. Now put me down.”
Aris ignored her, and though she scowled at him, in truth Blythe was quite grateful. For if he had set her down, she likely would have fallen again.
Aris tucked her back into the sled, doing up the fastenings and pressing so close against her that she was undeniably secured. This time, she didn’t resist his touch. Instead, she relaxed against his body as Aris gave the reins a gentle snap and had them on their way back to the palace.
