Page 64 of Ravished By the Revenant

I don’t let him finish, squeezing harder. “She is your unwilling captive.”

Marco blinks, his eyes watering. “Please,” he squeaks after a moment. “Please. I’ll disappear. She’ll never see me again, I swear it, I swear on my mother⁠—”

I press my sword against his chest, against his beating heart. It may not be cold crystal, but he never once used it.

“You struck her,” I intone like a judge passing a sentence. “I smell her blood. The punishment for striking the lady of Blackthorn Keep is death.”

His mouth opens, but I don’t let him speak.

The blade goes through him and into the stone behind, and I hold him upright against the mantel until the light leaves his eyes. Then I let him fall into a heap on the floor.

“I swear to god, if anyone can hear me—what’s happening up there? WHO GOT SHOT?”

My knees nearly buckle at the sound of her voice, then I bark out a laugh. Of course she is interrogating the door. Of course she is.

I cross the great room, moving toward her like she’s a siren calling to me from shipbreaking rocks. I stop in front of a door with the key in the lock. Her prison.

I turn the key and open the door.

She stands three steps down, lit from below, a wine bottle gripped by the neck in one fist like a club. Her lip is split, and her chin is dark with dried blood, and she is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. My warrior princess.

“Little intruder,” I say, my voice hoarse.

Clara drops the bottle, and it shatters against the stone stairs. She takes the steps in two bounds and collides with my chest. I fold my arms around her, bloody sword and all, and she is warm and shaking and alive.

“You came,” she says into my shirt. “You enormous gothic idiot, you came. Aldric, they had guns.”

“They did.” I tip her chin up with two fingers, my eyes narrowing on her split lip. My expression must darken, because her hands come up to my face.

“Hey. Hey,” she murmurs. “Eyes here. I’m okay.”

My lungs heave like bellows. “He struck you.”

“And you struck back, judging by the redecorating.” She looks past my arm at the great room and its contents. At first, she looks equally sickened and satisfied by the sight. Then her eyes find my shoulder and go wide. “Aldric. You’re shot.”

“It passed through.”

“It passed—” She jams her finger through the hole in my coat, finds the matching hole in me, and makes a sound like a kettle. “It’s not going to heal!”

“One more scar for the collection.” I catch her hand and press her fingers flat over my heart instead, where the light beats against her palm. “A small price. I would have taken every bullet in this house.”

“That’s not romantic, you buffoon.” But her eyes are shining, and she rises onto her toes and kisses me despite her split lip. She tastes like Clara and like copper, and I would raze a thousand cabins to be reunited with her like this.

When she pulls back, she wipes her eyes with her sleeve and squares her shoulders.

“Right. Okay. Is there anyone left up there I should scream at?”

I raise my eyebrows. “No one left at all.”

“Good.” A breath shudders out of her. “Good.”

I sheathe the greatsword across my back and lift her, and she wraps herself around me without argument for once, her arms around my neck, her cheek against my mangled ear, weightless as a banner. I carry her out of the ruined cabin into the night air, and she does not look back once.

“The trout has gone cold,” I tell her as we enter.

“Heat it up when we get there. Unless Shmoo ate them all while we were gone.”

She burrows closer, her breath warm against my throat, and her next words hit me hard enough to leave another permanent mark.