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“That’s the one children know.”
My brow furrows. “Children.”
Boone nods cautiously, and I look toward the flames.
“So they made him good.”
Boone doesn’t answer immediately. “They made him capable of love.”
I continue staring into the fire as the flames consume another piece of wood, wondering how many children have gone to sleep believing that version of my father.
He would have found it very amusing.
“Like Belle, you came here for your father and exchanged places with him.”
Boone gives me a look that makes it clear he’s already considered that particular similarity more than once. “The irony isn’t lost upon me, Rhys.”
My name on his lips does all sorts of things to me, none of which I understand or particularly care to examine. I look back at the fire instead. Silence stretches between us until his fingers slide carefully through my hair, and the unexpected contact stills me completely.
“Your father wasn’t an enchanted prince, was he?” he asks quietly. “The scars on your chest, was that from him?”
I’m on my feet before I even register the movement, putting distance between us as I turn toward him. “It’s time to go back,” I snap.
He looks monumentally confused, his hand still hovering where my head had been only seconds ago. “Back?”
“To your room.”
The fear and defeat that cross his face gives me pause. His eyes fill with tears, but instead of arguing with me or begging as he normally would, he lowers his gaze and nods.
“Get up,” I growl.
I’m not angry at him, though it would be easier if I were. I’m angry at the stupidity of the story, at the pity I heard when he asked about my father and, most of all, at the way his fingers felt sliding through my hair. I want him to do it again.
When he doesn’t move quickly enough, I grab him and haul him to his feet. He yelps when I seize him by his arm. “Ow—please, Rhys. I’ll walk.”
My name again, spoken so easily despite everything.
I release him before I can give too much thought to what hearing it does to me. He swipes quickly at his wet cheeks, and I shove him forward, walking him through corridor after corridor until we reach his room. I push him inside and close the door behind him before turning the key in the lock.
This time, I don’t remain outside his room to find out whether he starts crying again.
18
Boone
I wake to find my door open again. For the longest time, I do nothing but lie there and stare at the narrow opening before eventually rolling onto my other side to face the window. I thought—perhaps stupidly—that something had changed last night when he knelt in front of me and asked me to tell him the story.
For those few minutes, he seemed less like the man who had taken me and more like someone I might eventually understand. I thought maybe things would change, even a little. But then I touched his hair, asked about his father, and whatever fragile thing had formed between us disappeared.
Snow pelts the window outside, coming down harder than ever and collecting against the glass until the world beyond it is little more than shifting white. Of course it’s snowing again. I stay under the blankets until the fire burns low enough that the cold finally forces me out of bed, and after adding another log, I decide to bathe since I never did after last night. I can still feel traces of oil on my thighs from where he held me open.
I turn the water on and watch steam curl from the bath, wondering for what must be the hundredth time how a castle this old manages to have hot running water. The only explanation I can think of is a thermal spring somewhere under the mountain. I know they exist in places like this, groundwater sinking deep enough to be heated by the earth before finding its way back toward the surface. If the spring originates higher up the mountain than the castle’s plumbing, gravity could feed the water through pipes without pumps at all, though someone must have replaced the original plumbing at some point because I can’t imagine centuries-old pipes surviving this long.
Once I’m clean, I wash what I wore yesterday and hang everything near the fire to dry before rummaging through the armoire for something else. I pull on clean clothes and another wool sweater, then stand in the middle of the room staring at the open door while an idea slowly takes shape.
The greenhouse.
He said I could go there as long as I stayed away from the roses.
