Page 57

Rhys

Something has changed between us, though I couldn’t say exactly when it happened. Something has softened, become lighter and warmer. I feel it most at night when Boone sleeps beside me with his head resting on my chest, his breathing slow and even while I lie awake listening to it. He’s settling into my home—our home—leaving pieces of himself everywhere. And he doesn’t even seem to notice. I’ve begun to recognize the evidence of him as naturally as I recognize my own belongings.

The only real trouble comes when I lock him in his room. He hates it with a ferocity I still don’t entirely understand, becoming so upset, so worked up, that the effects linger for days afterward. Nothing I do seems capable of pulling him out of it. Even when I exhaust him enough that he can no longer fight with me, whatever is happening inside his head remains beyond my reach. Leaving him alone afterward only makes it worse. He withdraws completely, barely speaking to me or looking at me, the locked door remaining between us long after I’ve opened it.

But sometimes I don’t know what else to do.

When Boone is in his room, I know exactly where he is. I know he’s warm, fed, protected from the cold and from every conceivable danger beyond these walls. I can tend to the horses without wondering whether I’ll return to find the front door standing open and his footprints disappearing into the snow. I don’t trust him outside alone yet, not because I believe him incapable of taking care of himself, but because I know what he wants whenever he stares too long at the road beyond the gates.

Freedom.

His old life.

A home that existed before mine.

There are moments when I can almost convince myself he no longer misses any of it. Then I catch him staring through a window, or he asks some seemingly innocent question about the weather or the road into town, and that restless part of him rises again. The part that existed before he knew me, before this castle became familiar, before he started falling asleep against my chest.

I hate that part of him.

Not Boone. Never Boone.

I hate the part that still believes there is somewhere else he ought to be, and when it shows itself, when losing him suddenly becomes a possibility instead of some distant fear I can dismiss, locking the door feels like the only thing that makes sense.

“Rhys, look.”

I lift my head from the stove and turn toward the window Boone is standing in front of, one hand pressed against the sill while he leans closer to the glass. The kitchen windows are fogged around the edges from the heat inside, but beyond them the world has changed. The thick curtain of white that has swallowed the castle and surrounding woods for weeks is finally gone, leaving the snow-covered grounds strangely still under a pale winter sky.

“Look. It stopped snowing!”

He turns toward me with a smile already spread across his face, bright and effortless in a way I’ve begun seeing more often lately, but it slowly disappears the longer he studies me. He knows me well enough now to recognize the answer without hearing it, and disappointment creeps across his face. Apparently, some stubborn part of him still believes he can change my mind.

“After we eat,” he says softly, “can’t we go outside? I want to check on my horse and—”

He stops halfway through the sentence. Whatever he sees in my face is enough to make his excitement disappear completely, and his hand falls from the windowsill.

His shoulders drop. “Why?” Desperation is already creeping into the question. “You can come with me. I’m not asking to go alone.”

I grind my teeth together and turn back toward the stove, hoping that will be enough to end the conversation, but Boone has never been particularly good at recognizing when he should leave something alone.

“It’s been snowing for weeks, Rhys, and it finally stopped. I haven’t even seen him since I got here, and I just want to know he’s okay.” He comes closer, stopping several feet behind me. “You can stand right beside me the entire time if that’s what you want, so why can’t we just—”

“ENOUGH!”

The word comes out exactly as I intended—loud and angry, filling the kitchen and silencing him so completely that even the faint scrape of his boots across the floor disappears.

When I turn, Boone is staring at me with wide eyes, his body perfectly still. His lips part. I think he’s going to argue anyway because there’s still anger mixed with the hurt on his face, but he changes his mind. He looks toward the window one last time, lowers his gaze and walks out of the kitchen without saying another word.

I let him go because I assume he needs time to sulk, and lately I’ve been trying to learn the difference between Boone needing space and Boone needing me to follow him. He becomes furious when I hover, equally furious when I leave him alone for too long, and I haven’t yet discovered the logic governing which version of me he wants at any particular moment. Therefore, I remain in the kitchen and finish what I’m doing, telling myself he’ll return when he’s hungry enough.

Half an hour passes.

The silence begins bothering me.

Boone is rarely this quiet when he’s angry. He has developed a particular way of moving through the castle when he wants me to know he’s displeased, closing doors harder than necessary and walking heavily enough that his footsteps carry through corridors that were peaceful for years before he arrived. Even when he retreats to his bedroom, I can usually hear him cursing my name or slamming drawers, some small indication that he is still there and still furious with me.

Now there is nothing.

I set down the knife in my hand and listen.