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She winked at me then, slow and deliberate. Some kind of message for me.
Not for the first time, I missed that we couldn’t seem to speak directly. All those years of my lifenothearing mind-to-mind communications and now I felt crippled by its lack.
“Are you warm enough?” I asked her, more rhetorically than anything else. Though the sun shone bright, the wind possessed a cutting edge. Enough that I wished up a cloak—not the one Rogue gave me—and a gust caught at it, making it snap like a pennant. “We could move you to an inside room, like you had at Walter’s.”
I caught a rustle of amusement before she set her great head protectively over the eggs and closed her eyes. Guess that was a no.
And a clear dismissal.
Pocketing my golden apple—wasn’t one part of the story with Aphrodite, Helen of Troy and Paris?—I walked with Darling Hercules back inside. He suggested some mouse hunting, which I declined, to his disappointment. If I followed my list, I should go back to my tower room and make notes. I seethed with too much restlessness for that and my black mood made me unambitious, to boot. Blame my stubborn nature, but mostly I wanted to leave the castle. To go anywhere else, now that I couldn’t. I felt stifled, cooped up. Yes, I’d promised to try to be gracious, but that was before Rogue smacked me down like a disobedient toddler. An insidious voice whispered that I had indeed traded away my freedom, as I’d dreaded all along.
I loved Rogue. No escaping that fact. But it didn’t change reality.
After all, the feeling of being in love was all endorphins and, like a junkie coming down from a high, without that drugging influence, I saw my current situation in a cold and sober light. No wonder Nancy and Fafnir thought I’d been coerced. Seduced counted. It only felt more pleasant while it happened.
I didn’t know what to think and I really hated being in that place.
Worse, I had no one to talk to. No one who didn’t have some stake in the outcome, who could give me unbiased, objective feedback. Darling Hercules sent me an image of a handsome young man, his former self, possibly, listening intently.
“Thank you, but you’re not good for advice. I mean that in the nicest way.”
Not sure where I wanted to go, except far, far away, I plopped down on the tower steps, unable to motivate myself to go any farther, and Darling perched beside me in glum agreement. The tower had no windows, which made it comfortingly dark. It served as a place to hide, at least for a while. I could have sat outside with the dragon, but the wind was blowing too cold and she didn’t want me there anyway. Mostly I wanted to drink too much wine and drown my sorrows—to an alarming degree, given that I couldn’t dothateither.
After a time, footsteps came up the circling stairs, the scent of Rogue’s blue-black magic preceding him. He appeared around the bend, expression carefully blank.
“I don’t think I want to talk to you right now,” I said, before he got too close.
“So you’ll sit in a dark tower instead?”
“I couldn’t think of anything else to do.”
“Not like you.”
“That’s me—full of surprises.”
“I won’t apologize for being angry with you.” He’d stopped a few steps below me, one foot higher than the other.
“Makes for a short conversation, anyway.”
He said nothing to that.
“Fine. I’ll go first. Unlike you, Iamsorry for what happened. It was a mistake, but I didn’t know. The baby is fine. I won’t do it again.”
“I know you won’t, because I’ll keep that cursed scepter out of your reach. Had I any idea what you’d laid hold of, I’d never have let you use it.”
“Letme? I’m sorry—I think you’ve mistaken me for a fuck-toy after all.”
“Don’t start with that again. You were wrong and you said so.”
He just didn’t get it. Worse, it seemed more and more likely that he never would. A lifetime of this battle lay ahead of me. I sighed. “Darling Hercules—would you excuse us?”
With an affectionate thought and sweep of his tail, he trotted down the stairs, swiping a paw at Rogue as he passed.
“Come now, stubborn Gwynn.” Rogue made an effort to sound coaxing, but I’d had enough of being coaxed and seduced. “It was a misunderstanding. Let’s go somewhere more comfortable. Have you eaten? Mistress Nancy said that—”
“I think we shouldn’t get married.”
That stopped him. “You already promised. Will you break that vow?”
