61
HARLOW
itting on the boarding house window seat, I don’t feel a shred of guilt forS what I’ve done. I feel more cleansed from my anger than I did from my bath.
Ever since my magic showed up twenty-five years ago, I’ve stuffed my rage down and allowed it to rot away at me.
Now that my violence is spent, and I’m alone in the quiet waiting for Henry to return to our room, all I feel is soul-deep sorrow.
Grief is not an absence. It’s a presence. I feel it in every silence, in every breath.
I’ve lived six months without the other half of my heart—so bereft that my mind fractured and summoned a world where she was still with me.
Remembering is like losing her all over again.
I don’t know how to survive without this. Saving her has been my singular purpose—the last thread of hope I clung to for the last year. Without it, I’m nothing but a woman with a mind as shattered as her heart.
Killing my parents didn’t change the fact that I’ll never see Aidia’s face again. That I’ll never hear her say my name in the annoyed tone that used to make me feel triumphant. I’ll never fall asleep with her playing with my hair.
And I’ll never see who she could have been living somewhere beyond the mountains, far from my parents’ control.
I’m not just mourning who she was. I’m mourning her potential. I wanted to get to know Aidia unburdened from the life that broke both of us.
And still, I know I’ll continue as I always have, putting one foot in front of the other.
To know you will always be okay alone should be comforting, but really, it’s just terribly lonely. I am so unbelievably weary.
The bedroom door swings open, and Henry walks in. He stills when he sees me, studies me for a long moment, but he does not ask me how I am. He locks the door and removes his jacket, tie, and vest.
“I can’t apologize enough for today. I grossly miscalculated and I’m sorry,” he says. He looks genuinely contrite.
“You didn’t know. How could you? I didn’t know,” I say.
He studies me for a long moment before he speaks. “It’s the shock when you realize you cannot quite picture their face perfectly, when you can’t remember the pitch of their laugh, when you see something beautiful and all you want is to run home and tell them all about it, but instead, you’re left to whisper it to the wind.”
I swallow thickly. “We spent our whole lives wanting to leave the city walls. Now she’s gone and I finally left and all I want to do is tell her about the way the stars look over the fort at night.” I don’t know what possessed me to share it. It’s just comforting that he knows what I mean.
He crosses the room and sits down on the window seat beside me. “Holly was an early riser. No matter how early I woke up, she always managed to beat me and she loved to gloat about it. She slipped a note under my door every morning. After the attack, we were stuck in the caves for a while, but when I was finally able to move back into my room after a year, I woke up every morning looking for it. It took me almost two years to stop. I still do it sometimes.” He rubs a hand over the back of his neck. “Waking is the worst.
For a few blessed moments, you don’t remember, and then you do and it’s like reliving it. I don’t blame you for seeing her everywhere. This world can be cruel. You were just trying to survive.”
I stare into his dark blue eyes. “I’m so tired and this is such a Divine- damned mess. I think I could lie down and sleep for a year.”
“Is your grief so gentle?” he whispers.
I clench my hands in my robe, afraid and exhilarated that he can see me so clearly.
“No,” I rasp. “It’s not. I am sick with rage. My grief is monstrous.”
He reaches out, tentative at first. When I don’t flinch, he tucks my hair behind my ear and cups my cheek. “What do you need, Harlow?”
I can’t remember the last time someone asked me that and meant it. I’ve been asked so infrequently, I’m unpracticed at even assessing my own needs.
The temptation to let go and fall into this—lose myself, my purpose, my desire for vengeance—is so strong. And all for what? Some good sex and sweet words. Men lie. It’s what they do.
It would be nice to trust him with this—with me—but I’ve never just had fun. I’ve always had to think about consequences.
Maybe I could this one time, as a treat for surviving this day and every other one that came before it.
I kiss my husband. Not to shut him up, or to try to kill him, or even to taunt him. I kiss him because I want to.
Henry tastes like whiskey and cherries and a hint of sugar, and it’s all I want to taste.
He wastes no time. He breaks the kiss for a moment, pulling me to my feet and then down to straddle his lap. Then, he kisses me again more urgently.
His fingers tangle in my hair, and he tilts my head back, and even though I have never kissed anyone else for longer than a second, I know it doesn’t get better than this.
I feel myself plunging into some deep dark water.
I’m afraid of the ways we are alike—Henry and I. It’s terrifying to be understood. He knows what it means to turn a grave into a home—to live inside this hollow like a hermit—to fumble in the dark, but still crawl out the other side of the pit and rise to demand blood for your blood. I’m afraid of the way he understands the empty places in me like halls he’s been haunting for years instead of weeks.
In the deepest, darkest corner of my heart, I have always wanted to be known. But now that he knows me, I want to run.
This is something uncharted. I stopped wanting to be understood so long ago—made myself into a tight bud that only Aidia could coax open. But the more Henry challenges me, the more I feel myself unfurling into something new and more natural.
This will end poorly. I’ll be forced back into the old version of myself, and it will feel like trying to squeeze back into skin I’ve shed.
I can’t forgive myself for the weakness of irrevocably changing.
I know the way Kellan scours the entire city to bring Libby a new book every week, then takes the children out for a full day so she has time to read
it. I’ve watched the way Bea and Josie sit behind the counter at the end of the night, heads bent together as they laugh and kiss in the empty pub.
I’ve seen good examples of love, but I’ve never seen a good example of
someone loving me.
Not like that. Until now.
For so long, I felt certain I wouldn’t recognize love even if it slapped me across the face. Then, I worried that was the only way I’d recognize it.
But now I see that love is not letting the person you care for be caught with their guard down. Love is someone who helps you put your armor on, who knows how and when to help you take it off.
I told myself I was trying to avenge Aidia’s hurts, but I think I was trying to remind myself how easy it was to become one of those women I protected.
As long as I didn’t let someone close, I couldn’t become one of them.
Until now, men’s wanting has never been something that could sate me. It always felt a meal devoid of substance. No matter how much I consumed, it left me feeling empty.
For the first time, I feel how Henry’s desire could fill me up, scatter shadows from my aching hollows, and thaw my frozen heart. I see how staying could heal me as much as ruin me.
I’ll never forgive Henry for this. I can’t afford a weakness.
When I finally pull away, I’m breathless and shaking.
“Don’t look at me like that,” he whispers against my lips.
“Like what?”
“Like you’re forgetting to hate me.”
I can hardly breathe around the lump in my throat. Because I don’t hate
him at all.
“I do hate you,” I rasp.
Henry tilts my chin up and brushes his lips to mine so gently. “No, lovely.
I don’t think you do.” He kisses the corners of my mouth so tenderly. “It’s scary, isn’t it?”
“Scary?” I laugh bitterly. “Scary is too small a word. This is world- rending.”
I don’t want this. I want to toss the revelation in the nearest well and watch it get swept away in the current.
“Beautiful, wretched wife. You will be my undoing.”
That was always the plan, but I didn’t expect to wreck myself in the process.
He kisses me again, and I want my robe off. I want his shirt off. I want nothing between us.
Henry slides his hands under my ass. He lifts me as he stands, crosses the room, and sits down on the edge of the bed with me straddling his lap.
I unbutton his shirt as he yanks on the sash of my robe. There’s too much between us. I don’t want to talk or even think about how I feel. I just want him inside me.
But Henry doesn’t want to go fast. When I reach for the button on his pants, he grabs my hands.
“I will let you do a lot of things, Harlow, but rushing me when I’ve waited so long to take my time is not one of them.”
He twists to lay me on the bed beneath him. He kisses me slowly, his hands tenderly stroking my hair.
I don’t know why my heart is racing like this. We’re only kissing, but I can hardly breathe. He brushes his lips along my jaw and down my neck. His teeth skim down my neck, and I have never trusted someone like this— enough to bare my throat without a hint of hesitation—enough to be hurt beyond repair.
Some part of me is forever braced for pain. I keep waiting for the sharp slice of his teeth, but it never comes.
Henry places kisses along my collarbones and down the valley between my breasts. This is homage. It feels like he’s trying to make up for the lack of touch in my life. He cups my breasts, chasing each caress with his mouth.
So often, I’ve felt fractured between who I am and who I pretend to be.
But this is the first time I feel whole again—with him touching me.
He works his way lower, down the lines of my stomach and over my hips.
Then, he lowers himself to kneel on the floor, wraps his hands around my thighs, and yanks me to the edge of the bed.
The first brush of his tongue has me arching up off the mattress. I’m already so sensitive, every nerve in my body feels lit up.
It’s clear he was holding back before. With no audience, he is ravenous.
Not like he’s trying to prove something to me, but more like he’s trying to prove something to himself. When I start to squirm, he pins my hips to the bed. He’s merciless, plunging his tongue in deep, sucking my clit into his mouth until my thighs are trembling and my hands are fisted in his hair and I’m so mindless with pleasure I can’t stop saying his name.
The climax breaks over me, and it feels like I’ve been cracked wide open.
I don’t recognize the hoarse cry that escapes me. My aura is spread out wide, throwing off little golden sparks in all directions. I have never felt more out of control, and I like it.
I’ve always had an intimacy with pain—an awareness of the many ways that I could hurt. I never fathomed that my body could feel this good.
The trembling passes, and Henry draws away. He licks his lips as he stands and slides his pants off.
He’s gorgeous, bathed in nothing but candlelight that highlights the defined muscles of his torso and the deep lines of his stomach that seem to point directly to his thick cock. He strokes it lazily, his gaze raking over me, wet and spread wide for him at the edge of the bed.
“You are so beautiful.”
I slide back, and he prowls over me. He teases me, rubbing his cock against my sensitive clit until I whine.
Then he pushes into me agonizingly slowly. I want to grab his hips and pull him all the way in, but it feels so intense I can barely do anything but breathe.
He groans against my pulse, and I feel it everywhere. “Let me in.”
It’s different going slow. I’m more aware of every touch, how he’s stretching me to my limits. He draws back and then pushes deeper, and it
takes my breath away.
“Henry,” I gasp.
He curses into the crook of my neck. “Fuck. Say it again.”
He pulls back and watches my face as he draws away and pushes in again, and I gasp his name again.
He drops his forehead to my shoulder and takes a shuddering breath.
“Divine dammit, you take me so well.”
Henry hikes my left knee up and rolls his hips. The angle feels so good, my whole body clenches. I am helpless to everything he does, moving with him like we’re floating together in the same tide, and it feels so good to be in sync, to be able to kiss him and have him so close while he moves inside me.
He tweaks my left nipple, and I arch up off the bed.
“Bleeding woods, you’re so wet for me, Harlow.”
I don’t think I’ve ever been this wet in my life, and it’s all because he’s so close. Because he’s kissing me as he moves. Because one arm is hooked under my leg, his hand braced against the scar on my lower back, and the other is gripping my shoulder. I’ve never felt this close to someone else.
I’m exhilarated and about to tip over the edge. I can’t stop clenching.
He seems to feel it because his thrusts get more insistent. He pulls back and looks into my eyes with pure adoration.
I know what he does not say because it’s in every touch. Every brush of his lips. In the way he doesn’t bite me or allow me to turn this tenderness into fucking. I know by the raw look on his face that will be burned into my memory forever.
His heart is in his eyes when he looks at me. My climax hits hard. I grip his shoulders and moan as he continues to move in a perfect rhythm to draw it out. He murmurs soft praise into the shell of my ear, and I shiver.
When I can’t take any more and my feet are cramping, I push him onto his back and straddle his hips, sinking down on him in one swift motion. But Henry’s not content to lie back and take it. He sits up and pulls me close, and I want to fight it.
It’s so unnatural, and yet it’s all I want: skin on skin without fear that I’ll hurt him.
Every movement between us is so intuitive. He finds a rhythm with me immediately, his hands cupping my ass as I grind against him. He nips at my neck, and I’m already right back on the edge again.
“Yes, that’s it. Fuck, Harlow, you’re so good.” He kisses my shoulder, murmuring something incomprehensible into my skin.
I arch back and move faster and I’m so close. Henry’s bruising grip on my hips keeps me perfectly in sync. I meet his eyes, and I know how he feels right down to my bones.
In one searing moment I’m made and unmade, by this quiet, gentle, fleeting thing between us. When I look in his eyes, I’m no longer a Carrenwell or the Poison Vixen, or even Henry’s wife. I’m transformed into Harlow.
In that reflection, I see myself for the first time how I might have been. It hurts so much and the ecstasy is so bright and blaring that I have to close my eyes and breathe through the crush of it. He groans and shoves me all the way down on his cock as he shudders and finds his release.
“I love—” It slips out in some sort of brainless sex-drunk stupor.
Mercifully, I catch myself mid-sentence.
He must read the panic in my eyes. “It doesn’t have to mean anything.
We’re just pretending, right? It’s no big deal, Harlow.”
But I’m not pretending anymore, and it doesn’t feel like no big deal. It
feels like he’s woken me up from years of dreaming and now I don’t know how to go back to sleep.
I’m panicked. Everything that opened up in my chest wants to lock down again. I want to flee.
But he holds me firm, one hand pressed to the back of my heart and the other pressed to my scar.
He kisses my temple. “Don’t run. Stay with me.”
My instinct to fight is much more practiced than the instinct to surrender.
How dare he throw my whole life off course. It’s unforgivable to leave me stranded here with no path back to my old self. I feel rattled and raw, stumbling on drunken legs.
But I let him hold me. I lean my head on his shoulder and breathe in the cold mountain scent of him. Until my heart slows enough that I can flop onto the bed.
Henry lies down beside me. He whistles as he takes one last look at me before he pulls the blanket up over us.
“I wish you could understand how fucked I was the first time I saw you,” he says. “Divine damn me. You were so stunning. I couldn’t believe you let me sit at your table. And then when I walked into the contract signing the next morning and saw that it was you—that was when I knew how screwed I
was.”
“Because you wanted to fuck me?”
He grins and kisses the tip of my nose. “So prickly. No, because you were as clever as you are beautiful…and I wanted to fuck you.”
“At least you’re honest.”
“Some of the time.”
He studies my face in the low light, and I pray to the Divine he doesn’t bring up my mortifying mid-fuck admission. I search for anything else to say.
“My parents have been working with Stefan, and their plan once they killed you was going to be to marry me off to him,” I blurt.
Henry’s eyebrows shoot up. “Another terrible idea on their part.”
“They have few ideas that aren’t.” I brush his damp hair back from his forehead. “Everything will change tomorrow. The rumors about Rafe are spreading. I know it must feel so unsatisfying for you to have this lie be the thing that brings him down, instead of the wrongs he’s actually done. But taking him out of power will only protect other women. If it wasn’t my sister, it would have been me, and if it wasn’t me, it would be someone else’s
sister.”
He stares up at the ceiling.
“It doesn’t bring Aidia back, but it does make me feel a little bit better,” I say. “Killing him would probably make me feel most at peace.”
There’s recognition in Henry’s voice when he murmurs, “Because then you’ll know for sure he’s gone—that he can’t do it again.”
We lay there for a while in silence. He stares up at the ceiling, and I lie on
my stomach, studying his profile.
“My parents are dead,” I whisper.
Henry goes so still, he’s not even breathing.
“I killed them.”
“How?”
“Slowly.”
I thought he’d be upset that I robbed him of his vengeance, but he just looks relieved.
“I guess you got what you wanted,” I say.
He lets out a surprised laugh. “Technically, I wanted to kill your father personally.”
“I’m sorry I stole that peace from you.” I mean those words.
He runs his fingers down my spine and over the bumpy topography of my scar. “Truth be told, I think you more than earned your own peace. What does
that mean for South Hold?”
“Able is still alive, but —”
Henry arches a brow. “But?”
“But he has to die too.”
Henry props himself on an elbow. “He does?”
“He knew what happened, and he’s also been friendly with Rafe in the past. He could be again. I don’t know who should be in charge. I just know who shouldn’t be,” I say.
Henry sighs. “And to think I believed I was the greatest threat to the Carrenwell family.” He brushes my hair to the side and kisses my shoulder.
“I’m sorry you had to do that alone.”
“I didn’t. Technically. Kellan helped.”
His eyes widen slightly, but there’s no judgment on his face. He looks at me with resigned affection. “What about the rest of your siblings? How will they react?”
I run a hand over my face. Bleeding woods! I hadn’t given that a single
thought. The rest of my siblings have always been distant figures, more scenery I observed than actual people. I knew them only enough to understand their motivations.
“I doubt any of my siblings will be all that broken up over our parents, and they largely lack the ambition to try to fill my parents’ shoes,” I say.
“Electra, Carrianne, and Sophie have always been content to be out from under our parents’ roof with families of their own. Thomas has always been a little bit envious of Able being heir and Kellan being captain of the city watch. Frederick is clever, but I think he prefers being connected to power while not bearing the responsibility of being in charge. None of them have my parents’ desire for power—at least not in a general sense. I’m sure they’d all like to have power over certain things in their lives. They just lack that relentless hunger for more.”
Henry hums and traces a finger up the inside of my forearm. “Something has been bugging me. Why did you go along with this marriage?” he asks.
“You’d already married once for them before.”
I think of how many nights I sat at dinner, staring at the key to my freedom hanging from the chain around my father’s neck, imagining choking him with it and escaping the city in the dead of night.
“Because my father had a tunnel made under the Drained Wood and I needed the key to it to get Aidia out,” I say.
Henry stares at me in mute shock.
“I could have taken her from Rafe, but there was nowhere in the city where we could have escaped our parents. Even if she used her blessing to disguise us, our family can see magic. We couldn’t hide from them.”
“If it was as simple as just getting a key, why not steal it?” Henry asks.
I blow out a breath. “Because my father keeps it on him at all times, and because it’s not as simple as just getting the key. My brother Frederick is blessed by Harvain with the good fortune to be able to manipulate natural elements. He is critical to expanding and mending the wall around the city, but what people don’t know is that his skill goes well beyond stone. Twelve years ago, when travel through the Drained Wood started to become less frequent and more dangerous, my father started planning. He knew we’d need another way to bring resources in and out of the city. So he asked Frederick to start working on a tunnel.”
Henry listens intently, but his aura is swirling and I can tell he’s angry.
“Originally, he planned to burrow to Mountain Haven, and then from
there through the mountain pass,” I say. “He wanted a way to ensure that we could get beyond the reach of the Drained. Every trader who came to Lunameade over the years talked about how the Drained never go beyond the mountain pass. It was meant to be a way out.”
Henry props himself up on an elbow and takes my hand in his.
“I only have assumptions because he’s not transparent, but our people were so scared when the fort fell,” I continue. “They’d never been so willing to sacrifice and come together, or so eager for his leadership. I think he realized that if he gave people a way out, he would lose control of them. He’d be giving up his political power, and if he went with them, he’d surrender his access to the well. While the well isn’t the source of his power, it is the symbol of it. So he kept the tunnel secret from our people and ensured that no one could use it without him.”
“How could he do that? It’s been almost ten years. Surely someone—one of your siblings would have figured out where it is or how to use it,” Henry says.
“He made sure that no one could navigate it on their own. He had Aidia permanently cloak the entrance so it’s hidden by an illusion. The tunnel door can only be unlocked by someone with Carrenwell blood. And every time my siblings return from a trip, Electra, my oldest sister, also blessed by Harvain, uses her memory erasing blessing to remove the memory of every step they took to get through the tunnel other than the one they’re responsible for. So Frederick knows where the entrance is and where each obstacle is located, but he doesn’t know what the obstacles are or how to get around them. Only Thomas knows how to get through the protection traps. And the final gateway at the very end can only be opened with holy fire. So anyone who wants to escape wouldn’t just need the key from my father. They would need his sway over my siblings.”
Henry’s face is a mask of disgust. “So he kept you all trapped.”
“Yes. Of course, it’s not just as simple as getting through the tunnel,” I say. “Once the fort fell, Frederick couldn’t use it as a stopping point. He needed to take the original path farther. It takes a huge expenditure of magic to move dirt and roots and water and stone. It took almost three years for Frederick to complete the work, since he was also making a complicated labyrinth of tunnels and Thomas was designing traps for them. Not to mention that the stone around the mountains is apparently harder to get through. Frederick had to stop at the mountain pass, which means it’s still not
a safe route. There are some Drained who prowl that area. You need to come out of that tunnel ready for a fight.”
I don’t feel guilty for telling him all of these family secrets. I’m exhilarated by the defiant thrill of sharing so much about my family and their magic after years spent choking on their lies.
Henry is quiet for a long moment, taking in everything I’ve said. He shakes his head. “He’s so much worse than I thought. I’m sorry.”
He looks so earnest, propped on an arm, his dark waves falling into his eyes. He kisses my palm. “Will you stay with me?”
A knot forms in my throat. Henry wants to keep me. “I’m your wife.
Wouldn’t there be some sort of incident if I didn’t?”
He moves closer, pushing me onto my back so he can meet my eyes. “I don’t want to be another person in your life who is placing unwanted obligations on you. If you want to stay here —”
“I don’t want to stay here.” I wasn’t certain, but I know it when I say it out loud. Maybe it’s the fresh grief. Maybe it’s the haunting nightmares of this place.
My heart is in my throat. Because I’m not just agreeing to pretend now. I am admitting that this is real. I’m sacrificing my pride for the sake of my heart. I’m willing to lose for him.
“I don’t want to leave forever,” I say. “I still have work to do here— people to take care of. But I don’t want to always be here. These walls are a cage, and if we’ve really figured out how to stop the Drained from being so bad, maybe travel could be more frequent, not just from the fort but from the outside world.”
I don’t recognize myself. These are thoughts I would normally keep inside my head. But this is what Henry has done to me. He’s made me a
woman who believes in things.
He looks at me expectantly. “And?”
“And what? You want me to talk about my feelings, my wolf? Fine. I find you more tolerable than every other person I’ve met. I’m not tired of you yet.”
He smirks. “How romantic. The six words every man hopes to hear at least once in his life: I’m not tired of you yet.”
“What do you want?” I ask, trying to push through the nervous twisting in my gut.
He kisses me, long and slow and languid. “I want to feel you in my bed
every night and every morning. I want your constant testing me. I want your absurd love of running. And, bleeding woods, I want my fucking wolf back.”
I laugh. “Be better company, then.”
He leans his forehead against mine. “I want you, Harlow. Stay with me.
Just this once, don’t fight me.”
“Where’s the fun in that?”
I kiss him, satisfied that I’ve found the person I never want to stop fighting with.
