“The family dinner? Or the Vix bashing?”
“All of it.” I brought her hand to my lips, kissed her knuckles. “Having you here. In my home. With my family. I love it.”
Her expression softened. “I love it too.”
“Even the crazy parts?”
“Especially the crazy parts.”
I’d gladly endure them a thousand times over, if it meant keeping her by my side.
27
— • —
Riley
I’d been at the castle for several days now.
It was beautiful here. Stunning, really. Stone corridors that echoed with history, ancient tapestries older than anything I’d ever touched, windows overlooking snow-covered mountains that belonged in a fantasy novel.
Which, I supposed, made sense. I was literally living in another dimension.
My life had officially jumped the shark. No, scratch that. My life had pole-vaulted over the shark, done a triple backflip, and landed in a completely different ocean.
I’d met a lot of people. Servants who bowed when I passed, which still made me deeply uncomfortable. Nobles who introduced themselves with titles I couldn’t remember fiveseconds later. Lords and Ladies of This and That, Keepers of Ancient Whatnot, Protectors of Various Things. Guards who eyed me with poorly concealed curiosity, probably wondering what the hell this random woman was doing walking around their castle.
Fair question. I was still wondering the same thing.
No one had been openly mean to me.
But I still caught the stares. The whispers that stopped when I entered a room. The way certain people looked at me with an expression that screamed interloper, curiosity, doesn’t quite belong here.
I tried not to pay them any mind. I was engaged to their prince. I had a claiming mark on my neck. I belonged here now, whether they accepted it or not.
Right?
There was also the matter of how I’d been feeling.
It started the second or third day after I arrived. A low-grade nausea that came and went. A tiredness that sleep didn’t seem to fix, no matter how many hours I spent in Caelan’s ridiculously comfortable bed. Occasional dizziness that made me grip walls for support when no one was looking.
I’d been shrugging it off as the realm change, the stress, the lingering effects of the heat, which had mostly subsided but still flared up occasionally in waves of want that left me breathless. Nothing to worry about. Probably.
So today, I found the library.
It was massive, with three stories of shelves stretching toward a vaulted ceiling painted with constellations I didn’t recognize. Rolling ladders, reading nooks tucked into alcoves, and the smell of old paper and leather bindings, that particular scent that every book lover knows and craves.
I fell in love instantly.
Finally. One place in this castle that felt familiar. One place that felt mine.
I wandered through the stacks, trailing my fingers along spines written in languages I couldn’t read, until I found a quiet corner with a desk by a window. The view was spectacular. Snow falling gently, mountains rising in the distance, the kind of scene that made my writer’s heart ache with inspiration.
Speaking of which.
An idea had been niggling at me since I arrived. A scene, a character, a story inspired by this place, this world, this impossible turn my life had taken. My writer brain never shut off, even when the rest of me was having an existential crisis.
I checked the drawers of the desk and found paper. Cream-colored, beautiful, the kind of paper that made you want to write words worthy of it. And actual ink with a quill.
