Winnie doesn’t need to know that I was there during the siege, throwing vats of burning pitch over the walls onto the enemy soldiers or slitting the throat of their commander and tossing his body from the window in her bedroom.
Or how the peasants I saved in that siege turned on me decades later when they realised I wasn’t aging and burnedme at the stake as a sorcerer. That betrayal still rankles. I had to wait out a generation as a shadow in the wilds, subsisting on animal blood and wayward girls taking the woodland paths to visit their grandmothers, before I could return and claim back what’s mine. It took me years to scrub the human smell out of the castle walls.
“So your family lost the castle for thirty years, and then took the castle back?” Winnie follows my palatable version of the story. “You should give tours. This is so interesting, and you love history. You make it sound as if you were there.”
I nod. It’s on the tip of my tongue to tell her the truth, but Reginald is wrong. I’ve not lied to Winnie the whole time she’s stayed with us, and she doesn’t suspect what I truly am. If I have to say goodbye to her, we can make it another few weeks without her learning that monsters are real.
A few more weeks where I can enjoy her company and pretend that her bright smiles are for me.
But if she could be mine, then perhaps …
… perhaps she deserves the truth?
We pass by the kitchen so Winnie can make herself a coffee. I swallow down my cresting hunger, thinking of the fine vintage Reginald stores for me in the cellar, but I can’t risk having a glass now, not when I’m weak and Winnie has me so twisted up.
We head to the drawing room that I’ve been using as my ceramic studio. Winnie pulls over two chairs and sits them opposite each other. “I realise that you’re too unwell to help with the physical work today, but can you sit and tell me what to do?”
I nod.
“Good. Before we start with this room, I think it’s time to do step two of the Winnie Wins System – ‘Intention’.”
Winnie perches on one of the chairs and indicates that I should take the other. My knees brush hers, and the contact with her warm skin reminds me of the fire licking at my skin when the peasants burned me.
“I’ll do whatever you ask of me.”
Yes, ask me, beg me, whisper my namelike an incantation.
If you knew the things I would do to you now in that chair, if only you would ask …
Winnie’s dark lips form an O of surprise. For a moment, I believe she hears my lustful thoughts. But no – she expected me to fight her on this activity. But I think she is describing a ritual, and I’ve lived through centuries where rituals and magic were real and dangerous.
I want to see what Winnie Preston does with magic on her fingers.
I also need to remain seated, so that I can hide my arousal in the folds of my shirt.
Winnie takes in a breath, her chest rising so her breasts brush against her lavender shirt, and I see the twin peaks of her nipples hard through the fabric.
She’s cold, I remind myself as I force my gaze to her face, as I try in vain to stop myself from committing the perfect peaks of her breasts to memory.Reginald hasn’t lit the fire yet.
“—an intention is an idea or belief that you hold to be true,” Winnie is saying. I nod and nod and nod but I don’t think I hear a word. “You carry it through your life and come back to it when you feel lost or overwhelmed. Intentions guide our actions so we can live by our values.”
Sweet Winnie, if you knew about my intentions for your body right now …
“I can give you an example.” Winnie’s eyes flutter closed, her eyelashes tangling together. I lean forward an inch and press my knees to hers. I hoped the contact would ease my monstrous thoughts or quiet the hunger burning in my throat, but instead, it flares higher, burning through my kneecaps and straight into my chest.
“I would like that.”
Winnie’s voice trembles a little as she continues. “I haven’t said much about my mother or how I grew up, but it was … not great. I spent my teenage years staying at my best friend Claire’s house as often as I could and counting down the days until I could move out.” She swallows, her throat moving. I’m transfixed by the artery pulsing in her long, elegant neck. “I thought once I was out of her house, all the stress of living there would just disappear. Instead, it got worse. Claire and I lived together at uni and I couldn’t deal with all thespace. I cleaned constantly and threw out everything that wasn’t nailed down … I had these awful nightmares, and I’d wake up screaming.”
I open my mouth to ask her about the nightmares, the ones she still has now, but she keeps talking.
“Claire made me see a therapist, and it helped. One of the things she taught me to do was to set intentions. My intention is: ‘I will allow myself to be happy.’ Whenever I’m stressed or spiralling, I come back to that, and I ask myself, ‘What would make me happy right now?’ and I try to do that thing for myself. Does that make sense?”
I don’t know what a therapist is, but it makes my breath still and my heart clench for whatever Winnie has gone through that made her, even for a moment, think she didn’t deserve happiness.
“Yes,” I manage to grit out, my hands balling into fists. “I understand.”
“Good.” She smiles that beautiful bright smile. But this time, I see the sadness on the edges. “When I leave you with this beautiful, tidy castle, I don’t want you to fall back into the habits that got you to where you are. You deserve to have this space to be creative, Alaric, but Reginald’s right about one thing – you couldbecomea hoarder if you’re not careful. I don’t want that to happen to you.”
