“Cal is free to do as he wishes,” Nathaniel said, cutting off Ben’s sharp retort. “But he knows the rules, and he knows the consequences for breaking them.”
“If she knows and she doesn’t care, what does it matter? Just force her to marry him. Shotgun wedding. They’ve basically all been shotgun weddings, when you think about it.”
“Youdon’t have a stake in this,” Ben said coldly.
“Whose fault is that? Not mine. I didn’t tell our beloved patriarch to write out his stupid will with the assumption that women couldn’t hunt worth a damn. I shouldn’t have to stay a Cullraven to inherit. Maybe I’d like a sparrow of my own—did you ever think of that? Did he? Noooo.”
“Enough,” Nathaniel said. “Both of you.”
“I’m not cleaning up this mess again,” Ben said, slamming something—probably his fist—on the table. “This time, Cal can shoot his own deer. It’ll be good for him. Toughen him up.”
“You’re one to talk, considering what you brought home and what happened when you did,” Nathaniel pointed out. “Sulking around—an embarrassment. You’re just lucky you found that book when you did. Otherwise, I’m not sure what I would have had to do.”
“Strange that it would turn up now,” Ben said.
“There are plenty of transgressions here to go around, believe me,” Nathaniel said in a chilling voice. “If Cal wants the girl’s heart that badly, he can be the one to put the bullet in it. Because the only altar our deer guest will be seeing is the one that’s red with her own blood.”
“Woohoo,” Odessa said. “Red wedding.”
“That’s entirely enough out ofyou.”
Nadine backed up so suddenly that she nearly hit a painting. She covered her mouth with her hands and sprinted away, back down the hall. In her head, she heard the echo of Cal’s voice whispering that the cellar room was “the other bridal suite.” The room where all those recalcitrant sparrow-wives were forcibly—and violently—laid to rest for their betrayals.
Come with me, my sparrow, lest thy feathers commingle with the ashes and the blood from whence thy lately stags once fated to tread.
Would she get a portrait, too? she wondered hysterically. An entry in the green book? Another warning to the next girl who foolishly stepped into this house not knowing what horrors awaited her?
Maybe they wouldn’t even burn her. After all, she wasn’t a fucking sparrow.
Deer got butchered in the woods.
It’s murder, she thought. Ritualistic, cold-blooded murder. They could call the people they were killing stags and deer and sparrows, but they were people just the same.
It wasn’t hunting they liked to do; it was fuckingmurder.
And they wanted to do it to her.
Her eyes went to the bottle of Riesling. She pried the cork out, and the lukewarm wine hit her skull like a battering ram. When she looked at the bottle again, she realized she’d drunk nearly half of it, which explained why her head felt like it was spinning. She didn’t normally drink, not like this, but the situation seemed to call for it.
Would Cal go through with it? He’d told her that there was a clause built into the will of every subsequent generation and that it was up to the parents who got to decide who was in good standing and who wasn’t. He’d also told her that Caledon Cullraven had always offered his wife both a blade and a chance to fight for her life.
(I won’t put you in the green book, Nadine, but I’ll fuck you until you think you’re dead)
The alcohol clouded her head, gnawing holes in the fear. The parts of her brain that were sayingnoanddon’t fucking do itwere slowly fading, bite by bite.
Just like she had at the bar, she could feel an electric determination pulsing at the tips of her fingers. She kicked off her pants, studying her legs. They were a little bruised from rolling around on the hard ground. She should have been terrified then but she had given in.
She could do it again. He had come back and she could hear him stirring around in his room. Nadine looked at her reflection, tugging at her flannel shirt to outline the shape of her body beneath her clothes. Love bites trailed down her neck, past the open collar of her shirt.
She unbuttoned it a little more, and centered her necklace, which she never took off.
He had this hallway built so he could come to his wife in the night.
Cal was at his desk, shoeless, still wearing his nice pants. It looked like he’d been in the process of taking his shirt off but had gotten distracted. Now he was typing up a storm on the laptop with a dark expression on his face. She wanted to laugh at it, more amused than she should have been in her drunken state.Even monsters have day jobs.
Her throat tightened, her study becoming more speculative as her eyes swept over him, lingering on his corded forearms and the lean, sharp lines of his hips in his creased pants, before returning to his furred chest and the way it was framed by those starched white lapels.
Words stuck in her throat. She glanced at the open doorway behind her, leading back into her own room. He hadn’t seen her yet. She could still leave.
