“More so than Cal, yes. They’re different,” he said, as if that settled it. “Just like how you’re different from your sister.” He turned a page. “Less pretty and vivacious, but far more interesting for all your reserve. It’s like comparing a lily to a thistle.”
You asshole, she thought.Youdick.
His eyes went to her face. “There’s a frankness to your gaze that is quite refreshing, though; it feels almost like a challenge. I wonder if it is.”
Nadine could not think of anything she wanted to say to that, so she grabbed a book and headed for the door at last, rattled both by the comparison and his assessment of her.
A challenge.
Was that all this was? Nadine shook her head angrily, telling herself it didn’t matter what Nathaniel thought. What did it matter? She’d made her choice.
His next words, however, stopped her dead in her tracks.
“Has he had you yet?”
She spun around very slowly. “W-what?”
“Don’t do that,” he said, in such a hard voice that she took an involuntary step back. “You can play the stammering coquette all you like with my son, but to do it with me insults both our intelligences. I’ve seen how he acts around you. He isn’t normally this possessive.”
“I—”
“Come now, you’re not a simpleton, are you, my dear? Did you fuck him? Caledon has long refused to commit, but I’ve always wondered if it was a matter of finding the right breed of woman. Someone who forced him to put some effort into the claiming.”
Sweat broke out over her skin. Nobody had ever talked to her like this. Even her cruelest high school peers had seemed to intuit that she had no experience to lord over her and taunt her about.
“You’re disgusting,” she said, feeling even as she spoke that those words were not sufficient. “You—”
“It’s a small town, Nadine.” He turned another page she was certain he hadn’t read. “You’d be surprised what gets out. There are eyes even in the shadows—and they see everything. Even things that don’t want to be seen.”
She felt like she’d been punched.
No, she thought, clutching the book to her chest.He isn’t suggesting—
“You really should stay for the festival, Nadine. You won’t have experienced anything like it. It’s really quite a rush—one that . . . persists throughout the night.” His hawkish eyes darted in her direction again. “There’s a reason so many children in this family are born in March.”
Oh my god. She watched him get up, sickened by his insinuations, as he slowly folded his paper. The other words that had slowly been forming on her tongue evaporated, all at once.
“I’m surprised Cal hasn’t offered to take you. It’s tradition, you know, for Cullraven men to claim their intended on the evening of the festival when the thrill of the hunt raises their blood. I’m sure you canimaginewhat that’s like.”
Smiling thinly, he turned to leave.
And all the heat and the air in the room seemed to go with him.
???????
I’m sure you can imagine.
Nadine sat on her bed in the unicorn room with the book beside her, unable to read it. She stared instead at the painting of Caledon Cullraven slaying the blue-eyed deer, feeling close to panic. She had stopped taking her anxiety medication years ago in spite of her doctor’s orders because the pills had made her feel nothing. But now, at times like this, she found herself caught in the throes of what it was like to feeleverything.
Sometimes—like now—it felt like her heart might explode.
Because it had sounded like Nathaniel was intimating that he had seen her and Cal fucking.
Or someone else did and told him.
She thought of that time in the garden when she had sworn she had seen someone between the trees. Standing there. Watching them.
Just like how someone had been in her room.
