P R O L O G U E
while you taste of wine and freedom
A gentle breeze stirred through the curtains, scented by the pines from the surrounding wood. Chilled by its proximity to the tarn, the current stirred against Cal Cullraven’s bare torso, raising goosebumps. Beyond the window, a wordless urgency swelled beneath the tranquility of the densely wooded cordillera like a boiler straining at its iron seams, ready to explode.
His eyes snapped open and when the sunlight flooding his bedroom was caught in the iris, the red bubbles trapped in his unusual amber eyes gleamed like polished garnets—or fresh blood.
Still groggy, Cal reached for his phone and found to his discomfiture that the table was in the wrong place. Not his college apartment after all, but his childhood bedroom with all of its dense hardwood and heavy, imposing fixtures. He could hear the birdsong of distant sparrows calling to one another from the depths of Passer Woods. And, perversely, strings.Damn you, Odessa, he thought nonsensically.It’s far too early for whatever this is.
And then he blinked, fully taking in the melody for the first time.
Is that . . . Pachelbel’s Canon?
Oh, fuck. The orchestra. The wedding. Ben’s new bride. What a fucking nightmare.
Cal rolled back against the dark sheets, closing his eyes against the imagined specter of Ben’s peacocking smugness as he dragged his pretty young wife over the threshold like a houndwith its kill. Nor was he looking forward to what would come afterwards.
At the festival.
“What is your family like?” Noelle had asked him, the very first time they met. There was a shy ebullience in her voice paired with a convivial willingness to please that repelled him as effectively as if they were two magnets of like poles. “Ben says your house is quite old.”
Oh yes, it was. Brick by crumbling brick, his namesake had built this house, and now the specter of it hung over all their heads like an eidolic sword of Damocles. It was merely a question of which of them would be the first to spill the blood that would mortar the foundation and sate its sleeping hungers.
But he could say none of this to Noelle without sending her screaming off into the night, and under the glaring lights of the fine Thai restaurant Ben had chosen deliberately to impress, it was unlikely she would have believed him anyway, even if saying so was the kinder choice.
“We’re very traditional,” he said eventually, with a coolness she clearly found off-putting. And then, seeing Ben returning to the table, he added dryly, “You’ll get used to it.”
Despite her unease, she had still made every effort to include him in the conversation and seemed surprised and a little unnerved every time Ben pivoted the subject to exclude him at every turn, making the evening feel more like a cross-examination than an introduction.
Part of him had hoped that Noelle would see through the illusion of grandeur and leave. None of Ben’s other girlfriends had stuck around for very long and it seemed likely that this woman—with her easy candor and simple jewelry—would fall in line with all of the others, put off by the rot beneath the gilt.
But she hadn’t, and now here he was. A spectator to the travesty of his brother’s nuptial bliss.
As he did up the buttons of his shirt, Cal cast a contemptuous look at the cobbled courtyard down below. The decorators his mother had hired scrambled around like ants, assembling arches and various displays with torpid industry beneath the brutal hammer of the sun.
When he leaned out for a closer look, he imagined he could smell the roses from here.
I daresay they’ve never done a wedding like this, though.
He shrugged into his suit jacket, doing up the row of buttons before knotting the blood-red tie into a Windsor knot at his throat. At his breast, he affixed an onyx raven pin that had once belonged to his great-great grandfather. Mourning jewelry, his one indulgence to mockery. It was enough to know that Ben would see it and recognize the gesture for the slight it was.
The faces of his ancestors looked down sullenly from the walls as he stalked down the stairs. Only a few of the men had the Cullraven eyes, but the red the artists had used gleamed from the crushed glass that had been blended into the paint. He’d always wondered if it could still draw blood.
“—no! Don’t put those out there, we have enough roses outside. Those can go into the kitchen with the others.” His mother’s voice chimed like a fragile silver bell. The authority in it was unfamiliar and gave him pause as he rounded the corner.
She was wearing an elegant beaded dress and had a glass of champagne in hand—to fortify herself, he supposed. She watched the departing team of florists with a look of resignation that faded into something altogether more vigilant when she saw him.
Between his height and his daunting physique, he was used to being sized up at a glance, but seeing it come from his mother elicited a frisson of something very like regret.
“You look respectable,” she said at last, in a tone that suggested the opposite.
He felt his smile harden. “Thank you, Mother.”
Her eyes dipped, snagging on his pin. Her mouth formed a brief moue of displeasure. “Ben won’t like that.”
“Ben can go fuck himself,” Cal said, very calmly.
“Don’t.” The word flew like a bullet and they both tensed. His mother took a sip from her glass, looking at the stairs and then away. “Don’t,” she said again, in a more restrained tone. “Noelle’s sister will be here soon and so will the other guests. We don’t want a . . . scene before the tour.”
