Resigned as he was to his current course of action, Cal couldn’t quite bring himself to consider what his lack of compliance might mean for himself and his sparrow, but a fresh tension flooded his body, as if preparing him for flight or flight. As he walked down the stairs beneath the blindly staring eyes of his ancestors, he wasawareof his surroundings in a way that he had never really had to be before.
To his relief, the halls were deserted. Any staff that didn’t live on the premises would have already vacated from the property, which meant there was no one around to question his presence or report his behavior as he made his way into the kitchen. When he opened the fridge, he saw that the foodstuffs for the day’s repast had already been prepared in advance andstored for the cook’s use, because God forbid a Cullraven go wanting.
Grabbing a container of cornstarch from the cupboard, Cal opened the lid of watery stock that would be used for the chowder later and added three generous tablespoons.
She would eat it, if it came from him. Nadine trusted him with her body, if with nothing else, and he had taken very good care of her. The fact that he needed to betray her trust a second time was a necessary cruelty. His family wouldn’t hunt her if she was too ill to give them the fight they craved, and he couldn’t risk them dragging her from him prematurely as Ben had threatened—not before he had a proper chance at claiming her himself.
Because he fully believed that they had never intended to give him the opportunity to offer her the knife. It didn’t matter that she’d given him everything and welcomed him into her bed while the thrill of his bloodlust still rode untrammeled through his veins.
His father had planned to kill both of the Harnois women from the very beginning.
Cal snapped the lid back on the container and left the kitchen. By now he could hear the muted but distant bang of pipes, which meant that someone was having a bath. His family was rising, preparing for the festival day.
He changed into a worn pair of jeans and a flannel button-down that wasn’t all that different from the one he’d left his sparrow wearing. He considered warning her, but didn’t. Better if he avoided contact at all, until it was time to take her. If they thought her too prepared, they might only hasten her execution, as they had Noelle’s.
Still, his eyes went to the tapestry of the hunt hanging over the door, his mind’s eye tracing the contours of the shadowy hall that lay behind it, filled with the ghosts of liaisons past.
Soon, he thought, wishing she could hear it.Soon this will all be over.
He went back downstairs and nearly ran into his father, now dressed in English-style hunting finery and sporting his favorite gun. Cal stepped on a board deliberately, announcing his presence without a word and forcing his father to look up.
A line formed between his brows, which quickly smoothed itself out. “Decided to join us, have you?” he said, his mock-joviality like a sheath masking a poisoned blade. Cal could hear the undercurrent beneath it:you’re either with us, or against us.
He calmly took him in, studying the fine clothes which, on closer inspection, revealed themselves to have been worn and repaired many times. As with the furniture, they were vintage originals; their very quality lay in the fact that they remained unchanged with the times. Even his father’s weathered face was beginning to mirror the first Caledon’s, aged prematurely by the numerous excesses that never quite satisfied.
“I want you to know,” Cal said, “that I claimed her last night. She gave herself to me.”
His father’s smile faded, lips thinning until they all but disappeared into that heathen sneer. “And I told you that was quite out of the question.”
“I don’t think you understand,” Cal said. “She has bled for me, knelt for me, begged for me—not for clemency, no, but for my hand around her throat.” He clenched his fingers into a fist for emphasis. “By every definition, she is a true Cullraven bride. To reject her now is to reject the legacy itself.”
His father’s jaw ticked. “You are a second son and she is unworthy.”
“Unworthy,” he repeated, tasting the words. “As opposed to whom? My poor, shrinking mother, cowering upstairs? Nadine has had every reason to turn and flee, and yet she stays. Loyal. Beholden. But hers is a quiet strength and perhaps it eludes the senses of the easily fatigued.”
His father stood taller, bristling with anger at the insult. “Are you capable of bringing this to its end, Caledon? Or must your brother step in again for you and do what needs to be done?”
Cal laughed—a harsh, humorless sound. “It never was about the sparrows, was it? It was all about control. Your control.” He moved leisurely down the stairs, his sinuous grace belying the hard rock of anger burning brightly as coal-fire in his chest. “Ben and Noelle, me and Nadine—Odessa and . . . well, anyone. You never would have allowed any of us any happiness.”
“Odessa is a woman and Noelle came to us prematurely. She never could have been persuaded to our side. Not after the way Ben botched the ritual and allowed her to see things as they are.”
“But you helped that along, didn’t you?” Still speaking in that soft, dangerous voice, he said, “Noelle stole the book butyouput it into her hands, didn’t you? It’s the only explanation that makes sense. She never had any curiosity or suspicions until someone handed them to her like Bluebeard’s key.”
That tendon in his father’s jaw leaped again. “As for Nadine,” he continued, as if Cal hadn’t spoken, although there was a harsher edge to his voice now, “that pale, quivering creature will wilt in your shadow or betray you at first blush. You will be doing her a mercy.”
“And was it a mercy before?” Cal continued his slow approach. The floorboards groaned beneath his weight. “When you had Ben kill the first girl I lay with. Was it a mercy then?”
“Yes.” His father reached into his pocket for a bullet and put it in the chamber before snapping the cartridge in place emphatically. “You needed to learn a lesson.”
“What lesson is that, exactly?” Cal had reached the bottom of the stairs. He stood a few feet away from his father, arms folded. “That killing tastes sweeter than the flesh? That I, too, should hunger for a maiden’s death rattle? I have tasted the pleasure my great-grandfather sought, and trust me, it does not lie in the spilled lifeblood of the innocent.”
“Perhaps you’re right,” his father said grimly. “Perhaps that particular lesson was wasted on you. It seems you’ve inherited your mother’s softness—and her stubbornness.”
A chill threatened. Cal locked his shoulders against it. “I do know one thing. Whatever it was that Caledon Cullraven was searching for, it pales in comparison to what my sparrow gives me now.” He smiled—it was beautiful and cold, as cold as his father wished him to be. “I wasn’t asking your permission earlier. She is mine and I will be taking her into those woods later to prove to you, and to her, and whomever else cares to know, that she will continue to be mine until one of us ceases to breathe.”
“You dare defy me?” His father’s thick fingers tightened on the gun. “Do you want to die with her, then? Because if you lie with the deer this time, boy, so help me, you’ll be treated like one.”
“Even deer have antlers,” Cal quoted softly.
