His namesake: the libertine who could quote de Sade from memory and spent the coin earned on the backs of the laborers of his family’s blood mine on brothels and opium until he finally left England and came here, to exploit this forested enclave in the middle of the mountains and burn through the tedium of his various excesses like a white sun through fog.
But none of that was enough. Caledon Cullraven hadn’t wished to leash his depravity. And out here, isolated from the very society over which he wished to exert his peculiar brand of dominance, he began to stagnate and turn restless.
“He grew bored,” Cal said, “again, until for the very first time in his life, he felt something close to the passion that he had always secretly craved.”
Nadine’s lips drew back in a grimace.“Murder.’
“He was a gentleman, so he gave them a choice. He always gave them a knife. Even deer have antlers. He told them if they survived the night, they could live in peace. But they didn’t survive, Nadine. Ever. Because he was very, very good at what he did.”
She looked up at him in horror, as if realizing that this was the answer to her earlier question.Like what—whatdidhe want from her? Everything. Her body, her fight, her surrender. Her life.
“When he married his second wife,” Cal said, “he told her how much he loved the killing and the blood. He said it filled him with vigor and made him feel like he was god. God, that power. It was more addictive than opium and infinitely more illicit, but that only gave it a flavor that was all the more suited for his perverse tastes. So he gave her a choice, too. She could keep her silence and fuck him when his blood was up, and for her, thehunt would be bloodless. Or she could try her luck in the woods, and see if she could outlast him.”
“Outlast . . . him?”
“In a fight for survival,” Cal said. “To the death.”
She had never looked at him likethatbefore—a charged look of awareness, nearly sexual in its intensity.She sees me, he thought, and there was relief in that, as well as a certain carnal satisfaction. This was no mirror, no flattering intimist’s portrait.
This was him, unleashed, in all of his carnal glory.
“The sparrows—” Bravely, she struggled to maintain eye contact even as her words faltered. “Oh god, they’re . . . they’re women, aren’t they? So—what, y-you’re going to kill me in the woods?”
“Sparrows get to choose, Nadine.” She winced as he traced the still-tender edges of those broken blood vessels blooming violet and scarlet against her skin. “For you, it doesn’t have to be destruction. Evangeline Cullraven was the very first sparrow. She saved herself.”
“Because she married a psychopath,” Nadine said hotly. “Why doyoudo it?”
“There’s a will. Each generation writes their own codicil, since a will can only dictate a life in being. The parents distribute their wealth to those who ‘uphold the tenets of the past generations.’ There’s an in terrorem clause built in so anyone who contests the will loses their portion of the inheritance.”
And their life.
“You do it formoney?”
“Well.” He let her eyes drift to her shirtfront. “Idon’t.”
Nadine made a wounded sound, like he’d struck her with an arrow. Fighting against her restraints and him so bravely, like acornered animal lowering its head to charge one last time. He wanted to soothe her, but from the way she held herself now, a single touch might only cause her fragile façade of valiance to crumble like melting ice.
Cal leaned back and some of the tension ebbed from her shoulders. “Yes. Ben didn’t want to tell her. He didn’t trust her to make the right choice. But he still wanted her anyway, so he lied to our father and said that she knew, even as he kept her in the dark.”
And in that darkness, she beckoned like flame to a moth.
“But Father found out anyway, when he lost the book—and she found it. Oh, he was furious, my father. He told Ben to make it right.”
“To kill her,” Nadine whispered brokenly.
He bowed his head.
“Like adeer.”
“Oh, Nadine.” He cradled her head closer, letting her hair tangle through his fingers. Her breaths glanced off his stomach, quick and halting. “What am I going to do with you? You read the whole fucking book, didn’t you? I thought for sure that this—” he flicked the bruise on her neck “—would make you run.”
“I didn’t,” she said stubbornly.
“No, you didn’t. Selfishly, I hoped you wouldn’t. And you’re here right now because you’re exactly the woman I thought you were: brave, sweet . . . naïve.”
Her eyes filled with a blaze of hatred, body coiling as if she were prepared to lash out. And he would have accepted that but she was not his goal—not yet, anyway. The papers on the desk were, which Gideon had given him back along with theunconscious Nadine, the message clear: this would be his body to bury, his kill to clean.
(This time you’ll be culling your own heard)
