“Good. Stay away from him. He’s lost his sparrow and now he wants mine—but you belong to me.” His voice dropped. “I’ve marked you, and I’ll be the one to finish you off.”
“Finish me—?”
His cock twitched. “You’ll like it the way I do it, don’t worry.” She looked frightened and unconvinced. Cal reclined back, watching her as she continued to hover just out of reach. “Was there something else?” he asked politely, clicking the cap of his pen.
“What are you doing?”
“Just some probate litigation.”
“Do you like it?”
The question surprised him, and his surprise surprised him further, confirming the unreality of their situation. She had not asked him about his work since he had taken her to the diner in Arboreus and everything between them had gotten so twisted.
“It’s work but there’s a certain satisfaction in it, yes,” he said, but it sounded forced. The easy camaraderie between them was lost and he was faced with a rather disturbing vision of what Nadine would look like, forced to heel like his mother, all her vivacity of spirit drained away, with a dull glaze in her lovely eyes. “But I don’t think that’s why you came to see me.”
“I want my phone back.”
Her request disappointed him, though it shouldn’t have. Of course she was here for that. She still wanted to flee from this place—right into the waiting arms of death.
“No.” He picked up his pen again, waiting. “Is that all?”
“It’s mine.” She stared at him, as if this claim to ownership ought to impress. When he didn’t respond, she scowled. “I have friends. Friends who worry about me. If I don’t talk to them, they’re going to beworried.”
“They won’t be,” he said.
“They—what? Why?”
“Because I took care of it.”
It took her a moment. First, disbelief. Then anger, fear. “Youimpersonatedme,” she said, slowly realizing. “You impersonated me to my friends and family? But my phone has a lock.”
Cal looked at her, daring her to acknowledge what went on between them. That letting him into her room the way she did, he would have no trouble at all taking her hand as she slept and pressing her trusting fingers into her phone’s lock.
“You . . .” Her eyes glinted with tears. “Psycho.”
“You’re going to that festival,” he told her. “That was your fate, I’m afraid, from the moment you walked into this courtyard, demanding to know what happened to your sister. My family will see to it, even if I don’t. I can’t have you running around panicking, alerting all your friends.”
“So you’re going toimprisonme here? Is that the plan? For how long, Cal?”
“Until Iownyou.” It came out as a growl, low and menacing. She leaped back again, in a way that had his fingers clenching around the marker in an effort to ground himself. “When I’ve claimed you as my sparrow—that’s when you’ll be safe, Nadine. And then you’ll fuck me, just like all the other Cullraven brides fucked their husbands. I’ll hand you the knife, but we both know you’ll decline it, and darling, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t looking forward to it.”
He thought she would run again—she looked like she wanted to, swaying on her feet like that, as if mesmerized. But then she said again, falteringly, “Give me my phone.”
Brave, sweet little fool. Holding the pen loosely in his fingers, he said, “Tell me, what do you think will happen if youleave here? Do you think you’ll be free—from me? Fromthis? You’re not the first sparrow to want to fly from here.”
“What do you mean?”
“Our grand-uncle’s wife—she tried to run. She didn’t care much for his vicious appetites. So he chased her across two continents and six countries to punish her for her hubris before he fed her ashes to the sea. His name was Benjamin Alexander Cullraven. Ben’s namesake.” His smile was sardonic. “Seems rather fitting, wouldn’t you say?”
The color fled from her face and she held onto the back of his desk chair with white fingers. “Oh my god,” she said weakly.
“We both come from a long line of vindictive, draconian men, Ben and I. Maybe we’re both doomed to hurt the ones we love: two scorpions, forged in blood. I might even be moved to pity him, if I weren’t cursed with the same affliction.”
Nadine looked up from the floor. “You say that like you think you don’t have a choice.”
“There’s always a choice. But sometimes the consequences are the same.”Look at me, he thought.I swore to myself I’d never fall for anyone again.He flipped a page of his documents without reading them. “I thought we could go to the woods today,” he forced himself to say. “The weather is perfect for what I have planned. We can stop by the town on the way and show your friend no harm has come to you.”
Nadine gave him a harsh look. “Before the woods, you mean.”
