“What kind of spell?”
“The kind that destroys rooms, obviously.”
She frowns. “Uh-huh. And why did you do it in here? Knowing full well I had to clean today?”
She’s glaring at us. Make her stop.
It’s not my fault.
It really is your fault.
What did you want me to do, stop making love to Chelsea?
Is that a trick question?
Shut up, Nightmare.
I rush over to Nancy, hoping to solve this before she starts a world-class mutiny among my staff. “Tell you what—you canhave today off from my room. I’ll get this fixed and we can recalibrate.”
She eyes the flowers, the shattered glass, the crumbling walls. “Good. Because I don’t even know where to begin. I don’t get paid enough to deal with this shit.” She turns around and starts to walk out. “And don’t think I won’t mention this to Stave. He needs to know you’re trying to get us all killed.”
“I would be disappointed if you didn’t.”
“That’s what I thought,” she says before walking out of the room and closing the door behind her.
Once she’s gone, I exhale, releasing tension from my shoulders. “You can come out now.”
Chelsea slips out of the bathroom where she’s been hiding. She has a black silk sheet wrapped around her shoulders. I found it in one of the drawers in this room. She had to wear something since most of her clothes were, um…ruined.
Her hair’s mussed and she smells like us—sweet and musky. She whispers as she tiptoes over to me, “Do you think she’ll come back?”
“Not for a while, so you won’t have to hide from her again.”
She glances around at the destruction—roses growing through stone, glass glittering everywhere, walls that look centuries older than they did last night. “We really didallthis?"
I follow her gaze. The room looks like a battlefield between beauty and chaos. "We did."
“Is that normal?"
No,Nightmare answers.That's unprecedented.
"No," I say carefully. "That's not normal."
Chelsea touches a rose petal, then pulls her hand back like it might bite. "Should we be worried?"
Probably. But I can’t scare her. Not when she's standing here in a silk sheet, looking at me like I'm something worth keeping.
"We'll figure it out," I say instead.
She cringes. “Sorry. I just didn’t want her to find me here and realize?—”
“That we’re married?”
“No.” She rolls her eyes. “That I’m guilty of making the mess, too.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll gladly take the blame for your messes every day of the week.”
And I mean it. Every word. The truth of it squeezes my chest tight.
