Chapter 4

Caelum's POV

I stared at her retreating back.

Her heels clicked against the tiles in a slow, deliberate rhythm, each step perfectly measured, her head up, her dark hair moving slightly with each stride.

Edward was still on the floor behind me, curled around himself, gasping like a man who had forgotten how breathing worked.

I looked at him for a moment. Then I looked back at the corridor where Seraphine had disappeared around the corner.

She was stronger than I had expected. And I had expected quite a lot.

"Take him to the physician's chambers," I said to the two guards standing nearest to Edward. They moved immediately, getting their hands under his arms and lifting him between them. He was still making that winded, broken sound.

I turned and walked in the opposite direction.

Riven fell into step beside me before I had made it ten paces. 

"Did you see what she just did?" he said.

"Of course I saw it, Riven," I said. "I was standing right there. I'm not blind."

"She's dangerous," he said. "She cannot be trusted. I told you before she arrived, I'm telling you again now. That woman is a walking catastrophe and you invited her through the front door."

"Mind your business."

"I can't just stand here and watch you bring this entire household down," he said, and his voice had that particular edge it got when he had decided he was going to say the thing regardless of whether I wanted to hear it. Riven was the only person in this manor who spoke to me that way. It was one of the reasons I kept him close and also, occasionally, one of the reasons I found him exhausting.

I stopped walking.

He stopped too, looking at me, waiting.

"Have you noticed something?" I said.

He frowned slightly. 

"What?"

"The ground," I said. "That sound it makes. That deep, low vibration that runs through the floor of the east wing every few days." 

I looked at him. 

"It hasn't happened once since she arrived this morning."

Riven was quiet for a second. 

"So?" he said, but his voice had lost some of its certainty.

"So the stories are true," I said. "The curse was never one-sided. It was never just something the Vales carried. We carry our half of it too, and we need them to survive it just as much as they need us." I started walking again. 

"Lady Seraphine being in this house is not a threat to it. She is the reason it is still standing."

"You're listening to old stories," Riven said, following me. "Half those records in the library are a hundred years old, Caelum. You can't rebuild the entire household strategy around—"

"If we let the Vales in they will destroy this place," I said, cutting him off. "That is what you were about to say."

"Yes," he said. "That is what I was about to say."

"Exactly," I said. "Which is why, until we find a way to end what started between these two families, Lady Seraphine is the only Vale who comes through that door."

"And how exactly do you plan to end a war that started before either of us was born?" Riven asked. 

He wasn't being difficult. He was asking a real question, the way he did when he had already thought through the problem and wanted to know if I had thought through it too.

"I don't know yet," I said honestly. "But I will figure it out."

Riven made a sound that was not quite a sigh and not quite agreement but lived somewhere between the two.

"If your father were here," he said, more quietly now, "he would never approve of this."

I kept walking. "Too bad he isn't here then," I said. "Too bad."

"I'm sorry, my Lord. I didn't mean it like that."

"I know you didn't," I said. "It's fine."

We walked in silence for a moment.

"This discussion is over," I said. "Assemble guards around Lady Seraphine's room tonight." I thought about the way she had slipped that glove off without anyone noticing.

"Although I'm fairly certain she doesn't need them."

Riven made the sound again, the one between sigh and agreement.

I almost smiled.

Dinner was served at seven.

The dining room in the east wing was smaller than the main hall, warmer, lit by wall sconces that threw a soft amber light over the table. I used it when I didn't want the formality of the great hall, which was most evenings. Tonight the table was set for two.

I was already seated when she came in.

She had changed out of the travelling clothes she arrived in. She was wearing a sundress now, dark green, simple, the kind of thing that should have looked casual and somehow on her managed to look so stunning.

Her hair was down around her shoulders. She sat across from me and unfolded her napkin onto her lap and looked at the spread of food on the table with an expression I couldn't quite read.

I picked up my wine glass and watched her.

She reached for her fork and began to eat, slowly and carefully, taking small bites and setting the fork down between each one in the precise, deliberate way of someone who was paying close attention to their own manners. Her eyes stayed on her plate. Her back was straight.

I watched her do this for about two minutes.

The food here was good. One of the few things this manor did genuinely well was feed people. I had watched grown men close their eyes on the first bite of the cook's roasted turkey. And Seraphine Vale was sitting across from me eating it like she didn't like it.

"Is the food not to your taste?" I asked.

She looked up. 

"No, no," she said quickly. "The food is really nice. I'm just trying to eat more lady-like."

I looked at her for a moment. At the careful posture and the deliberate fork movements and the expression of someone exercising enormous self-control.

"You can eat however you want," I said. "I don't mind."

She looked at me. "You sure?"

"Yes," I said. "I'm sure."

Something shifted in her face. Not a big shift, just a small loosening, she looked relieved.

She put her fork down, reached across the table, and picked up the roasted turkey leg with her bare hand.

And then she ate it.

Properly, enthusiastically, the way food that good deserved to be eaten. She finished it in less than a minute, set the bone down, and immediately reached for the stuffed bread beside it. 

She worked through her plate with the focused, happy energy of someone who had been holding themselves back for hours and had finally been given permission to stop.

I kept my wine glass at my lips to hide the fact that I was smiling.

She was, without question, the most unexpectedly entertaining person who had ever sat at this table. And she was also, sitting there in that green dress with her hair down and her cheeks slightly flushed from the warmth of the room, the most beautiful woman I had seen in a very long time. 

I had heard her called the monster of the Vale clan since I was old enough to understand what the Vale clan was. I had built an image in my head over the years of something cold and sharp and deliberately frightening.

I had not accounted for the sundress. Or the turkey leg. Or the way her lips looked when she sucked a bit of the glaze off her thumb without thinking about it.

I cleared my throat and looked at my own plate, trying to stop myself from imagining what she would look like without the dress.

"Our wedding is in a few days," I said.

She looked up, chewing. She swallowed. 

"Okay," she said. "Will my family attend?"

"Your father will be there," I said. "The ceremony itself will be small. Private. Not a grand event, more of a quiet, contained thing with just the necessary people present."

Seraphine picked up her wine glass. 

"Okay," she said again. "No problem."

That was it. Just okay, no problem, and then she took a sip of wine and looked mildly around the room.

I watched her for a moment.

Most people in her position would have wanted the grand event. The ceremony, the guests, the acknowledgment. Even people who claimed not to care about those things usually cared more than they admitted once it became real. It was human nature to want the moment to mean something visible.

But she was sitting here in a sundress eating turkey with her hands, unbothered about a wedding with no guest list and no grand hall and no fuss, looking more comfortable than anyone had a right to look in a house that wasn't theirs.

She looked up and caught me staring.

I looked back at my plate.

I picked up my fork and said nothing else for a while, and across the table she reached for the last piece of stuffed bread and ate that too, and the amber light from the wall sconces sat warm on her face, and the dining room was quiet in a way that was not uncomfortable.

I did not fully understand what she was yet.

But I was beginning to think she was a great deal more than what either of our families had made her out to be.