When I’m Gone, You Love의 모든 챕터: 챕터 71 - 챕터 80

Beatrice's POVI came back to the palace the next morning with a plan half-formed behind my ribs. Protect Callum and find Jin. I was walking past the west corridor when I noticed the array of servants. They were carrying buckets, brooms and rags. My curiosity piqued till I was walking towards Princess Elara's room.I stopped in front of it and gasped. The door hung open on one hinge. The room was destroyed. Bookshelf ripped from the wall and lying face-down across the bed. Books everywhere — spines cracked, pages torn and trampled into the floor. The writing desk overturned, legs snapped off. Ink spreading in dark pools across the stone and the window was smashed.Elara's photograph — the silver frame bent, the glass spiderwebbed, lying in the wreckage like something that had been thrown.My stomach dropped."There she is."Neah's voice came from behind me. I turned. She stood at the end of the corridor with three servants at her back, her face arranged in careful outrage. Her eyes

Cedrick's POVShe was still asleep when I woke.Her back was turned to me, her breathing slow and even, one hand tucked beneath the pillow. The first light was coming through the window. In it, I could see the line of her shoulder, the curve of her neck, a strand of hair caught against her cheek.I didn't move. I lay there and watched her breathe, and my wolf lay quiet inside me. Last night had been different.I'd been gentle.I didn't know where it came from. When she'd kissed me back, something in me had loosened. Like a fist that had been clenched so long it forgot it could open. I'd touched her slowly. Paid attention to the sounds she made, adjusted when she tensed, stopped when she needed me to stop. And when it was over, she hadn't pulled away. She'd turned her face into my chest and fallen asleep with her fingers still resting against my collarbone.I hadn't sent her away.Every other time with every other woman, I'd ordered them out before the sweat dried. My bed was mine but

Beatrice's POVMartin was waiting outside."I caught the end of your performance," he said. "Through the window. I hope you don't mind."I shook my head. I didn't have the energy to mind anything right now. My throat still held the ghost of Cedrick's grip, and my face felt tight where the tears had dried."You were wonderful," Martin said. Simple. No elaboration. He fell into step beside me as I walked, matching my pace without asking where I was going. After a moment, he reached into his coat and pulled out a small wooden box."For you," he said. "I saw it in the market last week and thought of you."I took it. The box was carved with a pattern of vines along the lid — not expensive, but careful. Handmade. Inside, resting on a fold of cloth, was a hair comb. Bone-white, shaped like a crescent moon, with tiny flowers etched along the spine."Martin, you don't have to keep —""I know I don't have to." He smiled. "I wanted to. That's all."I closed the box. Held it in both hands. The we

Henry's POVThe auction master adjusted his spectacles and read the card in his hand with the careful theatricality of a man who knew exactly what he was selling."Lot number forty-seven, listed under the name Crimson. Female, early twenties, in excellent physical condition. Starting bid, five million dollars."Five million. For a human being locked in a glass cage with a blindfold over her eyes. I felt my wolf curl back against my spine in disgust, and I had to clench my jaw to keep the growl from reaching my throat. Around the room, buyers leaned forward in their seats. A few murmured to their companions. One man in the third row raised his paddle without hesitation."Five million from the gentleman in row three. Do I hear five and a half?"Another paddle, then another. The bids climbed in steady increments, each one landing in my chest with the dull weight of something obscene. These men were bidding on Beatrice the way they'd bid on a painting or a piece of land, and the casualnes

Beatrice's POVI poured his wine.Not because I wanted to and not because I was afraid, but because eight men were watching and a broken wrist was still bleeding on the tablecloth and I needed this night to end. So I walked to the head of the table, tilted the bottle, and filled Cedrick's glass while the room held its breath around me.He didn't drink it. He looked at me instead, and whatever lived behind those dark eyes was closer to the surface than I'd ever seen it. My wolf caught it before I did, a shift in the air between us, a pull that started somewhere deep in my chest and traveled down through my ribs and into my stomach. I set the bottle down and stepped back.Cedrick stood.He moved toward me with a slowness that was worse than speed because it gave me time to see it coming and not enough time to decide what to do about it. His hand came up and caught the side of my face, his fingers curling into my hair, and he kissed me in front of every man at that table.He tried to