Page 40 of The Witch They Crave

My stomach roils.

We pass under the oaks and he talks to me the way you talk to a horse you just bought and are pleased with.

"I've given you the east rooms. They get the morning—you've been underground long enough, I thought you'd want the light." A pause, warm, giving me ample time to appreciate the gesture. "Fresh linens. A proper bath, which God knows you've earned. And my physician will see to those wrists tonight." He glances at the blood gone tacky on Nellie's sleeves and clicks his tongue. "Thorns. In this day and age. The council does love to dress cruelty up as procedure. You'll find nothing like that in my house."

"Generous."

"I can afford to be." He says it lightly, and it isn't about money. "You'll want for nothing, Calypso. That's the part people never believe until they're inside it. Anything you ask for, you'll have—clothes, books, food that isn't slid under a door on a tray. A window that opens." He tips his head toward me, pleasant. "All you have to do is be exactly where I put you."

"So I have everything I want," I say, "as long as what I want… is to stay put."

"Now you understand me." He laughs—warm, delighted, beautiful, the worst sound I've heard all day, because nothing I throw at him lands. I'm a mouse who's just learned the cat finds her hissing adorable.

He turns his head, and for one second the warmth thins to nothing, and I see the look in his eye that I saw the first day I met him. Chills spread down the back of my neck. "I've wanted you close a long time, Calypso. Longer than you know. And here you are." A beat. "Walking me home."

My magic goes small and still under my sternum. Hiding.

"What do you want from me?" I ask. “What is all of this about? What did I ever do to you?”

The warmth pours back into his face like water filling a print in sand. He doesn't answer.

"Here we are," he says.

The residence sits at the north edge of the grounds where the campus gives way to trees. White stone, black shutters, iron gone delicate with age. Staff wait on the steps. A woman in grey takes my canvas duffel from one of Leopold’s bruisers.

They walk me up and inside what I now realize should have been referred to as a mansion. Wide stairs, good rugs, a hall of closed doors. My rooms are at the end—gold light, a real bed, a window seat, folded towels. Every inch of it built to make Leopold’s hands around my neck feel like a thoughtful gift.

"Dinner is at eight." The woman in grey stops at the door. "Mr. Vassard would be pleased if you'd join him."

"And if I don't?"

She hesitates—just a beat, but I catch it. "Then I'll tell him you're resting. After everything today, no one would think anything of it."

I nod, thankful she’s giving me this gentle out. "Tell him I'm resting," I say.

She nods and leaves me alone in my new room. The door doesn't lock. I check.

Then it's just me, in more beauty than I've ever stood inside.

I don't sit. I walk my new jail cell instead.

It's a beautiful room. That's the cruelty of it. My whole first duplex would have fit inside it twice, and everything in it is soft and warm and chosen—a bed with too many pillows, a writing desk, a wardrobe that already has clothes in it, hung and waiting, in my size. I run a finger along the desk. No dust. Somebody prepared this while I sat in a stone chair and learned what I was worth.

Leopold has been planning this for…

I shiver. I can’t think about that.

There's a bookshelf, half-full. A basin with real soap that smells like something green and expensive. A rug thick enough that my boots make no sound. I trail my hand across the back of a chair, the cool brass of a lamp, the cold pane of the window, and none of it feels like mine because none of it is. It's his. I truly am a prisoner here.

A gilded fucking prisoner.

The window looks out over the north lawn. Past it, the tree line, and past that—nothing I can see, but I know the shape of the campus out there in the darkening evening: the watchtower, the cellar under it, the chapel I turned to ruin. Somewhere out there is Nellie. Somewhere is Kage. Somewhere is a version of tonight where I chose differently and it went worse, or better, and I'll never know which.

A tear slides down my cheek before I feel it coming. Just one. I catch it with the back of my wrist and press it away, hard, and I make myself stop crying.

I knew this wouldn't be easy. I never once thought it would be easy. Nobody handed me a life where the doors open when I push them, and crying at a pretty window in a house I'll never own isn't going to change the arithmetic.

So I focus on what I can control.