Page 133 of Bittersweet & Strange

Everything I have just taken him away from.

I dismount first.

When I reach for him, Boone doesn’t fight me. He simply places both hands on my shoulders and allows me to lift him from the saddle. The moment his boots touch the courtyard stones, tears spill down his cheeks again.

46

Boone

I stopped fighting Rhys the moment I stepped inside the castle. It’s pointless, exhausting, and frustrating beyond belief. After everything that happened in Villeneuve, I didn’t have enough left in me to keep throwing myself against a man who has made it perfectly clear that my cooperation is preferred but no longer required. I did balk when he led me toward the stairs that first night. The thought of being locked inside my room for days, maybe weeks, made me so sick that I nearly turned around and tried my luck with the front doors anyway.

But when we reached the top of the stairs and turned right instead of left, I stopped.

“Where are you taking me?”

“My room.” Rhys didn’t slow. “You’ll stay with me. No more separate rooms.”

I stared at his back. “Excuse me?”

He stopped and looked over his shoulder, his eyes narrowing when he realized I wasn’t following him. “Whether you like it or not. Now let’s go.”

I was furious.

I told him exactly where he could shove his room, his bed, and the entire fucking castle. He listened with that infuriatingly blank expression, then took me by the arm and led me there anyway.

Being together in that room gave him ease of access to touch me whether I wanted him to or not. When he pried my legs open that first night, he whispered in my ear, “We’ll erase every trace Lucian left on you.” He ended up tying me to the bed while I screamed at him to stop. He made me come so many times that night that Lucien was indeed, the very last thing on my mind.

That was weeks ago.

Time has worn the anger down along with everything else, grinding the sharpest edges away until most days there is only a dull ache where something much larger used to live. I still wake some mornings expecting to hear Dad moving around downstairs. There are moments when I see something in the greenhouse or smell bread baking in the kitchen and turn automatically because I have something I want to tell him. Those moments are the worst because for half a second, I forget.

Then I remember.

Rhys never tells me I should be better by now.

He doesn’t ask me to talk about it or tell me Dad would want me to move on. He never offers any of the meaningless comforts people in the village probably would have given me if he’d allowed me to stay. He simply keeps me here, feeds me when I forget to eat, pulls me against him when I wake crying, and refuses to let me disappear too far into myself.

I’m still not sure whether I’m grateful for that.

Today, Rhys is outside in the garden near the front of the castle, doing something with the rose bushes there before winter takes what remains of them. I watched him from an upstairs window for a while, his dark figure moving between the beds with Soleil trailing several steps behind him. Eventually, the restlessness became too much, and I left his room.

I find myself wandering the corridors whenever Rhys gives me enough space to do it alone.

There are still sections of this castle I’ve never seen, hallways that seem to lead nowhere and rooms that haven’t been opened in years. I no longer feel the same urgency to explore them that I once did. I walk because sitting still gives my mind too much freedom, and because the castle is large enough that I can wander for an hour without reaching the same place twice.

My footsteps echo softly across the stone as I pass windows overlooking the mountains, then descend a narrow staircase I don’t remember taking before. The corridor at the bottom is colder than the rest of the castle, lined with dark wooden doors and old paintings dulled by years of dust. I slow without really knowing why.

Most of the portraits mean nothing to me.

Men wearing severe expressions stare down from gilded frames, their clothing belonging to generations I couldn’t begin to identify. Women stand beside them with their hands folded neatly over elaborate dresses. Rhys resembles some of the men enough that I recognize the family connection immediately. The same dark hair appears again and again, along with the same sharp features and heavy brows, but none of them have his eyes.

I keep walking.

At the end of the corridor, I turn a corner and stop.

Belle is looking at me.

I know her immediately.