Page 99 of Bittersweet & Strange

I lower my mouth to Boone’s hair.

“We are going to get your father.”

He clutches my hips.

“And Lucien?” he whispers.

I stare toward the windows, toward the mountain descending into the village below, and move my hand slowly over Boone’s back.

“Lucien,” I say quietly, “is mine.”

36

Boone

Rhys forces me to eat while he tends to Bramble, refusing to let me leave the castle until I’ve managed to get something into my stomach. I shovel down a few bites even though every swallow feels like work, then meet him in the garden. Sprouts are beginning to emerge from the beds, only an inch or two of green poking through the dark soil, and I stare at them because the last time I was here, everything was buried under snow.

Étoile is already saddled when I reach him, and Rhys sits high in the saddle with a lever-action rifle secured in a leather scabbard under his right leg. He lowers one hand toward me without a word. The moment I take it, he pulls me up effortlessly, settles me in front of him, gathers the reins, and kicks Étoile into a trot.

It’s so much easier this time around, heading toward the village.

With him behind me, his chest solid against my back and one arm occasionally brushing mine as he controls the horse, I feel safe in a way I haven’t since leaving the mountain. That safety does nothing to stop the anxiety gnawing at me. After what Lucien did, after he touched me and took something that once belonged only to Rhys, I can’t stop wondering whether Rhys will still want me.

Does he still love me the way he claimed?

Is he helping me because he loves me, or because he feels responsible for what happened after he let me leave?

Fresh tears fill my eyes, and I turn my face away so he won’t see them. Since Lucien attacked me, I’ve felt dirty, violated in a way I can’t scrub from my skin. No matter how badly I want to forget, something was taken from me in that room, something I never agreed to give him, and I have no idea how to get it back.

I drop my head against Rhys’s shoulder, too exhausted to keep holding myself upright. His lips brush my temple.

“The cherry seed took root,” he tells me quietly.

I roll my head across his collarbone so I can look at him, and those pitch-black eyes find mine immediately.

“When this is over, I want you to come home.”

Home.

His home.

The castle.

I spent so long fighting to get back to the village that I never noticed when the castle became the place I pictured whenever I thought about going home. Maybe it was the greenhouse, or the nights beside the fire, or simply Rhys occupying so much of every room that I can no longer separate the castle from him. Whatever happened, hearing him call it home doesn’t feel wrong anymore.

Rhys shifts the reins into one hand and wipes under my eye with his gloved thumb.

“How can you still want me after what Lucien did?”

A muscle moves in his cheek, and his teeth press together hard enough that I feel the movement where my head rests against him.

“I will always want you.” His voice is quiet, but there’s something vicious in it. “What he did to you changes nothing between us.”

I stare at him.

“But I will kill Lucien for touching you.”

And I’m perfectly okay with that.