Even before Garin’s caution over a possible bond developing—far before their journey and the crash—her mind had been consumed by concern over the Accords meeting and seeing him again.
She’d been distracted from the matters at her castle, the matter of her hand; she’d been a fool to think denying Sinclair was the end of it. Now that everything was forced into focus, she couldn’t help but feel jarred into an unbridled anger.
Anger at her parents, surely with Garin… but she had no one else to blame except herself. The past few days had been spent throwing herself at other matters of duty in order to distract herself, making herself sick with the effects of prolonging Garin’s demands. All she had to do was enter a marriage that might save her kingdom from war.
If she just did as she was told, it would make everyone happy. The thought made her insides coil, but her kingdom was at stake.
Really, a small voice at the back of her mind said.Was it Garin being selfish?
It had been impossible to make a sound decision with the incessant gnawing at her insides, and apparent the inability to focus or remember small details. She needed to see him. It would quiet her body and mind.
“I am leaving for some fresh air and privacy,” Lilac announced. “If anyone follows me, they will find themselves rotting beside Sinclair.”
She turned the knob and strode out into the early evening, willing herself to forget the open-mouthed glare of her mother, and her father’sface half hidden in his cup, deciding not to mention she intended to return by the end of the night. Maybe she shouldn’t. Maybe she should never return and spend the rest of her days waking up in the arms of the man who infuriated her.
She was not the only pawn here, so far as she was concerned.
“Let them send search parties. I’ll order them home,” Lilac drawled to the guard as he trailed her along the courtyard corridor that lined the patch of grass and imported greenery, riverstones surrounding the duck pond at the center. For a fleeting moment, she thought basking in the deep amber light and pondering her woes until the torches lit might be a better idea than the one she had in mind.
Then, she sawhiseyes in the stars, just visible in the gradient of dusk—winking, vicious demons of time—and stomped all the way through the shaded passage to the bailey, where Giles greeted her with a wave. The horses and plain carriage were once again prepared for departure, just as she’d sent her handmaidens to prepare in urgency. She swallowed, marveling at the way her racing heart and bubbling nerves seemed to subside the closer she strode to the stable.
Lilac allowed the guard to help her up the carriage step, then thanked and dismissed him. She’d brought no bags this time, only her dagger strapped to her thigh, and the inescapable, unholy need to seehimagain. The last few days might’ve seen a moment of weakness from her, but the moment she’d discovered there were no propositions for her to consider, Lilac decided it was time. When she thought she could try to push through the unsettling sensations her body and mind betrayed her with under Garin’s entrancement, the feeling had surprisingly lessened.
Her nausea had mostly subsided by the time she’d joined her parents for supper, and now, in the breeze, it felt as if she’d just removed a particularly tight corset. She exhaled and took in the night, savoring the lightness on her body.
For the first time in days, she could breathe. The worst of the soul-crushing anxiety was over.
Garin had entranced her, demanded she return to the castle, consider her propositions, and marry. She’d done so. She’d obeyed—and indeed, did not marry while lacking a proposition.
His horrid hold on her was over.
Lilac felt naked without her cloak, but the relief quelled her slight shiver, providing plenty of warmth; she wouldn’t need it this time to protect her from the frost, Daemons, or nosy onlookers.
Let them see me, she thought.Let the world know that I am free—that no one controls me, not God, man, nor monster.
This was her realm. If her kingdom once considered her wicked enough to lock away, and if Garin felt he needed to entrance her to marry, then Lilac was a formidable enough force to be seen imbibing at a tavern—or leading her men into war.
12
If Garin felt so strongly about not seeing her, he did a poor job at revoking access to the inn. Gaining access to the gate wasn’t her goal as much as seeing him, being near him again was, but she could only assume The Fenfoss Inn was where he’d remained in order to avoid her and stop any potential blood bond from developing further.
Who knows, she thought, fiddling with her dress ribbons and chewing her lip, careful this time not to make herself bleed.He might be across the kingdom by now. He might have boarded a ship for the New World.
The thought made her uneasy, but as she willed herself to stop squirming and Father Guillaume—Giles—prompted the horses to slow before the thin clearing on the left side of the path, she knew she’d made the right choice.
There was no way to explain it, but she could feel it. A buzzing in her joints, a hitch in her breath. He was here. She would see him.
And even if she met the same fury with which he left her, Garin shouldn’t have expected any less. If he didn’t have the witches strengthen the wards against her, he could have at least hidden the tinderbox that would allow her to access the path and pop in for supper and a drink, after all.
Since Lilac was his only passenger, she’d felt there was no need to ride in the carriage alone and had decided to sit up front with him. The ease with which they found and revealed the gate on the main path would have been more surprising if Giles hadn’t taken that moment to pull a plump gray cat—an orange-eyed chartreux—from the driver’s box to his right, just before they made the tight left turn into the hidden entry.
Lilac spent the start of the ride through the brightly lit canopy swallowing her shock and stiffly holding the creature, which Giles had placed on her lap.
It was evident that this was the barn cat that he had mentioned early on in their first trip. Lilac didn’t know where Giles might’ve acquired a barn cat, as they weren’t known to need or utilize one until recently. If she didn’t know better, she would’ve thought it was one of the strays that used to frequent the bailey and courtyard several summers ago, chasing the birds and ducks that lived there.
The funny thing was, Father Guillaume hadhatedcats—so much, in fact, that he had convinced Henri to hire a pack of small hunting dogs to chase them away.
It was a hair away from digging its claws into her chemise, so she continued awkwardly stroking it until she eventually felt it calm and curl up against the warmth of her stomach.
