“For being a monster who can’t always be gentle.”
“Stop. We both wanted it. Don’t pretend you owe me an apology for being yourself.”
“I love you,Lisichka,” I tell her for the first time.
Her eyes turn glassy as she beams at me. “I love you too, monster man.”
We gather up her dress and entwine our fingers together, stepping out into the hall. A shadow moves at the end of the corridor, and the temperature drops another ten degrees. The smell of old smoke and lavender slides down the hall and teases our nostrils. The apparition floats close enough for us to make her out more clearly before stilling and staring. A woman in an obsolete nurse’s dress watches us with her feet hovering an inch off the floor.
Cressida goes very soft against me. Not from fear, but from recognition.
“Okay,” she says in a small, delighted voice. “I wasn’t actually expecting to see you.”
“We should probably not piss off the dead,” I tell her, tightening my fingers around hers.
She gives the ghost an adorable little wave. “Hi. Sorry for desecrating your rooms with our filthy, heathen ways. We’ll be getting off your turf now.”
Cressida turns to stare at me with a huge smile and then we crack up like two idiot newlyweds with adrenaline in our blood and hauntings on our wedding night. Her laughter curls into my chest and ignites something reckless and joyful in my soul.
“Come on,Lisichka. Let’s finish our night somewhere less . . . possessed.”
“Deal. Race you down.”
And just like that, I’m running down the stairs with my barefoot wife at my side, laughing like a fucking teenagerbreaking curfew as we trip over each other and grabbing at banisters as the old asylum howls behind us. We burst through the side doors and into the cold that makes the night feel new.
I tuck her under my arm as we wait for Misha to bring the SUV around and tuck my mouth against the side of her neck. I taste the clean edges of a life that didn’t fully exist until this morning.
I’ve not been a man who has experienced much happiness in this life. It’s usually fleeting, disappearing under the weight of the crown I wear. Cressida, though . . . she’s happiness. She’s the one thing I’d burn it all fucking down for.
My chaos. My fire. My conscience.
She’s also trouble incarnate, and I’ve never been more doomed—or more alive—in my existence.
twenty-two
Konstantin
Theridetothemansion takes just under an hour, and by the time we reach it, the moon’s high in the sky. Cressida’s curled up against me in the back of the armored SUV, her head on my shoulder, her fingers absently tracing the inside of my palm like she’s sketching runes only I’m allowed to read.
She’s wearing only my shirt because there wasn’t much left of her dress by the time we finished consummating our marriage in a way that was befitting of us. Misha met us at the back of the asylum so she wouldn’t have to go through the place, and Sunniva was left closing out the reception and gathering everything Cressida left behind.
Most would call us rude, but I don’t give a fuck as long as my bride is happy and satisfied.
Cressida thinks the night’s over. That our wedding ended with ghosts and breathless laughter in an abandoned asylum.
She should know by now that I don’t do ordinary.
The driver pulls through the tall iron gates, the tires crunching on gravel as the mansion comes into view.
Her head lifts slowly and her mouth drops open. “Kon.”
The house looms like something plucked straight from a gothic fairytale. Sharp gables, broken gargoyles perched along the roofline, and ivy climbing the walls like veins. The windows glow with soft amber light, flickering like old gas lamps.
According to the realtor and the caretaker, it’s haunted as hell and perfect for my little gothic queen.
Her eyes are wide when she turns to me. “You did not buy me a freaking castle.”
“I bought us a problem that looks like a castle,” I tell her with a chuckle.
