He carried her to the bed. “You will be . . .”
MUCH later, warm and ridiculously happy, she lay on her side, her head on his arm, his body pressed against her. “So this is your idea of slow and sensuous?”
“Pretty much,” he said. “Explain the thirty days to me.”
“It’s your chance to change your mind,” she told him. “I’m scared you’ll fall out of love with me. I’m scared your family will hate me, and then you’ll marry me anyway to rescue me, but you’ll become a pariah and blame me for the rest of your life for being disowned.”
His chest shook, and she realized he was trying to hold in laughter. She stared at him, indignant. “I want to give you a choice, you idiot. I don’t want to make you feel like you have to do it.”
He broke into laughter. She groaned and curled into a ball.
“I’ve made my choice,” he said. “In fact, I’ve done everything in my power to get you right here into my bed, and I had to work very hard for it. I gave you no reason to believe that I’ll abandon you. Or murder the children and leave them on the side of the road. Really, that was priceless. I was a bit put out.”
She glared at him. “A bit put out” apparently meant three days of the silent treatment.
He pulled her close. “I’m not doing this to rescue you. I’m doing this for entirely selfish reasons—I love you, and I don’t want to be without you.”
“I love you, too,” she told him.
“Let’s get married now,” he offered. “We’ll go down to the magistrate in the morning . . .”
“Thirty days,” she said firmly. “After your parents meet me.”
“You’re an impossible woman,” he said mournfully.
“You wouldn’t love me if I wasn’t,” she said.
“True.”
She kissed him. He wrapped his arms around her, and she smiled. Tomorrow would bring new troubles, but for now she was perfectly and completely happy.
THE castle was enormous. It spread atop a hill like a crouching dragon: at the front, heavily fortified entrance, like a mouth, followed by the stretch of the wall—the beast’s neck. Next a round tall tower stabbed the sky—the dragon’s leg, followed by a cluster of fortified buildings surrounded by a high wall with a spiked parapet curling on the edge of a cliff, like a massive ridged tail around hindquarters. The brown stone, darkened with age, intensified the illusion. Rose gaped at it.
“It only looks severe,” Declan informed her. “Inside, it’s very open. The Duchess of the Southern Provinces has a fondness for natural light and gauzy curtains. It will be quick, I promise. We go in, I report to the Duke, and then we depart for Camarine Keep. We’ll be home by tomorrow night.”
Rose shrugged, trying to get rid of the tension sitting between her shoulder blades. Her horse, a smaller version of Declan’s Grunt, immediately reacted by dancing in place. He had bought it for her in that first town. The kids each got a mount of their own. George rode like a natural, with almost Declan-like elegance, while Jack mostly clung to the horse, clawing at it at every bump, until both he and his horse dashed about in blind panic.
The trip across Adrianglia had taken almost a week. Both she and the kids had ended up with raw thighs after the first day of riding, and after that, they’d taken it slow and easy. It was an odd place, clean and beautiful in some areas, stark in others. Ruins dotted the countryside here and there, scars of old wars. She had tried to prepare herself for the possibility that she might dislike the Weird, but it grew on her, with its patches of forest and horseless carriages, and children playing with magic on the sides of the roads.
She had been completely blindsided by Declan’s status. She had known he was a Marshal, but she’d never quite realized what it entailed. People bowed. When he passed through a town, a report was brought, usually by a commander of the local militia. Every stop was a working stop. The first time someone called her “my lady,” it zoomed right over her head. She had tried her best not to embarrass him. Unfortunately, she knew this would last only until she came into contact with other nobles.
Now she had to face the Duke of the Southern Provinces. He was the man to whom Declan answered. The man she desperately needed to impress, even more so than Declan’s parents. She still wore her jeans and a T-shirt. Her hair was still a short mess. She was still unrefined. She was Rose. And Declan was determined to drag her into the castle.
They rode up the road. This was so not going to end well.
They passed under the portcullis. Declan merely nodded at the guards, dressed in gray and blue. Everybody bowed. He jumped off Grunt and helped her down off her mount. The kids dismounted, and Declan started toward the doors.
“I was thinking, we might just stay here,” Rose said. “We can wait for you.”
“ ‘Dear Declan, where is your bride?’ ‘Oh, I left her outside, Your Grace.’ ” Declan shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
He took her by the hand, gently, but she knew with absolute certainty that she wouldn’t be able to get away, and guided her inside into the lobby. A wide room stretched before her, terminating in a staircase leading up. On both sides of the staircase she saw arched entrances opening into a vast hall. The floor was old worn stone. Tapestries decorated the walls. Small trees and bright flowers grew in huge pots along the walls. Bathed in the light of numerous windows, the hall looked surprisingly cheery.
A man appeared. His hair was silver, his clothes black leather, his face grim. He looked like he could kill people with his stare alone. “He’s waiting for you, my lord,” he said.
Declan nodded and glanced at her. “Wait for me, please,” he said, “I’ll be right back.”
He ran up the stairway. The man followed him. They were alone.
George looked at his shoes. Jack reached over, plucked a small leaf from the nearest tree, and nervously chewed on it.
“Jack, don’t do that,” she murmured.
A woman emerged from one of the entrances on the right. Jack swallowed the leaf.
She was older, tall, dark-haired, very beautiful, and dressed in a ragged shirt smeared with cream-colored paint. They looked at each other.
“Who are you?” the woman asked. A frosty sheen crossed her eyes and melted into their dark depths.
Oh God. A blueblood.
“I’m here with Declan,” Rose said. “These are my brothers. We’re just here for a minute.”
The woman pursed her lips. “Are you from the Broken?”
“Actually, I’m from the Edge,” Rose said carefully.
“Can you paint walls?”
Rose blinked. “Yes.”
“Would you mind helping me? I’ve been painting non-stop, and my back really hurts.”
There was only one answer to that. “Not at all.”
The woman smiled. She had a very warm smile, and Rose relaxed a little. “Come with me!”
They followed her into a side hallway, up a window stairway to the second floor and into a room layered with cloth. Half of one wall was cream. The rest was steel gray.
“I think it looks better with cream, don’t you?” the woman said.
“It looks brighter.”
The woman handed her a roller. In a few minutes all three of them were painting.
“When I become worried, I paint the walls,” the woman said. “I’ve done four rooms so far. Well, six, actually, since I changed my mind several times on the color. Your brothers are adorable.”
“Thank you. Why were you worried?” Rose asked.
“Because of Declan, of course. The whole mess with Casshorn nearly brought me to an early grave. I realize we won, but would you mind filling in the details?”
Rose bit her lip. “I’m not sure I should tell you.”
The woman smiled. “I know most of the story: Casshorn had stolen a device from the Duke of the Southern Provinces that feeds on magic and makes hounds. He took it across the country into the Edge. Declan left to retrieve it and save William, who managed to entangle himself in this mess. So how did it end?”
“Declan was flashing and Rose almost died, because she flashed to kill Casshorn and she had no flash left,
