When she opened her eyes again, she was inside—and warm. Rain drummed steadily against the roof. It streaked the windowpane and glittered in the light of the candle burning low on her nightstand. Another fire crackled merrily in the grate, releasing the heady scent of woodsmoke. Shadows marbled the ceiling, swirling slowly. It was all so cozy, she considered falling back asleep. But then she remembered.
Kit.
Someone had swaddled her in a wool blanket. Niamh squirmed out of it and forced herself to sit upright. Immediately, she regretted it. Her head ached. Everything ached. The inside of her chest felt as though it’d been hollowed out, like a well tapped too deep. It’d been a very long time since she felt this wretched. If memory served, she wouldn’t be getting out of bed for a day or two. She would live like a maiden imprisoned in her tower, watching life pass her by through a cracked mirror.
But the wedding was in two weeks.
Every second trapped in this bed, trapped in this treasonous body of hers, was one she couldn’t spare. The backs of her eyes burned with unshed tears. At least she was too exhausted to run to the looking glass and check how much her hair had silvered.
You’re not sick until you’re sick, she reminded herself. And yet, it was getting so much harder to convince herself that she was well. If only she had not pushed herself so recklessly. If only she did not have to worry about pushing herself at all.
The faint sound of voices reached her from behind the door. There were two of them, tense and hushed. If she held her breath, she could almost make out what they were saying.
“… really made a mess of things now.” Miriam, Niamh thought. “Go to sleep. She will be fine.”
“Let me see her first.” Niamh’s heart leapt. She would recognize Kit’s voice anywhere.
There came the awkward shuffle of footsteps, then the soft rattle of the door in its frame. “Don’t you think you’ve done enough for one night?”
Another low mutter.
“As you wish, Your Highness,” Miriam said sourly. “I’ll check on her for you again.”
The doorknob twisted. Oh no. If Miriam caught Niamh awake, she’d know she’d been eavesdropping. Niamh scrambled for the blanket, but it was too late. The door swung open, revealing a very exasperated Miriam. Her mouth parted in a soft O of surprise. She glanced over her shoulder, then locked the door behind her. “You’re awake.”
“I haven’t been for long.”
Miriam studied her with an unreadable expression. “How do you feel?”
She winced. “I feel fine.”
“Don’t be brave for my sake.” Her tone grew stern. “I don’t mean to be invasive—it is the healer in me—but you need to rest. I have seen conditions like yours before.”
Niamh supposed it made sense that her family was not uniquely afflicted, but she hadn’t considered her illness might be common. “You have?”
“Do others in your family have the same symptoms?” When Niamh nodded, Miriam went on. “Then, yes. Some illnesses pass through generations. We tend to see them appear more often in families with divine blood—not necessarily because they’re connected, but because stress seems to worsen symptoms. Magic use can be quite taxing on the body. There is no cure yet, unfortunately, but a good healer can help you manage your symptoms.”
Her thoughts swam. She couldn’t think of finding a healer right now. Until this job was done and her family was safe, she couldn’t think of slowing down or entertaining even a scrap of hope that her life could be longer or less painful than she anticipated.
“My apologies,” Miriam said sheepishly, clearly sensing Niamh’s overwhelm. “I imagine that is not what you wanted to hear immediately upon waking up. The prince is waiting for you in the hall.”
“Is he?”
“He carried you back to the house.”
“What?”
Of all the things Miriam could have told her, this was perhaps the last she would have expected. She couldn’t process it. She couldn’t even envision it. Kit Carmine was most certainly not the gallant type. But how else could she have gotten here? She remembered it now: the creeping darkness over her vision, the unbearable concern in his eyes, the feeling of safety in his arms.
She shoved that thought away.
“Mm. It was quite something. He came out of the storm, wild-eyed, looking like he’d seen a ghost.” She widened her own eyes for effect. “And you looked like a rag doll. I thought at first that you were dead. It took some convincing to get him to let you go.”
It was all too easy to fill in the blanks from there. The thought of him carrying her, completely limp and sopping wet, all the way back to the estate … It was too humiliating to bear. She would never, ever be able to look him in the eye again. He would lord it over her forever.
But when what he’d done well and truly sank in, her stomach curdled with dread. What had he been thinking, doing something like that so publicly? Sinclair had warned her about this very situation. More people than Miriam must have seen him emerging from the fog and rain like some revenant.
She could hardly make herself ask the question she dreaded most. But she had to know. “Did Infanta Rosa see?”
“No,” Miriam said quickly, “thankfully.”
“But it won’t take her long to hear, I am sure. If you saw him, anyone could have.” She buried her face in her hands. “Oh, no … This is a disaster. I ought to flee the country now. I need to—”
“One thing at a time.” Miriam sat on the very edge of the bed and squeezed her arm reassuringly. “She may not look it, but Rosa is quite an understanding person. If it comes up, I’ll explain it to her. He was only bringing you out of the rain and nothing more. Right?”
“Right,” Niamh said softly.
“He’s still in the hallway now. I think he’s worn a groove in the floorboards by now with all his pacing. Would you like me to send him away? I would like that. It reeks out there. The man smokes like a chimney when he’s stressed.”
“I’ll see him.”
Miriam sighed. “Very well. One moment.”
She slipped back through the door. There was a muffled exchange outside. Then, the door all but flew open. It crashed into the wall with a too-loud bang. Kit kicked it shut behind him, then strode to her bedside with grim purpose in the set of his shoulders. He still wore his damp clothes, spattered with mud. His hair fell loose and damp around his shoulders, curling just barely at the ends. She’d never noticed just how long it was. And his eyes …
They were as wild as Miriam said—practically ablaze in the firelight. A thousand emotions passed over his face at once, too quick for her to trace, before they landed, quite decisively, on anger.
“Hello,” she croaked.
“You fool. What were you thinking?”
All Niamh could do was gawp at him. Then, righteous indignation doused every one of her worries. “What was I thinking? Oh, you are so— Ugh! I shouldn’t have expected anything different from you. If that is all you have to say to me, then you can leave!”
“You followed me through a rainstorm.” Every word was an accusation, as sharp as a thrown dagger. “And then you collapsed. You’re clumsy, but I’ve never seen anything like that. Down like a felled tree, out of nowhere. What was that about?”
“I…” Her throat constricted. No, she couldn’t explain this to him. She couldn’t endure his pity. “I was tired. That’s all.”
“Then why would you be so careless?” When his hair fell into his face, he raked a hand through it. “You have a death wish, clearly. There’s no other sensible explanation for it.”
“You’ve made your point, sir!” Now she felt utterly embarrassed. What a joke she was, to harbor a single tender feeling for Kit Carmine. “If you must know, I was worried about you.”
“Worried about me? I’m fine.”
“No, you are certainly not fine. What I saw was not fine, Kit.”
The tension swelled between them like a storm cloud ready to burst. But then, she saw the exact moment his defenses collapsed. He spoke in a rush, as if he would lose his nerve if he stopped for even a breath. “What about you, then? You’re the one who was going to die of exposure, or by tripping over a pebble. What’s more, you’re constantly sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong and overextending yourself for no good reason.” A pause, then: “Not that it’s any of my concern.”
Oh, he was such a liar—and a poor one at that. She recognized all this bluster for what it was, and she certainly had not missed the way he’d looked at her in the garden. Fearful and full of something like … No, best not to dwell on things that would hurt her worse.
Accusatorily, she said, “Then why are you fussing over me?”
He reeled back, insulted. “I am not fussing. I just said I don’t care.”
“You can’t do that!” she cried. “You can’t carry me through a rainstorm and then say you don’t care. It doesn’t work like that!”
“Well, I did.”
At first, the only response she could muster was “Arghhh!” She threw her hands up. He didn’t even bat an eye. He was steely and—and … flushed? It had to be from cold or from anger. She did not know and did not care. She was sick of him. He brought out all her worst, most childish impulses. “Then I don’t care, either! And I do have a reason, by the way.”
His pupils were bare pinpricks of black, even in the flickering candlelight. The room suddenly felt too small. Her heart beat far too quickly in her chest. “So explain it to me.”
“It’s because…” Niamh hesitated for only a moment before the last of her resistance gave way. It wasn’t as though it was a secret, and Kit was not one to default to pity. She twisted the lock of white hair around her finger. “It’s because I’m dying.”
His expression went slack with surprise. “What do you mean?”
“I’m sick, and there is no cure for it. One day, it will kill me.” She knotted her hands together in her lap. “I suppose you’re right. I pushed myself too far. I shouldn’t have been so careless. All the same, I cannot do less. Everything is riding on doing this job well.”
“Because of your family.”
“Yes.” She squeezed her eyes shut. “My gran and I are the last of our bloodline who carry on the craft. If I cannot complete this job … I couldn’t bear it if thousands of years of Ó Conchobhairs ended with me, a silly girl who threw away the opportunity of a lifetime. Their sacrifices will have meant nothing.”
“Of course they mean something.” Anger crackled beneath his every word—not at her, she could see, but on her behalf. The protective look he fixed her with now skirted too close to the one he’d given her in the garden. “Despite everything we’ve put you through, you’re alive. They have no right to ask you for anything more.”
Don’t they? Her breaths came in fitful, shaking gasps. Tears spilled down her cheeks, too suddenly for her to stop them. Somehow, she hardly cared that she was weeping like a child in front of him again. “Of course they do. It is not enough to exist. It is my duty to be perfect. I have not been perfect—not at all.”
Some of the intensity dropped clean off his face, and he looked despondent in his bewilderment. “What are you crying about now?”
“I have done my best, but I have to do more to finish this. I can do more.”
“Listen to yourself. You’re not making any sense. You can’t give more than you have.”
“Yes, I can.” He had ripped open an old wound, and emotions she had long sealed away came rushing out of her. “I am so afraid, Kit. I am afraid that I will fail, despite all the pains I have taken. I am afraid I will let everyone down. And deep down, I am afraid that I am horribly, irredeemably selfish because I am so afraid that I will die without having let myself live at all.”
It was confession and a realization both. Here, in the close darkness of Woodville Hall, she wanted more than she’d ever allowed herself to want. The good, the bad, and everything in between: all of life and its ten thousand ways to cut you. All of the things she’d never envisioned for herself. To grow old. To be hurt. To fall in love.
“Maybe you are self-centered,” he said after a long moment. “Or just clueless.”
A mixture of hurt and indignation dropped heavily into her gut. Niamh wrapped her arms around her middle. “You do not always need to say exactly what you’re thinking, you know.”
“Sorry. I’m not trying to hurt your feelings. I’m just…” He sighed, frustrated. “The only happiness you can imagine for the people you care about comes at your own expense. You’re making yourself miserable, and don’t try to deny it. You are the most obvious, transparent person I’ve met in my entire life.”
She choked out a laugh through her tears. “Am I?”
“To me, maybe. You smile like my mother did. Your eyes…” He trailed off, then seemed to think better of finishing the thought. More gently, he continued, “Forget it. My point is, if your family really loves you, they’d want you to be happy. They’d be fools for not recognizing how much you’ve given up for them, or how talented you are. So just … stop it. You don’t need to work yourself to the bone. You don’t need to do things for people before you ever think to do a thing for yourself. Whatever you think you have to prove or earn, it’s all in your head. Your existence alone is enough. And if you believe you’ve made no difference at all to anyone, you’re even more clueless than I thought.”
But she did not know how to believe that, and she did not know how to stop. “I’ll try.”
“Good,” he said gruffly. “That’s all I have to say.”
They sat in silence for a few moments while her breathing evened out. She felt … awful. Yet somehow cleansed. Kit had not treated her gently, but she did not expect him to. There was something oddly comforting about his bluntness. It forced her to be honest with herself as much as it did with him. She supposed she owed him the same. “Do you want to tell me what happened out there?”
“Not really.”
“It’s only fair,” she said lightly.
“I’ve had a hard time controlling my magic for a few years now, especially when I’m emotional,” he said, only a little begrudgingly. “And especially when I’m drunk. Technically, that’s why I got sent away.”
She could tell it cost him a lot to tell her; it surprised her he’d told her at all. Something told her he didn’t want sympathy. “I see.”
“Being in this house, what Jack said … It pushed me.” He frowned. “It’s hard to describe. When I lose control, I feel like I’m somewhere else. I go back to where I was four years ago. I don’t want to hurt someone like that again.”
“You didn’t hurt me.” Niamh hesitated. “Kit … What exactly happened four years ago?”
“You really don’t know.” It was less of a question than it was an expression of disbelief.
She did, and she didn’t. His mother had died, but there was something else. Something that Jack couldn’t tolerate. Something that frightened Sinclair. Something that Kit was deeply ashamed of. She braced herself for all of his walls—all of his thorns—to go up again.
But after a moment, he let out a long sigh and sat on the edge of her bed. The mattress creaked beneath his weight. “What do you know of my mother?”
“Nothing but what you’ve told me.”
“She was complicated.” By complicated, Niamh sensed he meant troubled. “For most of my life, it was like she lived behind a glass wall. You couldn’t reach her at all. It wasn’t until my father’s health began to decline that she came out from behind it. I hadn’t ever seen her so happy, or so alive.” Bitterness colored his words. “She went to every event of the Season, and soon, the gossip columns fell in love with her. They watched her every move, dissected her every word, commented on every little thing she ate and wore.”
He fell quiet for a few moments, and Niamh thought that he had followed his own vulnerability to its end. But to her astonishment, he drew in a breath and continued. “One night, she left a ball early. It was a dark, rainy night, a lot like this one. Her curricle overturned, just beyond the gates there.”
He jerked his chin out the window. A shiver worked its way through Niamh as she stared at the wrought-iron fence beyond the sheets of rain.
“I was too young to go to the ball, so I was here. When I heard the crash, I thought it was thunder. But when I went to the window, I saw…” He closed his eyes, and frustration mounted in his voice. “I can’t remember exactly what I saw. I can’t even remember what killed her, even now, even though they told me a hundred times. If it was the horse that trampled her, or her head striking the cobblestones, or … I just can’t remember.”
“Kit, that’s horrible. I’m so sorry.”
“Her death alone, I could have dealt with. But the aftermath was a mess. The columns were desperate for details. They were like vultures, them and the rest of our court, and I was never able to satisfy their appetite. I couldn’t stop thinking about what had happened. I couldn’t remember, but no one let me forget, either. It was like this crater smashed open my life, and one day, I couldn’t step around it anymore. I fell into it. And once I fell, I kept falling, and thinking, until I didn’t want to think anymore. I felt like they wanted me to grieve differently. It felt like they were waiting for me to snap entirely. So I gave them what they wanted.”
Niamh wished she could do something, say something, that would make the pain of those memories go away. But sometimes, bloodletting was the only way to drain the poison. She reached out and placed her hand over his wrist. His pulse fluttered against her touch, but he did not flinch away from her.
“It was a bad period of my life,” he said, with a bitter wryness that made her heart ache. “Jack worried a lot, and I resented him for it. Sinclair tried his best to keep me together, but then the columns started speculating that the two of us were involved. I’d ruined my own reputation enough that not even my title could stop them from saying aloud what everyone already knew. I didn’t care what anyone thought of me, but Sinclair knew what his father would do if enough people talked.”
“They had no right to do that to either of you.” Niamh could not fathom such a violation. She boiled with anger, to know that nothing but idle gossip and small-minded hatred had cost Sinclair so much. “What happened then?”
“Apparently, someone made an insinuation about us at a ball when his father was in earshot. I’d been drinking too much and lost my temper. And then I lost control of my magic. Sinclair tried to rein me in. I almost … He almost…” He scoffed. “The worst part is, I don’t even remember what I did. I had to learn about it from the columns.”
Niamh did not need him to say it. The fear in Sinclair’s eyes today had already told her everything she needed to know. Whether he intended to or not, Kit had lashed out at him enough to leave scars. She imagined only half of them were visible.
Kit shook his head and muttered, “The idiot. He plays at being unreliable, but he’s stupidly loyal.”
“He has forgiven you.” She tightened her grip on his wrist. “He told me that he feels he owes you a lot.”
“No, I owe him. He could have walked away from me a thousand times. He should have, because I was killing him long before that night, and I was too self-involved even to care. After that, Jack put me on the next boat to Helles. He was right to do it.” His expression grew hard. “He was right about me today, too. The worst of both our parents. Doomed to end up either raving mad or dead on the side of the road.”
“Oh, Kit,” she whispered, blinking back a fresh wave of tears. “I know it’s hard.”
It felt so horribly inadequate. And yet, to her shock, Kit leaned forward and rested his head against her shoulder. He leaned heavily on her, but he did not seem to know what to do with his hands. He folded them loosely in his lap, as though he were afraid to touch her. Tentatively, she wound her fingers into the hair at the nape of his neck and cradled him against her. He went rigid, but as he relaxed, breath by breath, he finally dared to drape one arm around her.
“I came back for Sinclair.” Kit sighed heavily. “Jack said he was going to cut off my account unless I married Rosa.”
“What?” She gasped. “So you…? That’s—”
He pulled back suddenly, taking all his warmth with him. “I swear, if you tell him—”
“I won’t!”
“I mean it. I won’t hear the end of it if you do. It was almost impossible to get him to agree to accept my help in the first place.”
“I do not wish to upset you any more than you already are, so I will refrain from reminding you that you are a good man.” She paused. “And also that you are the one who told me that you should not make yourself miserable for others’ sake.”
He glared at her. “Thanks for that.”
“Still, I promise I will not tell him.”
He seemed to relax some at her reassurance. A small, selfish part of her wanted to pull him back to her and let him curl up against her. To coax him to accept more than a scrap of tenderness and comfort. Because in that secret he’d trusted her with, she’d glimpsed who he really was. Hadn’t she known it all along?
In all the ways that mattered, Kit Carmine was just like her.
“But I do think you should know…” She cleared her throat, suddenly shy. “I meant what I said the other day. Our fates are not sealed. It is never too late to live the way you wish, and you are not doomed to anything. I understand what it’s like to not want to disappoint people. But you deserve to be happy, too. Life is too short, and it is yours.”
“You hypocrite.” He sounded fond, the insult spoken as tenderly as a pet name. It made heat bloom within her.
He held her gaze with his own, then let it slide down, as if he was memorizing her face. He lingered on the curve of her lips as they parted in anticipation. Right now, there was nothing and no one but the two of them. No expectations, nothing but the desire she saw reflected in the brightness of his eyes. She had never felt less like she was dying.
Something in her face must have changed, because his body became charged with awareness. He twined his fingers into her loose hair, pushing it back from her face. His hand seared her chilled skin like a brand. She knew, down to her very marrow, that she was about to be kissed. Her head swam. It felt like a dream—a fairy tale. It didn’t feel possible, that she should’ve been allowed to have something she wanted so badly.
“Are you sure?” she blurted out. “After everything that has happened, I understand if you are tired, or—”
“Stop talking.”
He kissed her.
At first, he was impossibly gentle, his lips brushing against hers. Niamh sat up as best she could to meet him, sinking into the veritable mountain of pillows beneath her. Her fingertips skimmed his jaw. His breath shuddered against her mouth. That was all it took. A shot of pure, liquid firelight tore through her body. As he drank her in, his eyes darkened.
Perhaps this was inevitable from the moment he first stirred her anger.
When he kissed her again, all she could think was, Of course. The intensity of it was all Kit. He curled his hand around the side of her neck, angling her chin up to him. He was assured and uncompromising, all of his brutal, single-minded focus applied to eradicating every coherent thought she’d ever had, save more. When his tongue teased open her mouth, she melted completely into his hands.
Neither of them possessed even an ounce of patience. He bent over her, one hand against the nip of her waist as he dragged her closer. The brass buttons of his waistcoat were cool and rough against her fingers as she loosened them. She relished the thrill of satisfaction when she freed him of the last one—and again when she slipped her hands beneath his wet shirt. His breath hitched, and his muscles tightened against her palms.
He tasted like smoke, and he smelled like rain and damp wool, and she might very well go mad from how good he made her feel. She floated in a haze of pleasure and exhaustion. “Is this a dream?”
“I don’t know,” he said huskily, his eyes aglow. “Let me kiss you until dawn, and I suppose we’ll find out.”
Perhaps tomorrow, reality would crash down around her. But here, right now, with the patter of the rain and the whisper of the fire around them, she couldn’t find it in herself to worry, to regret a single self-indulgent moment at all.