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Dimitri

The hours passed slowly. Painfully slowly. It seemed like days, not hours, since Rosalie had left.

He had paid the triplets a pouch of gold each to stay with Rosalie the whole time she was gone, but he still worried constantly. He would have had her surrounded by a squad of armed guards if that wouldn’t have risked disrupting the Legacy.

They were so close to the finish line, and Dimitri knew he only needed to endure for a few more hours, but it was still hard to bear. He roamed from room to room, but everything he saw reminded him of her. He hadn’t been thinking of the future when he’d made memories of Rosalie in every room of the manor. Enduring her absence was going to be unbearable.

When it was time for the evening meal, his steps took him to the dining room. He wasn’t there to eat—how could he sit down to a meal when Rosalie might be in danger?—but it was what the two of them had always done at that time.

“Are you well?” a kind voice asked, and he remembered with a start that he wasn’t quite alone in the manor yet.

“Do you think Rosalie is well?” he asked and heard the rustle of Daphne moving closer in response.

A cool hand that he couldn’t see was placed against his forehead. “I’ve been watching you today,” she said. “You seem fevered. I thought the Legacy wasn’t supposed to start attacking you until after Rosalie’s appointed time away?”

Dimitri sank into a chair, placing his head in his hands. “I can’t even tell any more,” he said hoarsely, strangely glad to have someone to unburden himself to, even if he didn’t know Daphne well. “All I can think about is Rosalie. I go straight from happy memories to terrifying images of her hurt and hurting—and then back again. My stomach is churning too much to eat, and I can’t stay still for more than a minute at a time.” He looked up, forgetting for a moment that he couldn’t see her. “I’m exhausted, but there’s no way I’m going to be able to sleep.”

He looked back down at the table. “Do you think…do you think all that is the Legacy? Is it messing with my head—making me desperate without her because I’m a Beast and she’s my merchant’s daughter?”

With a soft sigh, Daphne pulled out the chair next to him and sat down.

“Does it matter what I think? What do you think? Do you think the Legacy can reach into your mind and place thoughts there?”

Dimitri frowned. Did he think the feelings he had for Rosalie were false ones created by the Legacy?

He rejected the thought immediately. He had recognized Rosalie’s fire from the first moment of their meeting, and she had followed that up by proving herself intelligent, brave, active, and kind.

“Of all people, Rosalie doesn’t need the help of the Legacy to win people over,” he said.

Daphne laughed. “There are some who might disagree with you, but I’m glad you see her that way.”

“I don’t love Rosalie because of the Legacy,” he said, and Daphne gasped at the word love.

He hadn’t meant to say it. It had slipped out naturally. Rosalie had worked her way too far into his heart to use any other word. But, even so, the intensity of the feelings that had been consuming him since her departure were another matter. He was less certain those were natural.

Despite her gasp, Daphne didn’t comment at his choice of words, so after a pause, he continued.

“This reaction,”—he gestured toward himself—“I’m less sure about.”

“I don’t believe the Legacy can control your thoughts,” Daphne said thoughtfully. “But in this situation, with all the power it’s pouring into you two, I’m sure it can give you a fever. And the fever might be enough to induce the frenetic intensity.”

She hesitated before adding softly, “It worries me, though. If you’re reacting this badly this quickly, you might go downhill very fast tomorrow.”

“That doesn’t matter,” he said with utter faith. “Rosalie will come. She’ll come and then the Legacy will reverse whatever it’s done to make me sick.”

“Yes,” Daphne said, but he was glad he couldn’t see her face because she didn’t sound sure.

But he trusted Rosalie completely. Regardless of how she felt about him, she was too kindhearted to put him at risk. He also didn’t think he’d imagined the connection that had grown up between them in their weeks together. Rosalie would return to him, at least for long enough to satisfy the Legacy.

Pain pierced him at the idea that afterward he might have to live without her. The prospect of day after day like the one he had just endured gave him his first insight into his mother’s mindset. Could he trust himself to be more sensible than she hadbeen in the same circumstances? He was no longer as sure as he used to be.

What would he do if he knew he had already seen Rosalie for the last time?

He drew a deep breath and leaped to his feet. He had to move. He had to move his body or something inside him would break. He paced the length of the room once, twice, three times and then headed for the door.

A pulling at his sleeve made him stop.

“I’m not sure constant motion is a good idea for the sickness,” Daphne said. “You’ll make the fever worse.”