Page 58 of The Nightmare Bride

K ai woke me at sunrise.

The rain had subsided to a murmur. We dressed in the half-light from the window, but something about the dawn looked different. Wrong.

When we emerged from the shack, I realized why.

The rot had gone, its purple glow vanquished by the rain, which still fell in spears from a steel-gray sky.

The swamp glistened, olive and navy and silver. No purple to speak of. The rain soaked us in moments and stuck Kai’s hair to his forehead, but being drenched felt right, somehow. Like a rite of passage that cleansed us, too.

“Ready?” he said.

A knot tightened in my throat. Olivian. He was definitely going to kill me.

But there was no help for it, so I took Kai’s hand and nodded, pointing my feet toward home.

The seneschal met us in the drive.

His face crumpled when Kai and I emerged from the marsh, but I could tell by the defeated set of his shoulders that he already knew. Of course he did. Nothing else could have cured the rot overnight except the one thing he’d feared above all else.

I raised my chin and headed for him, leaving Kai behind. By the time I reached Olivian, he was on his knees in the gravel, his throat convulsing. I couldn’t tell if he was crying. Rain coursed down his cheeks, soaking his beard, plastering his hair to his head.

“You promised,” he gasped. A dark abyss lay beneath the accusation. “You promised me.”

“I know.” I got on my knees, too, ignoring the bite of gravel. “I’m so sorry.”

He looked wild, his face a tangled mess of grief.

I reached for his hand, then thought better of it. “But she asked me, Olivian. She wanted to go. And I couldn’t keep her here anymore. I just...couldn’t. It wasn’t right. I loved her too much to make her stay.”

A sob tore from his chest. “I should kill you.”

I waited, but he didn’t move, and I could tell he didn’t really mean it. He just needed to vent his anguish, by any means necessary.

“I brought something back, though,” I said. “For you.”

He just sat there. The light had left his eyes.

I glanced back at Kai, who nodded his encouragement. I eased the dagger from its sheath and offered Olivian the hilt. Rain collected in the channel that ran down the blade.

The seneschal stared, seemingly devoid of even the will to take the knife and bury it in my chest.

Not that I would’ve let him. “Hold it,” I said. “And you can talk to her. Inside your mind.”

A glimmer stirred in his life-starved eyes. He palmed the dagger with one massive hand.

His gaze unfocused. Then his body jolted and his eyes slammed shut and he was weeping, truly weeping—great, wrenching sobs that wracked his frame. He curled forward until his forehead hit the ground.

“My sweet girl,” he babbled, between heaves. “My baby. My precious daughter.”

I knelt there, a wealth of feeling stoppering my breath. I had never seen anyone fall apart so spectacularly, and I couldn’t decide what to do. Eventually, I settled for an awkward pat of his back.

“Leave me,” he growled. “Leave me with her.”

I did.

I went to Kai, who brought me inside. We told the closest steward where to find Vick, then gave the man the keys to free him.

Then my husband took me upstairs and undressed me in our room.

We drew a steaming bath and washed each other with worshipful intention, which concluded with us making love on the bathroom floor amid a wonderland of reflections.

I gazed into the mirrors the entire time.

They showed me our joining from a thousand different angles, and it felt like glimpsing the future, like a promise that we would celebrate this way a thousand more times.

When it was over, Kai kissed me and said, “Hideous. Downright painful.”

“Awful,” I agreed. “It’s like you get worse every time.”

“Likewise. It beggars belief, honestly.”

I laughed. What a stupid joke, and yet I couldn’t imagine ever tiring of it. “I guess we’ll have to try again.”

His eyes glinted. “Poor us. Will the torture never cease?”

We stayed in Oceansgate until after Lunk and Miss Quist’s wedding.

They held their ceremony in the library, and this time, the whole household attended. Everyone except Olivian. The seneschal had kept to himself for weeks, haunting the halls with the dagger clutched close, a husk of a man who spent every waking moment conversing with his lost daughter.

I wondered why he hadn’t spent this much time talking to Amryssa when she’d been here under his roof, but I couldn’t judge him too harshly. Olivian was broken. Beaten down by the brutality of loss in ways I couldn’t comprehend and hoped I’d never have to.

But I dared to hope he’d come out of it, someday. That maybe he’d recover, and rebuild Oceansgate. Maybe even sire a new heir, instead of letting his line end in disgrace and ignominy.

On the night of Lunk’s wedding, at the nuptial feast, I pulled the big man aside.

Someone had hired a musical quartet, and fiddles dueled with one another while the stewards and housemaids danced.

This song sounded familiar, and then I realized—it was the one Kai and I had danced to that night in town.

No wonder he’d seemed to know it—he actually had . At that point, he’d been here nearly a year.

Behind Lunk, streamers of orange leaves ran along the ceiling. Miss Quist hovered just out of earshot—she couldn’t go far, considering the cypress vine that tethered her to her new husband.

Lunk grinned his beautiful, broken-toothed smile at me. “Keymistress.”

“Lunk.” I smiled back. “Or...Henry, is it? Your real name?”

He bobbed his head. “That’s the one my mother gave me, yes. Lunk was the liberators’ name for me. All of us had nicknames, there.”

“Right. Well, Henry.” I rolled the name around in my mouth, testing out the friendly letters. Lunk had never suited him, anyway. He was so much more than that. “I couldn’t be happier for you. Can I hug you?”

His eyes crinkled. “Of course.”

I squeezed him hard. It was mildly awkward, considering he had one arm leashed to his wife’s, but we managed.

“I’m sorry I gave the dagger to Olivian,” I said. “Before you could decide about changing anything, I mean.”

He shrugged good-naturedly. “Oh, it’s all right. I don’t think I would’ve done it, anyway.”

“If you ever change your mind, you could always ask him.”

He chuckled. “I think he’s just as liable to stab me as grant wishes.”

“Good point.” I grinned. “Probably better not to chance it. At any rate, I wish you two all the happiness in the world.”

“And you as well.”

We hugged again, and I turned away, intending to go find my husband and spend some time enjoying his gift for rhythm down here before I got to enjoy it again later, in a different way, upstairs. But then a thought struck me and I turned back.

“Henry?”

He paused. “Yes?”

“What was Kai’s nickname? When he was with the liberators?”

“The prince,” he said easily. “We always called him the prince.”

I snickered. “Right. Of course you did.”

Because really, what else?