Total pages in book: 153
Estimated words: 146289 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 731(@200wpm)___ 585(@250wpm)___ 488(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 146289 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 731(@200wpm)___ 585(@250wpm)___ 488(@300wpm)
“You snored,” I point out with something like glee.
“I never.”
“Little ones. Wee baby snores.”
He stares at the ceiling, that look of astonishment still present. “I dreamed,” he whispers. “I’d forgotten what dreams were. I was in a boat. Someone was singing somewhere over the water and I couldn’t find the shore, but I wasn’t afraid.” He turns his head on the pillow to look at me. “Is that a normal one?”
“That sounds pretty nice, actually. Mine are usually about having to use the toilet except all the bathroom stalls are dirty and the doors are too low and they don’t lock. Or I’m back in high school or college and I forgot to attend one class all year and it’s the day of the exam and I’m about to fail. I’d rather have your dream.”
“Aye. Yours sounds like a curse.”
“It’s called having an unregulated nervous system, you’ll see.”
And then his stomach growls, audibly, a long, whining complaint, loud enough that we both look down at it, and his expression is so deeply affronted that I lose the battle and laugh until I’m crying. That’s how the first morning starts, with the former terror of the western Highlands being betrayed by his own digestion.
So I make eggs and toast and leftover stew, and he eats like a teenage boy, reminding me of the way my lanky brother used to demolish the kitchen when growing up. He eats my toast too, only after I offer it, of course.
“It’s demanding,” Alasdair says, shaking his head. “This bloody body. It just goes on wanting things. Heat, food, sleep…you—” he catches himself, and there it is, faint color along his cheekbones. He can blush now, how delightful. “It’s a wonder any of you get anything done.”
“You keep saying that, and I keep telling you. We don’t. Welcome to the human experience, where you’ll be a slave to a never-ending to-do list.”
Though at least in his case, he doesn’t have to become a slave to capitalism, which makes that list lighter. Not that I’ve had a lot of time to figure out what life looks like for us going forward, but he’s got a castle that, sure, could use some renovating but is still a fucking castle, and I’m sure somewhere in those hallowed halls he has things he could sell, or perhaps a large sum of money to lean back on. I mean, vampires always end up being rich because they’ve had centuries to save and invest, and maybe it’s the same with him.
At the very least, I have the cottage, which I will most definitely be inhabiting for a year now, so it will be mine and I still have my career (um, kinda, I’m really behind on a few deadlines now). All this to say, Alasdair can be a kept man. All he needs to do is continue to fuck me and look pretty and we’ll call the whole thing even.
I refill his tea, and for a while we just sit with the steam coming off our mugs, and the pale autumn light, and the dark bay through the window. I could live in this morning. I know part of me is looking to the future, but I’m also more than content to stay here in the moment and live in this morning indefinitely.
Which is when he sets his mug down and says, “There’s something I have to show you, foxglove.” And the grave look on his face tells me that maybe the morning and the moment are over. “It’s at the castle. And I’ll warn you now…you’ll want to hate me for it, and I’ll not blame you if you do.”
Okay, now the morning is definitely over.
We walk to the castle, because of course we do. The day’s already showing signs of the strange warmth it’ll open into, the sky rinsed clean after all that fog and rain, and the track around the head of the bay is the same three miles I walked two nights ago with a knife in one pocket and salt in the other, except everything about it is different now, because the fog is gone, and the dread has changed, and the man beside me keeps stopping to look at every damn thing.
He stops for the smell of the bracken warming in the sun, dragging it in through his nose like he’s never been allowed it before, and maybe he hasn’t, maybe the creature smelled everything through six feet of cold water its whole long life. He stops for a wren singing in the gorse. He crouches at a burn we’ve both crossed a dozen times and puts his bare hand in it just to feel the cold as a thing that bites instead of a thing that belongs to him, and he comes up grinning like a boy, shaking his fingers, saying, “It’s sharp. Iris. The water’s sharp now. I’d forgotten how it felt, to feel such things as a man.” I am so in love with this idiot it’s a wonder I can walk in a straight line.