Beneath his back, the hardness of the floor, usually cool, was moist and warm, glued to his skin. He had a fever, probably. The heat that left him chilled aroused thoughts of the fire, of the way it had scorched him, of the way it had scorched Elizabeth.
Elizabeth.
His eyelids ripped open. In his hand was another hand not his own, and he filled with such relief that his exhalation felt to be the most cleansing, relaxing thing he had ever experienced. He continued to hold it, delicate and feminine and possessing more love than most people held in their entire bodies. She slept next to him, curled on her side. Her blanket was pulled high, and her hair was swept away from her neck, falling behind her. He never knew anything could be so beautiful—more beautiful than the illusory beauty he had seen in his dreams, the beauty that was no beauty at all.
It didn’t make sense that Aglaé had come, or why she’d said what she had. He’d never come close to killing a woman to break his curse. There’d been times he was tempted, and times he had to work harder against his instincts—one time even with Nicole—but he’d taken the women mostly to scare them, to keep up his pretense. And even then, when he hadn’t been close to taking their lives, he’d been far closer than he ever was to taking Elizabeth’s. If he ever was to break the curse, it would never be through her death. His brain couldn’t even wrap itself around such a thought.
So why come now? Why try to prevent him from doing something he would never—not in a thousand centuries—do?
As he watched Elizabeth sleep, watched her shoulder lift ever so gently with each breath, he tried gathering the pieces of the night, tried determining what was real and what wasn’t. Obviously, there hadn’t been real fire, on him or her or anything else. And, God, how that made him rejoice. But she was with him. Had she really stayed, promising she would never leave? Had she really saved him?
His heart dropped, every piece of reality floating to the surface of his mind. He couldn’t believe he’d been too distracted by her presence to realize she was here in the first place. She was here, in his house, sleeping beside him. Heat swelled through him, emotions he himself couldn’t even decipher: rage, humiliation, exposure, even gratitude.
He peeked beneath the blanket over him, at the stitches on his side and the scratches on his leg. She had saved him. And though it moved him—because it moved him—he grew angrier than he’d been since the moment he’d met her. Stubborn, curious, unafraid Elizabeth.
He sat upright, but an overwhelming bout of dizziness hit him in a wave, making everything go topsy-turvy and momentarily taking his sight. His limbs were weightless, shaky. Elizabeth stirred beside him, opening her eyes, and she sat just as quickly.
“Henry,” she said, and he wished she wouldn’t call him that. When she called him Henry, he felt like Henry. His name in her voice was a beckoning, a call to come home—a home where he wanted desperately to be, but couldn’t believe in.
He tried to stand, again in a hurry, while holding the blanket around his waist, but instead he closed his eyes tightly as the marble felt pulled from beneath him, like the floor of a gyrating plane.
“You might not want to do that,” she warned.
Between nauseating breaths he stood anyway, ignoring her advice. With a croaky throat he managed, “What are you doing here, Ms. Ashton?”
She didn’t answer, rushing to him while keeping her own blanket high, and she steadied him, placing her free hand on his chest. Was the familiarity of her hand just a dreamlike sensation, or had she really done that last night, too—steadied him? And how he loved the way it felt, her touching him. “You need to take it easy,” she said. “Lie down, please. But not on the floor. The couch maybe, or—”
He removed her from him, backing away, and grasped the back of the couch. “Why…why are you here?” The room still spun and he brought his hand to his forehead. He thought maybe he should do as she requested, or at least sit down, but he couldn’t.
“She saved your life,” Arne said, entering the room and looking more tired than Henry had seen him in years. “That’s what she’s doing here.”
“You…” Henry started, the betrayal turning his stomach. “You let her in?”
“Henry, you would have died out there,” Elizabeth said.
His eyes shot to her before he scrunched them closed again, trying desperately to remember. But saving her, fighting Diableron, and getting stabbed was the last thing he remembered with any clarity. “Don’t call me that.”
He felt her question in the air.
“Henry,” he clarified. “Don’t call me that.”
Her face fell and she swallowed deeply, but held her chin high.
“What happened?” He didn’t know what else to say.
“It’s all right,” she said in the soothing voice he hated, because of just how much he wanted to believe her. Because really, he did believe her—that maybe it could be all right.
“What’s all right, Ms. Ashton? That I’m a monster?” He looked to Arne, and heat flushed his face, more than just the warmth of the fever. “How could you betray me like that?”
“She already knew.” Arne looked upset too, since his face appeared darker than usual and he stepped toward him in the passionate way he rarely did. “She came to me last night, came to the gate—desperate to save you. And you’re delusional if you think I would turn her away. If she hadn’t come, you’d be dead.”
Henry ignored Arne’s words, scrunching his eyes. His chest was heavy, and if he let himself, he could have cried. He didn’t know why and it didn’t make sense, but he felt it, building up inside.
She knew who he was.
She knew what he was. It wasn’t just Arne who had betrayed him. “How long have you known?” he asked quietly, keeping his eyes closed, still clutching the blanket around his waist while grasping the edge of the sofa.
Her voice was small, even scared. “Weeks.”
His eyelids shot open. One of her hands kept the blanket over herself, not to keep herself shielded like him, since she was clothed—perhaps she was cold?—and her other tucked her hair behind her ear. She looked tired, too.
“It was hard to miss,” she went on after a swallow. “Really, it was obvious. I’m surprised I didn’t know the first time I met you.”
None of it made sense—mostly, why she would know and continue to meet him every night, continue to walk with him every morning as though he was a normal person, instead of running the other direction; how she could even touch him or kiss him, knowing what he was. Even before this, he had wondered those things, wondered how she could meet his mouth with as much passion as he had met hers, after the way he’d treated her. But now, knowing he was this…
His head spun and again he closed his eyes. “I…You knew…”
“Hen—” She cut herself off, and the sound was an unpleasant one, his name getting caught in her throat. It seemed as painful to her as it was to him. “Mr. Clayton,” she corrected after a light throat clearing, “you need to lie down. You’re coming off both the poison and the mor—”
“The poison?” he asked, his eyes again shooting to her, then to Arne. How much had his only confidant told her? “How did you know about the poison?”
Folding her arms, she threw him an exasperated glare. “What do you take me for? We do have the same book, Mr. Clayton.”
He stood on the deck of a ship, rolling over a choppy, stormy sea. He wondered how long he could fight the desire to throw up. She touched his arm and the sensation made him jerk, since she felt cold against his feverish skin.
“You’re burning up,” she said. She tried making him sit, but he didn’t.
“How can you touch me?” he blurted, his voice bitter and eyes narrow. “How can you even look at me, Ms. Ashton, knowing what I am?”