Jared didn’t follow into the house straight away. I was okay with it. I needed a minute to just sit in the feelings I was experiencing and take a mont to mull them over.
Dinner was being served in the dining room like usual, and the house was blanketed in lively chatter over the sounds of silverware clanging against porcelain plates. I sat down, fixing myself a plate as I scanned the table.
“Where’s Scarlett?” I asked Giselle, who was sitting across from with a glass of wine in her hand.
“I haven’t seen her since this morning,” she replied, taking a sip of wine as she looked over my bruised face. “I think she was a little shaken about what I heard happened last night.”
“You missed quite a show,” I breathed, rising from my seat and grabbing an empty plate from the center of the table. I fixed Scarlett a plate of food and picked up my own, balancing them on my hands. “I’ll talk to you about it later. I’m going to try to find her and make sure she’s okay.”
Giselle gave a grateful nod in farewell as I walked out of the dining room, careful not to make eye contact with Miriam. I could feel her gaze on my back as I awkwardly pushed my way through the door leading out of the dining room and into the narrow hallway leading toward the stairwell to the upper levels. I poked my head into the laundry room, but didn’t see Scarlett.
My arms were aching by the ti I made it to the attic. Scarlett was curled up in her bed, and for a mont I thought she might have been asleep, but she opened one eye and peered at as I set her plate down on the table between our beds.
I sat down on my old bed facing her, setting my plate in my lap.
I took a deep breath as she sat up.
“I just had a conversation with Carn,” I said slowly, blinking as if trying to wash the mory of the confrontation from my mind. “She told so things about Jared that have ... questioning...” I tapered off, unsure of how to word what I was feeling and thinking.
“Don’t believe a single word she says,” Scarlett practically growled as she swung her legs out of bed, her bare feet grazing the floor as she took the plate from the table. “This is a ga to her. It always has been.”
“What do you an?”
“n,” she said firmly, then exhaled, toying with her food with her fork. “I’d only been here for a few weeks by the ti Jared banished her from the village.”
I knew Scarlett had only been living in the village for a few years, and before that she’d been raised in the sa orphanage as Archer, and then beca an Alpha’s breeder. What had happened when she first arrived at the village was still a mystery to .
“I was... not well when I first ca here,” she began, struggling to swallow. “Archer was very... gentle with , defensive of . Carn was staying in the attic at the ti, a kitchen maid. She saw my weakness and Archer’s possessiveness as a threat, I think. I’ve never asked Archer about his history with her. I’m not sure I want to know, but she imdiately began to try to put herself between Archer and . At first, I thought she was being protective of , you know? But then I... so of the things she said to about Archer just didn’t align with who I knew him to be.”
I exhaled heavily, understanding that sentint completely.
“Carn ruled the house. She didn’t listen to Miriam and spent most of her ti causing trouble. She was in the habit of calling Jared her mate, and I rember several instances where he publicly reprimanded her for doing so. She’d tell all of us won he was hers, and fought with several of the won we worked with because Jared smiled at them, or talked to them. She got worse and worse during those last few weeks she lived here.”
She took a deep breath, shaking her head.
“I was in the laundry room one evening when Archer ca inside to talk to . We were both... broken. I’d felt the mate bond with him the second I saw him again after I was brought here, but I wasn’t in a place to even express it. He knew, of course, but didn’t push . He’s never pushed . He was more concerned about than claiming but... we were talking, I don’t even rember what about, and Carn ca into the laundry room and found us. She told Archer she needed to talk to him, and made it sound like it was an ergency. Archer didn’t seem comfortable going with her–” She swallowed, blinking several tis to clear the tears from her eyes.
“The look she gave over her shoulder still haunts , Eliza. Like... like she knew she was about to hurt , to hurt a pair of mates and she wanted to know, like she was staking a claim to him she wasn’t entitled to. That night I just... hurt, physically, like my soul was being ripped from my body. I knew then that she’d taken him to... to bed–”
“Oh, Scarlett,” I said, setting my plate down so I didn’t break it in half with the intensity of my grip. “Archer would never have done that to you. You know that!”
“I know,” she said, swallowing back a sob. “I know he wouldn’t have. But Carn was trying to hurt , Eliza, because she thought the attention I was getting was a threat to her for whatever reason. It was common knowledge that she went after the highest-ranking n in Jared’s circle. She’d been doing it since before he took over the village.”
“They both made it sound like they were exclusive–”
“Maybe Jared was,” she cut in, then shook her head. “Carn wasn’t. I know that much. I can promise you that much.”
A silence settled between us, and it was obvious neither of us had an appetite.
“She said so things to that made wonder if... well, she asked if I was comfortable spending my life warming soone’s bed. She asked if Jared was keeping locked up, essentially controlling –”
“She’s threatened by you–”
“She offered to take with her, to work as partners.” I sucked in my breath as I ran my palms over my pants. “She asked if I was looking for sothing, if I wanted more out of life than I’d get here.”
“Do you?”
I looked up at her, her green eyes shone like gems in the soft light of a lantern illuminating the room, her mouth slightly ajar as she waited for to answer.
“I thought I did,” I whispered, knitting my hands together over my lap. “I do, I just... Jared is... not what I expected him to be when I first t him. I’ve never allowed myself to feel like this for anyone, I guess. It was never on my mind but now it’s the only thing on my mind.”
“You love him?”
I looked up at her through my lashes, the truth of the matter settling against my chest.
“I do.”
But everything Carn had said to was clawing at that notion. Jared was commanding, forceful, and strong-willed. So was I. If he hadn’t been carrying this curse on his shoulders, what kind of man would he be? What kind of expectations would he hold to?
Was I really just a pretty thing to co ho to? If we broke this curse, would he expect to just stay ho, to have his pups, to raise his children and run his house?
“He’s not what she says he is,” Scarlett said with force, reading every emotion fluttering over my face. “I promise you.”
“I feel like I barely know him,” I said, resigned as I ran my hands over my face. I was exhausted. My body felt like it would fall into pieces if I stood up too fast. I wanted nothing more than to curl up in bed and hide beneath the covers until the sun was high in the sky tomorrow.
“And you’re not like Carn,” Scarlett concluded. “Not a bit. You never will be.”
I looked up at her, wanting to believe her. I really did. But I’d seen my reflection in Carn’s dark brown eyes. I’d had the sa fire, the sa stubbornness and drive in her gaze.
I hated that I was actually thinking about Carn’s offer.
“Do you know anything about Jared’s locket?” I asked, but Scarlett shook her head.
“I’ve never seen it, but I rember hearing that Jared was a ss after it went missing. Carn took it, from what I was told. She was here one day and gone the next.”
I nodded. I was unable to process that piece of the puzzle yet. Every ti I thought about the locket, I pictured Jared’s face that first day at Aeris’s castle when he’d caught playing the piano. I’d played the sa song Carn had humd. Jared had said... when I told him I composed it, he’d told I hadn’t, and he’d looked... shocked.
Scarlett rose from the bed and moved to the armoire, grasping the dark for sothing out of my line of sight.
“I should have asked you first,” she murmured, turning around with the map I’d stolen from Aeris’s vault. “But it was very wet, and I was worried about the fabric disintegrating. It looked important.”
“You nded it,” I gasped as she placed it in my arms.
“I sewed so paneling on the back so the original fabric wasn’t having to support itself any longer. I was gentle, I promise.” She pointed to the symbols and the map itself, her fingers brushing over the raised lines of colorful thread she’d sewn over the paint. “I was very careful.”
She’d embroidered over the original map, bringing it to life. I looked up at her, shocked beyond belief.
“Thank you,” I said, aning every word. “I can’t tell you how much this ans to .”
She shrugged, looking pleased. “What is it, exactly? I know it’s a map of Egoren, but it was obviously made centuries ago.”
“You’re right,” I replied, looking down at it. I traced the symbols she’d stitched to perfection. My fingertips brushed over the northern tip of the map, where mountains stretched across the coast. Above it, she’d stitched the faded stars, the moon, the forked river that stretched–
Wait a minute.
I looked at her, my heart pounding against my ribs.
Holy shit. Holy–
I sprung from the bed, nearly knocking over the plate of untouched food sitting next to .
“What’s the matter?” Scarlett yelped, her eyes wide as I looked down at the map again, scanning the northern hemisphere and letting it weave itself like a thread through my mind.
“His tattoos,” I rasped. “Oh, my Goddess!”
I ran from the room, Scarlett hollering after , but I didn’t stop. I didn’t stop running until I reached his study. I leaped over the piles of books and papers still scattered on the floor. I swept my arm over his desk and sent everything on top of it clattering to the ground.
And then I drew, and I drew, until the desk was full of sketches of his tattoos, the mory of them forever etched into my mind.
I backed away from the desk, pushing the chair out of the way so roughly it fell to the ground, the sound echoing through the room.
Silence fell, the room so still I could hear my own heart beating.
I looked down at the map that would take us to Myrel, the birthplace of the Cryptex... the ho of Draven and what I prayed was the key to breaking the curse.
Jared had been carrying around the answers on his skin since the day he turned twenty-one.
There was a commotion outside the window, the sounds of shouts breaking from my shock. I ran to the window, throwing open the shutters to find Jared’s crew rushing toward the house.
A burst of noise rattled the house, followed by a male roar loud enough to cause the glass panes in the window to tremble.
I whirled toward the door, my heart stopping mid-beat.
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