Away. His eyes went back to the handwriting underneath the word Sacrifice on her board.
“But most accounts assume Philippa and Malcolm were both killed by his clansmen. They couldn’t break the curse from beyond the grave. So . . .”
“Who are the enemies?” A rising sickness in his gullet told him he already knew the answer.
“Um.” Riley covered her face with her left hand. “I don’t really know how to say this.”
There was a picture of him on that board.
All her antics of the last week . . . breaking into his camper, requesting a lock of his hair, the cleansing solution she mixed for him to drink. Yesterday—her inescapable presence. The persistent questions targeted to poke at him. That incredibly distracting outfit.
What had Philippa wanted with those words, an end to enemies?
To drive the Graphms back, hold the castle unchallenged once and for all.
“We’ve been trying to get each other to leave”—the manacle weighed heavy against his wrist—“ and it hasn’t been working.”
Riley spun the cuff around her own arm.
Unbidden, a vision of her in his bed came back to him. He’d thought the darkness in her eyes as she tore him apart last night had been nothing but malice, but perhaps he’d mistaken something else: grim determination, even regret?
“I did what I thought it would take.” She made herself meet his eyes. “I don’t expect you to forgive me.”
Clark didn’t know if it made him feel better or worse to hear that the attack had been strategic, calculated to achieve some greater end than wounding him. Of course she would prioritize breaking the curse over his feelings. It was her job.
His eyes fell to the journal still open on the nightstand.
Sex rituals.
“That’s clever, actually. The opposite of enemies is lovers.” Clark joined Riley in sweating. “But if that’s the requirement, we’ve already . . .” He raised his arm to wave off the end of the sentence and—mortified—realized he was accidentally gesturing to her chest.
After what they’d done last night, it was pretty ridiculous to find himself circumspect now, but his facilities had been significantly weakened over the course of this conversation. Besides, even if he was a . . . god help him, freak in the sheets, he was still a gentleman in the streets, thank you very much.
Riley looked thoughtful—and, thank goodness, distracted. “What if the sex has to actually take place in the castle—or maybe the curse only recognizes certain types of intimate interactions?” She shook her head. “I need to read more about it.”
Clark fought to keep composure amid his rising internal temperature. “You’re saying this curse might have antiquated ideas about what acts would qualify us as paramours?”
Riley gave him a sardonic grin. “I’m saying I think the ancient, horny fae magic might not be satisfied until you rail me.”
“Jesus.” Clark went as tongue-tied as a blushing schoolboy.
“Hey,” Riley jumped in, “I certainly don’t define sex by penetration. But”—she shrugged—“it’s a three-hundred-year-old curse. It stands to reason we might be operating under a less-than-progressive definition of lovers.”
The idea that the castle wanted . . . that sent a bolt of awareness through his body. Clark didn’t know whether it was from interest or a primal survival warning to run.
Riley must have seen something troubled in his face because she reached for his arm. “Oh, god, Clark, listen, I would never, ever ask you to do that. After last night, I know you wouldn’t,” she said firmly.
Reaching for the book, she flipped the pages again. “I’m sure there’s something else in here I can try.”
“Something else. Right.” He’d stop thinking about taking her from behind any minute now.
Partially out of curiosity and partially to distract himself, Clark made himself consider the work that must have gone into compiling a journal that massive.
Her gran had seemingly dedicated her entire life to the study and practice of curse breaking, taking care to record all she could in order to pass down the legacy to her kin.
That kind of commitment, the pursuit required for such an endeavor, was even more impressive when you considered that unlike fishing or cartography or even lidar technology, curse breaking was a practice without an established history.
Chasing after such a polarizing calling must have required a massive leap of faith, especially for a woman back in—what, the 1920s? 30s?
“Riley, how did your gran—sorry, what was her name?—how did she become a curse breaker in the first place?”
She looked up, evidently surprised that he’d asked.
“June,” she said softly, as if talking about her family even now brought up dormant emotions. “Her name was June, and she was born in rural Appalachia. Into a small mining community.”
Oh. He’d expected she came from near Philadelphia, like Riley.
“I’ve always found Appalachia fascinating.”
The bedrock of the mountains was 480 million years old. It was one of the most ancient and mysterious geological artifacts in the world.
“Do you know those mountains predate the dinosaurs?”
“Yeah.” Riley grinned. “My mom likes to remind people that her hometown is older than Saturn’s rings when they sass her about her accent.”
Clark had begun to recognize the particular kind of softness born of—he suspected—love and pride that entered her voice whenever she spoke of her mum.
“But she left?”
Riley nodded. “She moved away when she got a scholarship to go to college—that’s where she met my dad—but even though she never studied curse breaking, she did kind of go into the other branch of the family business.”
He raised his brows. “What’s that?”
“Midwifery.” Riley put the book back in the drawer. “My mom’s a nurse in obstetrics and gynecology, but my great-grandmother, and her mother before her, they served in a long line of midwives in the mountains. So much of the land out there is isolated, almost inaccessible, trapped as it is in valleys and ridges. It’s hard to get to a hospital.”
She sat on the bed, eyeing the spot beside her until Clark did likewise.
“Our family brought generations of children into the world. And because the women in the community trusted them so much, they began to show up asking for help with problems beyond babies. By the time she was nineteen, Gran was the person everyone in town came to with their troubles.”
Clark had never heard Riley talk like this—effusive but tender, almost shy.
She was quick to share stories about her clients or to defend her decisions, but he rarely heard her describe anything personal. This easy, reverent storytelling about her matrilineal line came in such sharp contrast to the stilted, painful way she’d revealed her father’s betrayal at the pub.