Do Your Worst(92)

This time while they climbed to the guard tower, Clark and Riley held hands.

She had never been up here after dark. The view was enough to steal her breath. For once the night sky was clear, a perfect black canvas for twinkling constellations. Waves crashing against the cliffs enveloped them in a bittersweet soundtrack of ascent and retreat.

It was impossible to stand here now and not think of Malcolm Graphm. How torn apart he must have felt waiting for the attack of his own people. He might have stood at this window, given a signal for Philippa to run as his clan descended. She might have looked back at him, just once, hoping he’d make it out to follow her while knowing every odd was stacked against them.

It was hard to blame the curse for campaigning for a happier ending. Maybe even ancient supernatural forces needed hope in the face of relentless death and destruction.

Riley stood in front of the beam where they’d found the dagger lodged.

She hoped Malcolm’s last thought was of love. The kind of impossible love that challenged everything. Even death.

Turning to Clark, she held out her hand. “Ready?”

They took their places.

Without the hum of the crowd, the pageantry of the swirling leaves, Riley could give herself fully to the feeling of his hand in hers. The air crackled, restless, around them, making the back of her neck prickle like pins and needles.

It turned out, the curse did want a kind of sacrifice, just not the one Riley first assumed. She didn’t have to hurt Clark, or even herself. Instead, the curse asked her to cast aside the belief she’d clung to for so long like a security blanket—that she had to choose between calling and partnership.

It was like the universe wanted her to know that the sense of peace she strove to deliver wasn’t just for other people. It was for her. And Clark. And maybe, after tonight, in some small way for Philippa Campbell and Malcolm Graphm.

Riley had never had any particular aptitude for languages, but as she made her vow to Clark in the Gaelic words they’d practiced, she felt them deep in her bones.

“Tha gràdh agam ort.”

There was something amazing about looking at someone you’d once thought you loathed and realizing how wrong you could be—about other people, about yourself.

“Tha gràdh agam ort,” Clark said back, his low voice becoming a tether between her restless heart and his.

As the last syllable fell from his lips, Riley held her breath, pulling Clark forward and wrapping her arms around his neck, the foot of space between them suddenly too much. When she let herself inhale, deep and long, there was the scent of stone and mist. Of cobwebs and dust. There was Clark’s detergent. The warm orange spice of his shampoo mingling with the faded perfume at her wrist.

Nothing else.

“Clark.” She leaned back to tell him but saw tears tracking down his stubbled cheeks.

“What is it?” She dried the damp skin gently with her knuckles, a pit forming in her chest. “What’s wrong?”

He turned to kiss her hands as they stroked his face.

“I could have missed this.”

She didn’t understand. “Missed what?”

Clark brought her hand to his heart. The beat was even, steady, under her palm.

“I felt it.”

“What?” Her mouth fell open on a gasp. “You did?”

It wasn’t that unusual for someone to experience a curse in the moment it broke. Occasionally, one of her clients did. But most of those people had lived with the oppressive weight of malevolent power in their lives for years.

She had never considered that Clark—who had been so adamantly opposed to the idea of supernatural forces less than a month ago, who earlier today had told her might never be able to fully believe—could have a similar response.

“It’s the stomach-swooping, breathless, terrifying thrill that happens at the top of a roller coaster, that single frozen second at the peak right before you descend. The release of all that buildup, the mounting pressure. The hardest part is over—you’re already falling, but it’s okay. It’s good. It’s what’s supposed to happen.” He frowned. “Is that—does that sound right?”

Riley nodded against his mouth, already on her way to kiss him.

As it turned out, sometimes what you needed was someone who brought out the worst in you. There was a gift, she realized, that could only be exchanged between former enemies—permission to forgive yourself. Because if someone could see all your failures and faults, could actively seek out every possible reason to dislike you, and somehow still come around in the end, well, maybe your worst wasn’t so bad after all.

The next morning, Riley and Clark woke up to find that for the first time in three hundred years, indigo angel’s-trumpet had bloomed on the grounds of Arden Castle.





Epilogue


“I can’t keep having this same fight with you. I’m at my wit’s end.”

Clark came out of the shower to find Riley arguing with the cat, who seemed to have gone into a protective crouch over a bunch of bananas.

“We just bought you all those cans of fancy French cat food,” she continued, a note of imploring in her voice. “The least you could do is let me try to make this bowl of steel-cut oats less boring.”

“Félicité,” Clark said sternly.