Now you’re out here looking like regret
Ain’t too proud to beg, second chance, you’ll never get
Jesus. Clark barely stopped himself from laughing, muffling the impulse with his fist. He was almost having fun—he had to put a stop to this at once.
Urgently, he hit the off button on the speaker, plunging the room back into silence. He simply couldn’t tolerate these types of time-wasting pranks. Setting down the device, he went to find her. They were about to have a very strongly worded conversation.
“Riley,” he called, heading through the granary toward the servant’s hall. She couldn’t have gone that far and still been in range.
A few steps farther and an acrid smell hit his nose. Was that— Clark sped up, breaking into a jog when the hint of smoke grew stronger.
“RILEY.” Clark burst into the hall to find her with her back to him, standing in front of the hearth. “Tell me you’re not intentionally starting a fire.”
She arched to look at him over her shoulder. “You want me to lie?”
Was he not due a break? Did he truly deserve these incessant torments? Had he not spent enough of his life picking up the pieces of someone else’s recklessness?
His father was gifted and important, and everything else fell to the wayside. Payments to Clark’s school he said he’d taken care of, doctor’s appointments for Mum. Every family holiday was at the mercy of his career. Clark had learned to double-and triple-check every contract, schedule, and commitment, to pay extra for travel insurance, to remain always, always on guard.
He marched forward. “What could possibly possess you to do something so reckless?”
“I’m using the fireplace,” Riley protested.
Indeed, she’d placed a small pile of dried sticks and brush in the blackened hearth and held a matchstick, still smoldering, between her fingers.
Where should he even begin to list the number of problems with that plan? Oh, yes, how about, “That hearth has likely been blocked for a century.”
“Oh.” She stared at her tiny blaze, the flames merrily dancing in shades of orange and gold, then bent her knees to try to see up the flue. “That’s not good.”
At least the floor in this room was dirt. Muttering under his breath, Clark began using his boots to kick together a pile large enough to douse the fire.
“Next time you’re cold, try putting on a hat.”
Seeing what he was doing, Riley began to help using her own boots. “Please. I’m not that delicate.”
Her words drew his eyes from her feet up her thick thighs, the wide sweep of her hips, the sweet dip of her waist. Clark dragged his gaze away before he could get any higher.
“I wanted to run a diagnostic on the dagger we found.”
A diagnostic? But then why— “Wait, were you going to put the dagger in the fire?”
He hadn’t thought he could lose his composure any further today, but once again Riley had gotten the better of him.
Kneeling, he began sweeping dirt from the pile into his cupped hands.
“I know Martin said you could examine the artifacts you find—against my advisement, I might add—but that doesn’t mean you can treat them so cavalierly, pursuing every whimsical idea that pops into your head.”
“I’m not just making things up as I go along.” Mirroring him, Riley scooped her own dirt, the two of them beginning to douse the fire. “My gran had a process for curse breaking. A system of analysis and elimination.”
Heat from the rapidly dying flames warmed Clark’s hands, his arms. “What kind of process, exactly?”
“Why should I tell you?” A scowl sat wrong on her features. Her rosy apple cheeks and softly dimpled chin were made for exuberance. “I don’t care whether you believe me or not.”
It was starting to seem impossible that they’d ever spent a whole evening sharing drinks without arguing. Let alone just two days ago. At this rate, Riley Rhodes would never smile at him again without malice. It was a shame. She had a remarkable mouth.
Clark thought of the care she’d taken with her website. The business card. How defensive she’d been when she handed him that salve this morning.
“I think you do,” he said slowly.
Riley bristled. “Excuse me?”
“Your whole attitude is armor.” Clark let the scientist side of his brain take over, giving in to the impulse to read her like a discovery. “Why do you think even innocuous questions sound like insults to your ears?”
“Because you’re a dick?” She threw her last handful of dirt into the hearth at such an angle that some blew back on his shirt.
“You care what I think anyway.” The blaze dimmed to smolders. Clark removed a handkerchief from his back pocket to clean his hands. “Even though it kills you.”
He extended the cloth to her, but with a storm brewing in her eyes, Riley wiped her filthy hands on her denims—the ones he hadn’t wanted her to wear.
“You want me to eat crow? Fine.” His curiosity about Riley, about the increasingly elaborate folds of her story, persisted like an itch Clark couldn’t seem to resist scratching, even as he knew doing so would only make things worse. “Tell me how curse breaking works.”
If he had to spend an indeterminate amount of time around her, he wanted to know what she planned to do. Even more, he found he wanted to know how she thought. How she’d built a compelling business proposition out of smoke and mirrors. Worst of all, he’d discovered an unparalleled delight in provoking her. His whole body hummed with anticipation for her next move. Would she strike or parry?
Riley shook her head at the ground, full lips pressed tight together, and Clark thought for sure the game, this game at least, had ended, but then—
“Every curse is different.” The hard edge in her voice said she’d make him pay for this, even as she kept talking. “But there are four main techniques, applied in isolation or combination, on an ascending scale of difficulty. Charms, cleansing, sacrifice, and rituals.”
“The fire tells you which one to use?” That sounded . . . remarkably practical.
If someone had asked him to describe artificial magical lore, he would have come up with something much more loosey-goosey. The way Riley described curse breaking was almost scientific.
“Sometimes. It depends on the age and origin of the curse—” Her next few words were cut off by a sudden, intense gust of wind, so strong it rattled the remains of the kitchen’s wooden shelving.
Both Riley and Clark turned toward the room’s set of busted windows, but the source of the current seemed to come from behind them, instead, from the doorway.
“There must be some kind of cross breeze coming from the other side of the castle,” Clark said, coughing a bit as the wind caught and carried ash from the hearth, scattering orange embers at their feet.
“You think this is normal?” Riley threw up her arms, protecting her face from the gray clouds as another gust tore through, this one seemingly from the opposite direction.
By the time they could both open their eyes, they had other problems.
“Something’s burning,” Clark said at the exact same moment that Riley looked down and screamed.