After much agonizing and several “bracing” cups of tea, Clark agreed to call a colleague who studied ancient metalworking to see if she knew anyone who could help them.
“I’m going to tell her the question is theoretical, all right?”
Riley looked up at the wariness in his tone. He’d managed to say very little to her in the last few hours of forced proximity, but this sentence in particular seemed to cost him.
Clark was embarrassed, she realized, in addition to generally not wanting to be anywhere near her. That made sense now that she thought about it. As a curse breaker, zany shit happened to her all the time, but getting physically restrained by one of the artifacts he’d discovered was probably a first for Clark . . . though surely not for archaeologists in general?
“Understood.” She gave him a salute, feeling the bizarre need to make as much use of her free hand’s range of motion as possible.
Who knew how long they’d be stuck like this? Riley was very carefully avoiding her water bottle, since there was no way she and Clark were on good enough terms right now to discuss a system for when one of them had to pee.
It took a fair amount of conversational sidestepping, but eventually his colleague referred them to a friend of a friend who—good news!—could forge them a key. Unfortunately, the blacksmith （they did still exist） would have to come up to take a mold and couldn’t arrive from Manchester until tomorrow at the earliest. And that was after Clark had offered to pay an exorbitant price for a rush job.
He made her sit while he transferred money for their rescue on his laptop. Apparently, he couldn’t concentrate with her looming over him.
This was so inconvenient. She wanted to be back in her room at the inn. It was harder to brainstorm without being able to look at all the pieces. Riley went back to the language of the curse. An end to enemies. Language was always the key, no pun intended.
Assuming the power in the cave had fae roots, the curse might be wilier than most. Perhaps the wording was a trick? A play on words, even. Riley considered different interpretations. Really, this shouldn’t be that hard.
An end to enemies.
End seemed like the option with the most opportunity for interpretation. Hmm. If the curse didn’t want her to get rid of her enemy by driving him away, how else was she supposed to end him? Death was still, obviously, not an option. Besides the fact that Riley would never murder someone （despite her emotional dependence on Criminal Minds）， it didn’t fit. If the curse wanted to hurt them, it would have by now.
They’d survived its ominous influences—many of which could have been lethal—relatively unscathed. At least physically. The curse had caused plenty of mischief since its inception, but thinking about it now, she couldn’t recall any record of fatalities on-site in three hundred plus years. No, she didn’t believe the curse wanted anyone six feet under. Instead, it seemed to be trying to send them signals, nudges in the right direction.
She turned to Clark. “What’s the opposite of enemies?”
“Huh?” Repeated urgent clicking and his refusal to remove his eyes from the computer screen said PayPal was giving him trouble.
“I’m doing the crossword on my phone,” she fibbed, holding up the device that had been sitting next to her on the armrest. It didn’t seem like a great time to explain the whole “I tried to drive you away because I thought that was what the curse wanted but now I need to rethink my strategy” thing.
“I haven’t the faintest idea,” he snapped, and then, after a moment of reluctant pondering, “Does friends fit?”
Oh. There was an option that never would have occurred to her.
Was that plausible? Could you end your enemy by turning them into something else? She guessed so. Though she couldn’t see Philippa Campbell and Malcolm Graphm setting aside their families’ blood feud to bond over—Actually, what do friends bond over? Hobbies? Entertainment properties?
“Do you—” There was no way Clark watched Criminal Minds. CSI was way more evidence oriented.
The computer made a womp sound. “Riley, figure it out yourself. I’m clearly busy.”
Right. Something twisted in her chest. Clark would make a good friend. For someone else. He was loyal to a fault, strangely considerate, funny sometimes—mostly by accident.
But, of course, after what they’d done to each other, he and Riley could never go back.
As night fell, it became harder to avoid the looming presence of his bed and all that had occurred there—both decadent and devastating.
“Why don’t we stay in my room at the inn tonight?” At least the mattress was bigger, and neither of them had made the other moan in it. “We can get dinner at the pub on the way.”
Her belly had not enjoyed “working” through lunch, but asking Clark to stop and make her a snack while he wielded various sharp objects had seemed like pushing her luck.
Reluctantly, he agreed. Probably half because he hadn’t had time to change his sheets.
Anyway, they went.
“Could you please stop drawing attention to yourself?” Clark gritted his teeth the second time Riley knocked over the saltshaker.
“Sorry,” she said, using her free left hand to set the shaker back beside its peppery fellow. “These things” —she jangled the cuff on her right wrist— “are heavier than they look.”
Contrary to what he seemed to believe, she wasn’t actively trying to humiliate him.
Besides, in her opinion, the reception to their manacled appearance at the pub had been downright mild. A few stares, a few chortles behind raised hands. One good-natured scolding that they shouldn’t involve bystanders in their kink games without informed consent. No big deal.
Eilean wasn’t even working tonight. Riley could just imagine what the no-nonsense bartender would make of Clark trying to block their chain-linked wrists behind a propped-up menu. Luckily for him, it was Ceilidh who appeared at their table wearing an apron and carrying a notepad.
The redhead raised an eyebrow at their joined wrists, but when Riley mouthed, Don’t mention the handcuffs, she pivoted quickly.
“Are you both ready to order?”
“Definitely,” Riley said. The sooner they got this over with, the better. “I’ll have the balsamic spinach salad without onions, please, and a side of fries.”
Clark ordered his usual burger and “the largest glass of whiskey you can legally serve.”
After Ceilidh scribbled their requests on her pad and returned to the kitchen, Riley leaned forward to whisper conspiratorially, “People will lose interest if you stop looking around like we’re about to dine and dash.”
“Fine.” He stopped peering at the tables around them and leveled the force of his gaze on her.
Uh-oh. She realized her mistake as mounting silence grew between them. It was the first time since they’d been chained together that neither of them was occupied with a task.
Sweat began to gather on her lower back. What were they supposed to do for the fifteen or twenty minutes it took for their food to come out? They didn’t even have drinks yet—Ceilidh appeared to be swamped at the bar—so Riley couldn’t pretend to be occupied with taking a sip or plucking at her garnish.