“Something weird, right?” Clark looked to her for confirmation after they sat down.
“Right,” she said, resisting the impulse to reach over and smooth a wayward curl back from his forehead. Gross. When had she turned so mushy? When had this man become so . . . dear?
Several hours and one neck cramp later, Riley realized the book was full of weird things. The problem was none of them felt particularly useful. Plus, there was only one book and two of them so they kept bumping shoulders and thighs, as they leaned over trying to read the fine, faded print.
She took back her assessment of Clark as helpful. He was outrageously distracting.
Every inhale brought her lingering traces of his wintergreen shaving cream. She kept looking at his jaw. Which inevitably led to looking at his mouth.
Then Clark would catch her looking at his mouth, and say, “What is it?”
And she’d have to make up something, pretending she’d been lost in thought about crop patterns or methods for roof thatching. It was a whole mess.
But it wasn’t her fault. She didn’t know what the rules were between them anymore.
They’d done this whole ritual that, even if it didn’t break the curse, still cemented them as intimate. Riley felt like she knew Clark, his body, his mind. Like he belonged to her, only he didn’t.
Now, all this banding together to prove his dad wrong, or everyone wrong in Riley’s case, it had a way of making it seem possible that—Hey, wait a minute . . .
“Clark.” She fumbled for his arm while keeping her eyes locked on the book. “Look at this wound report.”
“Really? Wounds?” He turned green around the gills. “Must I?”
“You must.” Riley pushed the book closer to him. She supposed not everyone grew up studying their mom’s medical journals as a hobby. “It’s an excerpt of a field medic’s record from right after the Graphms took Arden. And see here? It says the patient—a scout—died after he was attacked with an unusual instrument.”
“Right,” Clark said, still looking at her, clearly lost. “Are you sharing simply because you’re excited by blood sport?”
“What? No.” She slapped ineffectually at his hand. The man had picked a fine time to stop paying attention to detail. “Would you just read it?”
Chin in hand, Clark bent over the passage, “All right. It says the wound came about after the scout entered the castle’s guard tower—Oh.” He raised his head. “That’s where you threatened to stab me—this is sort of nostalgic. Look how far we’ve come.” He smiled fondly.
“Would you just keep reading,” Riley urged, massaging her temples in an attempt to remain calm.
“Not up for a bit of reminiscing, I see.” He bristled, somehow becoming more British in the gesture. “Well, fine. Fine, where was I?” Clark made a show of returning to reading. “Ah yes. Here we are. Scout entered the guard tower, blah blah, oh here’s something, he was actually stabbed in the back of the neck by ‘a dagger of unusual design’—hmmm—and the medic notes that because of the length and width of the blade that must have caused the wound, the attacker needed to possess extraordinary skill to severe the spinal cord in a single blow.” Clark turned to her. “You believe this man was attacked with the dagger you found in the castle?”
“It sounds like it, doesn’t it?”
“I need to read more.” Clark pored over the rest of the text for several moments, making little hmm noises and shushing her every time she tried to ask him a question before finally he sat back and crossed his arms. “It doesn’t make sense.”
“What doesn’t?”
“Well, aside from the fact that it’s unlikely Philippa would have possessed the physical strength or training to make such an attack, I can’t see how she would have gotten close enough to the scout to make a strike at such short range. Here, stand up.” He grabbed both her hands and hauled her to her feet. “Okay, you’re Philippa. You stay there.”
After placing her, he jogged about fifteen feet away.
“I’m the scout. This is roughly the distance from the end of the guard tower to the end of the staircase.”
Riley squinted, trying to remember, but that seemed rightish. “Now what?”
“Now try to stab me in the back of the neck with your dagger.”
She judged the distance between them. The blade they’d found couldn’t be more than eight inches. Riley walked toward Clark. Because the tower was circular, and the staircase entrance exceptionally narrow, she didn’t see how she could get behind him.
“You can’t, right?” Clark mimed unsheathing something from his hip. “Plus, I’ve got a sword. There’s no way you’re getting close enough.”
“Unless . . . unless I’m not Philippa. What if I’m Malcolm?” This time when she approached, Riley held one hand behind her back.
Confused, Clark let her get within arm’s reach. Instead of extending the dagger, Riley opened her other arm, embraced him, and only when he reached for her—automatic, unthinking—did she drag her opposite fingernails across the back of his neck, the faintest proxy for a blade.
“Malcolm was a hero to his clansmen. Their favored son.” Clark shivered. “They wouldn’t have expected to find him waiting in a guard tower, not when he was supposed to be in the dungeons. The scout would have been surprised, would have greeted him as a lost brother.”
“Especially if he appeared unarmed.” At this rate, she’d have to send the writers’ room at Criminal Minds a thank-you email. “Philippa’s dagger would have been easy to conceal until the precise moment when he needed it.”
Clark’s heart raced, a mirror of her own where their chests pressed together.
“It was always strange that Malcolm died in the siege, and no one ever said how, or why. But if, at the very end, he betrayed them, they wouldn’t have wanted it known. The Graphms would have done everything they could to hide the record. Would have burned any trace of warrior accounts, but something like this”—he broke apart to rush over and tap the medical report—“they might have missed.”
Riley stared down at the page.
“I don’t understand. He was barely there for three weeks. I thought they might have been hot for each other, sure. But for Malcolm to turn on his clan for Philippa.” She blew out a long breath. “Was it Stockholm syndrome? Like are we talking a full Beauty and the Beast situation here?”
“No,” Clark said, surprisingly quick, surprisingly sure. “I think he fell in love with her. I mean, look what we know even centuries after her death. She was brave. Determined. Clever.”
He laughed, looking wondrous. Looking at Riley.
“He was probably terrified at first, of how caring for her, wanting her, put him at her mercy,” she mused.
Two things are bound into repetition, Gran had written, history and curses.
“From her lips, death,” Clark said, “of all he knew, all he was.”
Riley hadn’t seen it. Hadn’t wanted to. It was right there in the word—lovers.
She clenched her hands into fists.