Chapter eighteen
Sometimes thoughts could be destructive. Sometimes they became a dark fog that swirled around and cinched tighter and tighter until it was impossible to breathe. Like a python.
With every breath I took, I battled my thoughts. With every day that passed, hope refused to blossom.
One day blended into the next, and before I knew it, I was wearing a strapless, champagne-colored wedding gown, staring at my reflection in a full-length mirror. The body of the dress was soft tulle with a lace design on the bodice, creeping up from my waist and cupping my breasts. My leg peeked out from the slit that ran all the way to my hip.
I looked pretty enough. My ankle had healed and the cuts on my hand were gone.
I should have felt like a princess on her way to becoming a queen.
Instead, I felt like one of those old, dilapidated houses people slapped a fresh coat of paint on in order to trick someone into buying it.
Property.
Mrs. McTavish stood behind me, fastening the buttons along the back of my gown. Over the past two weeks, she’d started to grow on me. Every day for breakfast and dinner, she sat with me at the table made for twenty while I ate… alone. Grey never ate with me. After that day in the library, the only time I ever really saw him at all was during my bath when he sat on the floor and read to me. He had a thing for the classics, and so did I. I guess I really scared the shit out of him my first night here. That was saying a lot, considering he didn’t seem like the type to spook easily.
He never spoke about the man in the cottage, and neither did I. Everything about that night was something I’d rather forget.
Mrs. McTavish said not to take his absence during the day personally. She said Grey worked a lot and that I would learn to adjust.
Before I was taken, my world was fast-paced and exciting. Now I spent my days mindlessly walking around an empty house the size of a small castle, wondering what was behind locked doors, reading outside on a blanket in the grass, and listening to a playlist that reminded me of a different life.
I didn’t want toadjustto that.
Caspian and Grey had saved me from Hell only to trap me in Purgatory.
“You look beautiful, dear.” Mrs. McTavish’s words yanked me out of my thoughts before they drifted into that place where the dark fog suffocated me.
I sucked in my stomach as she pulled the fabric together at my back. “You say that like this is my real wedding day.”
“This is the only one you’re ever going to have.” Grey’s voice floated in behind me, making me freeze. “It doesn’t get much realer than that.”
I watched in the mirror as Mrs. McTavish stepped aside, letting Grey take her place. My eyes met his in the reflection. “Did anybody ever tell you it’s bad luck to see the bride before the wedding?”
“I don’t believe in luck.” Grey’s eyes lingered on my face, then lowered to his fingers at the small of my back. He pulled the dress tight as he fastened button after button.
I held my breath and watched myself in the mirror. I almost didn’t recognize the girl staring back at me. My pale skin had turned a soft, golden bronze from all my hours spent reading in the sun. My formerly long blonde hair was now jet-black and shoulder-length. Grey said the less I looked like myself, the better off I’d be. We may be an ocean away from my old life, but our marriage wouldn’t be a secret. We would go places, see people. He was an important man with important friends, and important people didn’t hide.
Mrs. McTavish had spent the last week coaching me on my “background.” I was no longer Lyric Matthews. She was nothing more than another statistic. I was now Lauren Radcliffe, niece of the Queen of Ayelswick. At the age of twelve, I was sent to a boarding school in Pennsylvania to “learn American culture.” And I met Grey at a formal event last spring when I returned home. It explained my accent, why no one in Scotland had ever seen me, and why someone from the U.S. might think I looked familiar. That was the story we told because the truth was ugly. People couldn’t stomach the truth. So we fed them pretty lies.
I was now officially a Zooey Deschanel/Katy Perry doppelganger theory. Somewhere out there, someone would compare images of the new me to the old me and wonder why we looked so much alike.
I had to spend hours searching images and watching YouTube videos every day because I’d never even been to Pennsylvania—or boarding school.
Grey finished with my buttons, then straightened his shoulders. Everything about him was impeccable, from the way his hair framed the sharp lines of his face to the way his tuxedo stretched across his broad shoulders and lean physique.
Grey was breathtaking. He was the kind of beautiful that made my chest ache from looking at him because I knew I should have thought he was horrid. If he’d been ugly, hating him would’ve been easy.
I didn’t hate him.
Icouldn’thate him.
“Turn around,” he said as if I had a choice, but the moment the words left his mouth, he grabbed my waist and spun me around to face him.
His smooth fingertips brushed the side of my face, making my heart stutter. He took a step forward, closing the inches between us.
My body went stiff. “What are you doing, Grey?” The words tumbled out between ragged breaths.