Into the Woods Read Free Page A

hurt me like this, Algaliarept,” she whispered. “I only wanted to say good-bye.”
    “It’s you who hurt me,” he stated, forcefully where before he had always been demure. “I’m forever young, and now you’ll make me watch you grow old, watch your beauty fade and your skills tarnish as you shackle yourself to a loveless marriage and a cold bed.”
    “It is the way of things,” she breathed, but the fear in the back of her eyes strengthened as she touched her own face.
    Her fondness for the mirror had always been her downfall, and he felt a surge of renewed excitement. “I will mourn your beauty when you could have been young forever,” he said, looking for a crack in her resolve. “I would’ve forever been your slave.” Faking depression, he slumped his perfect posture. “Only in the ever-after does time stand still and beauty and love last forever. But, as you say, it’s the way of things.”
    “Gally, don’t speak so,” she pleaded, and he tensed when she used the nickname she’d chosen for him. But his lips parted in shock when she reached for him only to drop her hand mere inches from the barrier between them. His breath came in with a shudder, and his eyes widened. Had he been cracking the nut the wrong way? He had been trying to rattle her, make her lose her resolve so he could find a crack in her circle and break it, even knowing that her will would likely remain absolute even when her world was crashing down about her. She would not let her circle weaken, but what if she would take it down voluntarily? Ceri was of royal blood, a Dulciate. Generations of crown-sanctified temptation had created women who would not make a mistake of power. But she might make a mistake of the heart.
    And the instant he realized why he had failed these seven years, her gaze went past him to the palace, lit up and replete with joy. Her eyes closed, and panic hit him as he saw everything fall apart. Shit, she was going to walk.
    “Ceri, I would love you forever,” he blurted, not faking his distress. Not now. Not now when he’d found her weakness!
    “Gally, no,” she sobbed as the tears fell and tiny blue butterflies rose about her.
    “Don’t call me again!” he demanded, the words coming from him without thought or plan. “Go to your cold bed. Die old and ugly! I would make you wise beyond all on earth, keep you beautiful, teach you things that the scholars and learned men have not even dreamed of. I will survive alone, untouched, my heart becoming cold where you showed me love. Better that I had never met you.” He looked at her as a sob broke from her. “I was happy as I was.”
    “Forgive me,” she choked out, hunched in heartache. “You were never just my demon.”
    “It’s done,” he said, making a hitch in his voice. “It’s not as if I ever thought you would trust me, but to show me heaven only to give it to another man? I can’t bear it.”
    “Gally—”
    He raised a hand and her voice broke in a sob. “That’s three times you’ve said my name,” he said, crushing the now red rose beneath his foot. “Let me go, or trust me. Take down the wall so I may at least have the memory of your touch to console me as I weep in hell for having lost you, or simply walk away. I care not. I’m already broken.”
    Expression held at an anguished pain, he turned his back on her again, shifting his shoulders as if trying to find a new way to stand. Behind him, he heard a single sob, and then nothing as she held her breath. There was no scuffing of slippers as she ran away and no lessening of the circle imprisoning him, so he knew she was still there. His pulse quickened, and he forced his breathing to be shallow. He was romancing the most clever, most resolute bitch he’d ever taught a curse to, and he loved her. Or rather, he loved not knowing what she would do next, the complexity of her thoughts that he had yet to figure out—an irresistible jewel in a world where he had everything.
    “Do you