Her eyes shone unblinking in the lamplight. Was it too self-indulgent to think a portion of her unshed tears might have been for me?

“Even if I agreed,” she said. “How can it work when you know I don’t really mean it?”

“I have thought of that as well,” I said with a nod. Clasping my hands behind my back, I turned to pace over the carpet. “And that is why you must leave the grounds as soon as you can. Only this time, you must never return. The heart. It should last at least until you are gone for good and I am sure I shall never see you again. So long as it remains . . . any plans of betrayal on your part . . . Well. They will not matter.”

“Why wouldn’t they matter?”

“Because,” I snapped, wheeling on her. “That is what true love is!”

It was out before I’d known I’d said it.

She gaped at me, awed and horrified. And still so beautiful.

“Oh, I don’t expect you to believe it,” I said. “What cause have I given you to? How can such a thing as love survive in a place like this? In a thing like me? It does, though. Perhaps it is what caused the roses to return and the snow to vanish. I know it is the thing that allows me to stand before you and consciously offer you the key to my undoing.”

“And what happens if . . . if I say no?” she asked, trembling.

“Then . . . there will be blood.”

SEVENTY-ONE

Stephanie

I watched him in disbelief. And yet I believed him all the same.

He turned from me and went to the piano, where he paused to remove a ring from one gloved finger.

The silence in the room swelled. Between clock ticks, the metal ring clicked loudly against the piano’s smooth and polished black surface.

“You don’t have to say a word,” he said. “You don’t have to say yes. I know it frightens you. Just . . . take the ring. Take it, and that will be enough.”

More ticks and tocks. More silence. Then he moved to walk past me, out of the room.

“Wait,” I said, stopping him by placing a hand to his chest, my lids fluttering in shock at my own words. “Don’t go . . . yet. I . . . I’m not ready to be alone again.”

He’d said he’d missed me. Had I just admitted to having missed him, too?

“You prefer my company to solitude.” His gaze went from my hand to the clock. It wasn’t a question. I could tell by the way he’d said it—like he was just repeating the punch line to a joke he’d found funny. “Things really have gone too far . . . haven’t they?”

I tilted my head at him. These lucid questions. They kept coming. Evidence of his growing awareness? His mannerisms and his demeanor, too, had shifted toward those of the boy who had appeared in my dreams. So much so that I halfway wanted to ask if this was a dream.