They drew away from the human lands and closer to Nightbrook, and the closer they got, the more Belle's blood turned cold and her palms drenched with sweat of nervousness. She had eaten, not as much as she wished she could because of Rohan. The coachman had brought her many various meals she did not believe she could finish even if they were to travel on for days, not only food but snacks that would not easily spoil and a bag to put them in for her to eat later on the journey. He also got her a few water gourds.
Everything looked enticing, but her stomach could not take them in. She was not just already homesick but terrified of what awaited her the moment she reached Nightbrook. She was exhausted and scared to the point of nauseousness. They had not even arrived, and yet he had kissed her and said words no man had said to her before.
'I want to see you with nothing on but the blush on your cheeks. Your Jamie did not know how to treat a woman properly, little lamb. I will teach you once we reach my home.'
What would he teach her? And what did he mean by Jamie did not know how to treat a woman properly? In her own opinion, he was the one who did not know how to treat a woman properly. She'd seen many gentlemen in her life of attending balls. They did not do so much as kiss a female's knuckles, even though they were married. He was supposed to wait until he took her to his house.
He did not ask for her permission before kissing her or saying crude words that made her stomach feel like little things were crawling inside her and generating a heat chamber and setting her skin aflame. His words and intense eyes made her embarrassed and self-conscious to the point that she had almost put her food to her nose instead of her mouth. Did he have to look at her while she ate, after what he had said?
What sort of man was she married to? No doubt everything he did was part of his madness. He had been in an asylum for years, and she'd heard that in an asylum, even if you were sane and put in there, you would slowly turn insane from the tutoring and purging. If he had been put in a place like that and had come out of it, he was the kind of man she would want to stay clear of, only that she was now unfortunate enough to be married to him.
She had asked herself a few times now, if she were to turn back time to weeks ago when she told her family she would go in place of Eve, would she redo it and not put herself through this? The answer to that question was as clear as the fact that her time in Nightbrook would be hell before she was returned to her family. She would do anything to make them acknowledge her as they did Eve. She would still follow the same path as this.
If she came out of this alive and sane, she could finally live the life she wanted without anyone being against it. As a reward for her giving a few years of her life for Aragonia, she would be allowed to marry Jamie, and if he would not take her, she would request the king to give her her own home in Aragonia so she would no longer be a burden to anyone.
Now, however, she had to live in the moment and brace herself for whatever awaited her once they arrived. He had not spoken to her again, nor had he touched any of the food he'd sent the coachman to fetch for her. He had only eaten a single snack.
She had wordlessly offered it to him when it was first brought, expecting him to refuse as he did not look interested in the food, but to her surprise, he had said,
"Unwrap it."
Her fingers trembled slightly as she unwrapped the linen cloth tied with a string around the snacks, not thinking much about it, until she held it out to him. But instead of taking it with his hands, he had leaned in, lips parting as he took it straight from her fingers.
Her breath hitched as his teeth grazed her fingertips, not hard enough to hurt, but just enough to make her shiver. His lips closed around them, the warmth of his tongue teasing the very tips before he released them with slow, deliberate sensuality.
Belle jerked her hand back as if burned, her pulse hammering. The side of his mouth curled into a knowing smirk as he chewed, amusement glinting in his eyes before he leaned back, closed them, and rested as if nothing had happened.
But something had happened. And the heat still tingling on her fingertips made it impossible to forget. She wiped them against her dress to rid herself of the lingering warmth, then she began to eat the rest of her snacks.
The further they traveled from the human lands, the denser the cold and the thicker the clouds and air in the atmosphere. The last humans she had seen were in the market along the traveling roads where they had bought her food, but apart from that, they had not passed by any towns or villages again.
The last village before Nightbrook was known as Raventown, and they were approaching it now.
She had heard so much about Raventown, a place that was once home to many humans but had long since become nothing more than a desolate ruin. Years ago, when vampire attacks were rampant, the town had been massacred by bloodthirsty vampires. It was the borderland that separated the two territories, and as they neared it, a shiver ran down Belle's spine.
One would think that after what had happened to her in childhood, she would have stopped looking out the windows of moving carriages. But she couldn't help it. She liked to see the danger, or at least be aware of anything that might bring it. She knew she shouldn't be looking out now, but curiosity got the better of her. She wanted to see what had become of the town that once thrived.
She had once met a woman whose grandmother had lived there and had barely escaped into Aragonia during the massacre. The woman had spoken of the town's former beauty, of its shimmering lakes and towering trees. Now, however, the sight of it sent ice through Belle's veins.
A dense, ghostly fog curled over the ground, swallowing everything in its path. The trees stood lifeless, their skeletal branches bare and brittle. Perched on them were crows, dark, and they watched their moving carriage with eerie, unblinking eyes. In the distance, houses loomed like forgotten corpses, hollow and decaying. The only sounds in the heavy silence were the rhythmic creak of the carriage wheels, the galloping hooves of the six horses pulling them forward, and the occasional cry of crows, or perhaps something else unseen.
Then she saw it, movement within the mist.
Her breath caught as she peered out, fingers tightening against the edge of the window. Something was there. It was keeping pace with them, shifting and weaving between the thick fog as if watching, waiting. Her heartbeat pounded. Was it just a trick of the light? Her imagination?
No.
The figure moved again. And this time, before she could convince herself she was imagining things, it lunged straight toward her window.