If You Leave, I Leave novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Thirty Nights

Aveline faces Corwin in his gouged study, sets her terms, and he accepts every one without asking her to stay. The King's steward arrives: Verity is moving in beside him.

I waited for Corwin in his study that night, because it was the one room in the palace he could not avoid.

It sat at the end of the east wing, behind a door with a bare strip of new wood down the frame.

Inside there was a desk, a shelf of ledgers, and an iron cot with a grey blanket folded at the foot.

The cot had been made with sharp, tight corners, and the pillow had no dent in it.

The left leg of the desk was scored with bright scratches at knee height.

I had not stood in this room in a year.

He came in at nine, still in his dark coat, with his gloves on.

He saw the paper in my hand and stopped in the doorway.

"You signed it three weeks ago," I said.

"Yes."

"Before the photo. Before the press release. Before any of it."

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because I knew you would want to go, sooner or later."

"Sooner or later isn't three weeks ago, Corwin. What did you know three weeks ago?"

He looked at the scratched door frame and said nothing.

"Is it Verity?"

"Verity is the Crown's choice. I never asked for her."

"You didn't stop it."

"I couldn't."

"Couldn't, or didn't?"

"Couldn't."

That was all he gave me.

Four years of marriage, and I had never once heard him explain himself.

At our wedding breakfast he had asked me to pass the salt and nothing else.

I had been twenty-four then, and I had still been hoping.

I put the paper down on his desk, next to the cot he slept on instead of my bed.

"I don't want reasons," I said. "Reasons built after the fact are worth nothing. I want terms."

He nodded once.

"The Registry says I stay under this roof for thirty nights, until the Moon Hall seals it," I said. "So I'll stay. Here are the rules."

"Go on."

"One. I move into the west wing tonight."

"Yes."

"Two. You don't touch me."

His jaw moved.

"Yes."

"Three. No explanations. If you have a reason, you can tell it to the registrar."

"Yes."

"Four." I made myself finish it. "You never ask me to stay."

He was quiet long enough that I heard the clock in the hall.

"I won't ask," he said.

"Say it properly."

"I will never ask you to stay, Aveline."

It was exactly what I had demanded, and it cut anyway.

He took a key from his pocket and held it out.

His glove was off, and I saw his bare fingers for the first time in months.

The knuckles were scabbed and split.

I took the key by its ring so that our skin would not meet.

His hand dropped as if I had burned it.

I could still feel the place where his fingers had stopped, one inch from mine.

I told myself that was the anger.

"The west rooms are aired," he said. "The housekeeper made them up on Saturday."

"On Saturday."

"Yes."

The housekeeper had made up the west rooms two days before I was told there would be a divorce.

I looked at him.

He looked at the floor.

"Did you tell her to?"

"That's an explanation," he said quietly. "You said you didn't want any."

I almost laughed.

I almost hit him.

What I did was put the key in my pocket and turn to the door.

Someone knocked before I reached it.

It was the King's steward, in the grey coat of the Crown, with a sealed paper in his hand.

He bowed to Corwin and read from it in a flat voice.

"By order of His Majesty the Alpha King, Miss Verity Ravensdale is to be lodged in the family wing from tonight."

Corwin did not move.

"In which room?" he asked.

"The one beside yours, Your Highness."

The steward bowed again and left.

On the other side of the study wall, I heard a door open and close.

Someone was already unpacking.

Corwin turned his face away from me, toward that wall, and the muscles in his neck stood out.

"Go to the west wing," he said. "Lock your door."

"From her?"

He did not answer.

"Corwin. Lock it from whom?"

"From everyone," he said.

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