The Villainess Woke Up Mid-Confession novel · Chapter 20 of 24

Chapter 20: The Balcony

The stair tipped under Ravielle.

Kyrian caught her elbow before she went down it.

Rain, she thought.

Rain on the rail, and wine in her mouth, and someone laughing.

No.

Her own laughing.

And under the rain, close behind her, a smell she had been breathing every time her cousin came near her.

Clove and clean linen.

"Ravielle." Kyrian's voice came from very far off. "Look at me."

"It was him," she said. "I remember the clove."

His hand went hard on her arm.

"Where is he?" he said.

"No."

"Ravielle, where is he?"

"If you touch him tonight, he'll be a martyr by morning, and your captain's word is worth nothing, and it's your head on the block, not his." She got her breath. "One more day. You've waited three years. Wait one more day."

He stood very still on the dark stair.

Then he took her face between his hands and kissed her forehead, hard.

"One day," he said.

He had said he would wait one day.

He had never said she would.

That was his mistake.

The next afternoon Ravielle walked through the walled garden to the dower house alone.

Hanne followed her as far as the yew hedge, scowling, and Ravielle told her to stay with Liliane by the pond.

She wanted to hear him say it.

Damien was on the landing at the top of his stairs when she came in, pulling on his gloves to go out.

He looked down at her.

"Cousin. You're not supposed to be here."

"I came about a balcony," Ravielle said.

He went still with one glove half on.

"The captain was very talkative last night," she said. "You bragged to him. You must have been very drunk, or very proud."

She came up the stairs, one at a time.

He didn't move.

"I remember the rain," she said. "And the rail. And I remember the clove, Damien. You've worn it since you were fifteen."

She stopped two steps below him.

For a long moment he only looked at her.

Then he finished pulling on the glove, slowly, finger by finger.

"You laughed at me," he said.

His voice was perfectly pleasant.

"I asked you nicely, you know. Do you remember that part?"

Ravielle didn't remember.

But she could hear herself.

"Your own mouth did it," Damien said. "I only finished the sentence."

He smiled.

"It was so easy, cousin. I hardly had to touch you."

"And then you woke up," he said, "and you were sweet. And stupid. And grateful. You thanked me for everything. You gave me the keys and the seal and the study, and you signed whatever I put in front of you." His smile widened. "Those were the best three years of my life. And then you came back."

He came down one step.

"I've always hated you, you know. Even before. Even as a boy."

"I know," Ravielle said. "I just never thought you mattered."

He lunged.

His gloved hands caught both her arms above the elbows.

He swung her round against the banister so her back hung out over the drop to the hall.

The rail cracked into her spine.

The stone floor was twenty feet down.

"You fell," he said into her face. "You were overwrought. Everyone saw it at the ball."

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