Serpent Husband Pursued Me Again After Losing His Memory novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Double the Price, No Questions

Carys sells one tourmaline and an anonymous buyer offers double for any stone she sells; that night a dream of her husband wakes her to find him asleep on the glass roof above her bed.

I spent one week packing and sold exactly one gemstone.

The stone was a green tourmaline, the smallest in the vault, and I took it to the jewelers' arcade in the city market.

Every dealer in the arcade knew the estate's name, so every dealer smiled too widely.

I picked the one with the oldest loupe, because a man who keeps a loupe that long has been wrong in public before.

"Fifteen thousand," he said.

"Twenty-two," I said.

"Seventeen, and that is robbery of me."

"Twenty, and I won't tell your neighbors the stone is a clean four carats."

He wrote the number down and winced at it.

"Twenty," he said.

I took the cash and asked for a receipt with the stone's weight on it.

He asked whether I did this to everyone.

"Only people who hand me money," I said.

He was folding the receipt when his phone buzzed twice on the counter.

He read it, and his eyebrows went up.

"Madam, I have a message from a buyer. They will pay double the price for any stone you sell. Any stone, any day, no questions."

"Any stone," I said. "A cracked garnet?"

He typed it with two fingers and waited.

"Double," he said.

"A chip of green bottle glass?"

He typed again, and the phone buzzed before he had set it down.

"Double. For the glass."

"A pebble out of my shoe."

He held the phone out to me, urgent and coaxing. "Madam, the buyer pays double for your pebble. Take the money."

"That's what my father said about the man with the gifts," I said.

He typed once more and read the answer slowly. "The buyer says the pebble will be framed."

I asked who the buyer was, and he said they wished to stay private.

"Put the offer in writing," I said.

He did, and I put the paper in my bag, and I told myself I would think about it later.

That night I did not think about it.

I sat on the bedroom floor, surrounded by boxes, under the starlight dome Caspian had built.

I was trying to decide which of two identical black sweaters had been a gift.

Neither had a receipt.

I fell asleep with my head against a box of shoes.

Then he was there.

He sat on the edge of the bed in a white shirt with the sleeves rolled.

It was the old Caspian, the one who looked at me with his whole face.

"Baby," he said, low and warm, "you're sleeping on the floor."

"I'm packing," I said.

"You're dreaming," he said, and I knew that was true, and I did not care.

I was in one of his shirts, and nothing else.

His hand slid across my waist and down my thigh, and it was hot, which a serpent's hand should not be.

"We agreed to rest tonight," I said, with no strength at all.

"Mm." His mouth moved against my neck, right over the mark. "I'm resting. I'm just holding you."

His fingers had already reached the hem of the shirt.

I made a sound I would have denied in court.

"Caspian."

"Say it again."

"There's two of you," I said into his collarbone. "I want it noted. There's always two of you."

He laughed against my skin, deep and delighted. "Noted. Negotiable."

"It's not negotiable."

"Everything is negotiable, my love," he said, and his tail curled around my knee, and I woke up with a jolt.

I was alone on the floor, the dome overhead was full of stars, and my face was hot all the way to my ears.

I lay there and stared at the glass.

Then something on the dome moved.

I sat up.

A long gold shape was lying across the glass above me, one coil hanging over the edge of the frame, completely still.

It was a tail. It was attached to a man in a dark coat who lay on his back on top of my roof, one arm thrown over his eyes.

I stood up and put my hand flat on the glass.

His chest rose and fell.

He was asleep.

My husband, who had forgotten me, had climbed three stories of marble in his sleep to lie on the roof over my bed.

The tip of his tail tapped the glass once, right above my hand.

I did not move.

I stood there until I realized I was grinning, and I made myself stop.

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