The room they had given her was larger than any room Rachel had slept in before, with a high stone ceiling and a fire already burning low in the hearth.
It should have felt grand.
Instead, standing alone in the middle of it once the door clicked shut behind her, Rachel had never felt smaller in her life.
A maid named Ida drew a bath for her near the fire, steam curling up into the cold air.
She was younger than Greta, softer-spoken, and she moved around the room quietly, as if she too had learned to make herself small in this castle.
“Long day, my lady,” Ida said gently, testing the water with her wrist.
“Long doesn’t cover it,” Rachel said, trying to smile.
It didn’t quite work.
She sank into the warm water once Ida had helped her out of the red gown, and for the first time since the ceremony, Rachel let herself feel everything she’d been holding back all day.
The strange blood ritual.
The howling crowd.
The watchful eyes at dinner.
Rex’s hand resting near hers but never quite touching.
She was married now, bound by blood and vow to a man she had spoken to only a handful of times, in a castle full of strangers who watched her like she might break something just by being there.
The water was warm, but Rachel felt cold all the way through.
Back home, her wedding night would have looked so different, she thought.
There would have been music still drifting up from the hall below, her mother checking on her one last time, maybe even Beth giggling about something silly to keep her spirits light.
Here there was only the crackle of the fire and the too-quiet stillness of a castle that seemed to hold its breath even in celebration.
She thought of her mother, of the wooden bird still sitting on the table by her bed, of her father’s arms around her the morning she left.
Homesickness rose up so suddenly and so sharply that she had to press the back of her hand to her mouth to keep from making a sound.
Ida noticed anyway.
She always did, it seemed.
“It gets easier,” she said quietly, wringing out a cloth.
“Not right away. But it does.”
“Did it get easier for you?” Rachel asked.
“Being here?”
Ida’s hands stilled for just a moment.
“I wasn’t brought here the way you were,” she said carefully.
“But yes. It got easier.” She didn’t explain further, and Rachel didn’t push.
When the water had gone lukewarm and Rachel’s fingers had started to wrinkle, she finally rose, wrapped herself in a warm robe, and let Ida comb the damp waves out of her hair by the fire.
It was the first quiet, gentle moment of the whole day, and Rachel found herself grateful for it in a way she hadn’t expected to be grateful for anything in this cold castle.
A knock came at the door just as Ida was finishing.
Ida glanced at Rachel, silently asking whether to answer, and Rachel nodded.
It was Rex.
He stood in the doorway a moment, still dressed in his wedding clothes though he had removed the heavy red coat, leaving just a plain black shirt beneath.
His pale eyes moved once around the room, then settled on Rachel, wrapped in her robe by the fire, her hair still damp.
“You may go, Ida,” he said.
“Thank you.”
Ida bowed quickly and slipped out, and then it was just the two of them, the fire crackling softly between them, the whole strange weight of the day settling into the small space of the room.
Rachel pulled her robe a little tighter, suddenly aware of how bare the moment felt, though Rex made no move to come closer.
He simply stood near the door, hands loosely at his sides, watching her the way he had watched her at the top of the castle steps the day she arrived — carefully, like he still hadn’t decided what to make of her.
“I wanted to see that you were settled,” he said finally.
“That’s all.”
“I’m settled,” Rachel said, though her voice came out smaller than she meant it to.
He studied her a moment longer, and something in his face shifted, the same flicker of something almost human she’d seen once before, at the feast.
“You don’t look settled,” he said.
“You look like you’ve been crying.”
Rachel’s cheeks warmed.
“I haven’t.”
“You have,” he said, not unkindly.
“I can smell it. Salt, on your skin.” He paused, as if realizing how strange that sounded out loud.
“It’s a wolf thing. I apologize.”
Rachel let out a small, surprised laugh despite herself, the first real laugh she’d managed all day.
“That might be the strangest apology I’ve ever received.”
The corner of his mouth twitched, almost a smile, gone as quickly as it came.
He crossed the room, slowly, and stopped a respectful distance away, close enough to speak quietly but far enough that she didn’t feel crowded.
“You’re allowed to miss your home,” he said.
“I won’t think less of you for it.”
“Everyone here acts like feeling anything at all is a weakness,” Rachel said.
“Like the whole castle agreed a long time ago to stop having hearts.”
Something flickered behind his pale eyes at that, quick and sharp, there and gone.
“Perhaps some of us agreed to that a long time ago,” he said quietly.
“It seemed safer.”
“Safer than what?”
He didn’t answer right away.
He looked at the fire instead, his jaw tight, as if deciding how much of himself he was willing to hand over on the first night of a marriage neither of them had chosen.
“Safer than this,” he said finally, gesturing vaguely between them.
“Wanting things you’re not supposed to want.”
Rachel’s breath caught.
She hadn’t expected honesty, not from him, not tonight.
She studied his face in the firelight, the sharp lines of it softened slightly by shadow, and for the first time she let herself really look at him, not as the cold prince from the stories, but as a person standing in front of her, tired in his own quiet way.
“I don’t know you at all,” she said softly.
“And you don’t know me. Maybe that’s not something to be afraid of. Maybe it’s just something to start.”
“You make it sound simple,” Rex said.
“I don’t think it’s simple,” Rachel said.
“I think it’s terrifying, actually. But most things worth doing probably are.”
He almost smiled at that, a real one this time, though it vanished as quickly as it appeared, like he wasn’t quite used to letting his face do that anymore.
“You’re braver than I expected,” he said.
“Most people who come here learn quickly to say as little as possible around me.”
“I noticed,” Rachel said.
“Greta barely looks at you when she talks about you. Even Ida flinched a little at your name earlier.”
“They have reason to,” Rex said, and something old and tired passed behind his eyes.
“I haven’t always been careful with my temper. Especially not after my father died and everything fell to me sooner than it should have.”
It was the most he had said about himself since she’d arrived, and Rachel found she didn’t want the moment to end so quickly.
“What was he like?” she asked.
“Your father.”
“Strict,” Rex said.
“Colder than me, if you can believe that. He didn’t think a wolf pack could survive being led with softness. I think he taught all of us to be careful with what we let anyone see.”
“That sounds lonely,” Rachel said quietly.
Rex looked at her for a long moment, something unguarded passing behind his eyes before he caught it and pulled it back in, the way he seemed to catch and pull back everything he felt.
“Perhaps,” he said quietly.
He reached out, slowly, and for a moment Rachel thought he might touch her face, but instead his hand paused just short of her cheek, as if he’d caught himself at the very last second, unsure whether he had the right.
“Goodnight, Rachel,” he said instead, stepping back.
“Goodnight, Rex,” she said, and found, to her own surprise, that she meant it gently.
He left without another word, the door clicking softly shut behind him.
Rachel sat by the fire a while longer, her damp hair drying slowly in the warmth, turning the strange little moment over and over in her mind.
She had come to this castle expecting a monster.
What she was finding instead, slowly and in pieces, was something far more complicated — a man who had built himself into stone to survive, and who seemed, just barely, to be wondering if stone was the only thing he was allowed to be.
Outside her window, the mountain wind picked up, rattling faintly against the glass, and somewhere far off in the dark pines, Rachel thought she heard, just once, a single low howl — lonelier, somehow, than all the others had been.
Pls guys comment on my novel if you like it.