He reached out and touched her face, his fingers cool against her cheek. “I don’t know. That is not my question to answer.”
—
The silver key appeared in her dreams that night—floating, turning, catching light. She woke with her hand outstretched, reaching for something that wasn’t there.
She looked at her chamber door. Unlocked. It had been unlocked for weeks.
She rose and walked.
His door stood closed, but not locked. She could see the faint glow of candlelight beneath it.
She raised her hand to knock.
And then she didn’t.
Instead, she turned the handle and stepped inside.
The Duke sat up in bed, startled. The candle on his nightstand flickered.
“Clarara.”
“I’m tired of knocking,” she said.
She crossed the room and sat on the edge of his bed. The silver key—the one he had given her on their wedding night—hung from a ribbon around her neck. She had worn it to bed without realizing it.
“Do you know what I thought when I first saw you?” she asked.
“Tell me.”
“I thought: he is a monument. Something carved from stone that will never feel anything again.” She touched his face. “I was wrong.”
His hand closed over hers. “You were not wrong. I was stone. I had been stone for fifteen years.”
“And now?”
“Now I am afraid of how much I want to be alive again.”
She leaned forward and kissed him—not on the hand, not on the cheek, but on the mouth. It was gentle at first, then deeper, then something that felt like a door swinging open after being locked for too long.
When they finally pulled apart, his eyes were bright.
“I have a confession,” he said.
“What?”
“I have been writing you letters. Every day. Since our wedding. I have not sent them because I was afraid you would laugh.”
“Where are they?”
“In the drawer of my desk. All sixty-one of them.”
Clarara laughed—a real laugh, surprised and warm. “Sixty-one days since our wedding?”
“Sixty-one days since I first saw you walk down the aisle and thought: I have ruined the most beautiful thing I will ever see.”
She kissed him again. “You haven’t ruined anything. You’ve only just begun.”
—
