1
Few of us are lucky enough to know a real wizard.
Even fewer of us are lucky enough to be sent on a quest by one.
Or at least that’s what I tell myself during my endless flight from D.C. to London, and during the following train ride to Exeter, and during the long, harrowing drive while I struggle not to scrape my rental car against the hedgerows while I consult the GPS on my phone.
I squint at the screen and then sigh.
Somehow it’s taken me an entire hour just to make it fourteen miles.
I sigh again, as if hedges and sheep are Google’s fault, and then toss the phone on the passenger seat. Supposedly, I’m only a short drive through a village away, but I didn’t get much sleep on the plane, and everything is starting to feel blearily unreal. I’ve kind of given up hope that Thornchapel exists at all by this point.
All this way for a book, I think tiredly.
If the request for help hadn’t come from Merlin and Nimue—Merlin’s new . . . well, his new whatever she is—I might have said no. The president I’d served faithfully for four years is dead, and while his successor offered me the same job, I couldn’t accept it. It feels too close to moving on, and I don’t want to move on. Not yet, not when I still feel so wrong inside, so ruined and lost.
But when Nimue asked me to help her and Merlin, I felt a flicker of the old Belvedere. The Belvedere who could do anything and do it in trendy glasses and a smile. I said yes before I even realized I’d opened my mouth.
I nudge the car over a bridge and into a village called Thorncombe that looks like it’s been pulled straight off a postcard. It features a stone church with a square Norman tower, an accompanying graveyard with weathered tombstones, and plenty of pubs in adorably sagging buildings. It’s only a few days before Christmas, and everything is hung with wreaths and ribbons and garlands, and it looks like one of those miniature Christmas villages my grandma likes to collect. I normally don’t enjoy things this transparently festive, but it’s strangely heartwarming to see the village all cozy and cheerful in the middle of the cold, brown wastes of the moors.
There’s no such coziness or cheer at Thornchapel itself.
After a sharp turn and a trip over a small ice-snaggled river, I creep down the long driveway until I encounter a stern edifice that looks older than the hills themselves.
Crenellations chew at the winter sky like stone teeth, and the windows reflect back trees and trees and trees. It’s three stories of gray stone, asymmetrical and obviously added to over time, and there are no wreaths here, no Christmas tree beaming merrily through the front window. In a way, the lack of seasonal cheer is a relief, since there’s a possibility I’ll be staying here over the holiday and I’d hate to feel like I’m imposing on the Guest family, whom I’m told owns the estate. No, there’s just a house, and a book inside this house that’s been promised to Merlin and that is therefore my job to find.
I park behind a narrow work van, taking note of the signs of renovation happening around the house—a big construction dumpster tucked discreetly around one side, a bucket of paint propping open the massive wooden door at the front—and then go to retrieve my suitcase from the trunk just as a sleek Audi pulls into the driveway behind me. I close the trunk lid and turn, wondering if this is the family lawyer, Mr. Cremer, who I’ve spoken briefly on the phone with.
But when the car shuts off and its owner climbs out looking like a GQ cover, I know he can’t be Mr. Cremer. I’ve worked in D.C. for four years, and every lawyer I know looks like he’s on stimulants or blood pressure medication—or both. This man looks cold and fit and serene; a block of ice that’s been carved into a god shape, clad in a bespoke suit, and then covered in one of those expensive wool coats.
(You know the kind: dark and long, and fitted just enough to make you want to slide your hands underneath it.)
Paired with a gray scarf, nice gloves, and burnished leather shoes, he exudes cool elegance and sophistication; he radiates the kind of remote power I can’t help but crave like an addict.
And his face—that face. I stop moving just to stare at it. Pale and striking, with high graven cheekbones and a haughty mouth. He’s got pearl-gray eyes, dark hair with just a breath of silver at the temples, and an expression of pure imperial arrogance as he gazes at Thornchapel. He’s Caesar standing at the Rubicon, Hannibal gazing up at the Alps. It’s an expression that says he’s ready to conquer, and conquer ruthlessly.
I imagine that look directed at me, and heat arrows down my spine. What would it be like to be the object of his merciless determination? What would it be like to have that leather-gloved hand gripping my jaw as he forces his cock down my throat?
Hoping he can’t see the heat in my face or the thickening behind my zipper, I give him a smile.
And all I get is a slight nod in return.
A couple of months ago, this would have barely registered. My job was to keep the President of the United States comfortable, informed and on task—hourly I had to face down pissy senators, angry diplomats, and worst of all, the personal aides of other world leaders. It took a lot more than a cold nod to put a dent in my smile.
But now, with Maxen Ash Colchester dead and with me drifting from place to place with no direction and no purpose—well, this beautiful man’s dismissal of me feels like another glum nudge from the universe, reminding me that nothing matters and nothing ever will.
My master is dead, and I’ll never get to serve again.
2
As promised by the dumpster and construction supplies, the inside of the house is a mess, which I can see even through my fogged-up glasses. Me and the wool-coated Ice God are welcomed by the real Mr. Cremer, a tall, reedy man with rimless glasses, who shows us to our rooms and tells us that the owner of the house will be joining us for dinner.
“I’m happy to take possession of the book any time, Mr. Cremer,” I say, a bit hopefully, as he walks us both down to the ground floor to give us a tour. “I hate to be a burden.”
“Nonsense,” Mr. Cremer says. “Mr. Guest is delighted to have you here. I’m certain he’ll want to hear all your stories about working in the White House. And besides . . .”
We’re walking through a narrow corridor lined with arched windows to get to the library. It looks like something out of a monastery, as do the iron-bound doors set into the stone wall, and when Mr. Cremer pushes them open, even the Ice God next to me lets out a startled breath. Before us is the library in Beauty and the Beast, if Beauty and the Beast were set in the austere gloom of the seventeenth century. There’s countless books on sturdy, endless bookshelves, two stories of it all with plenty of ladders and clever little staircases to connect them. All the light comes from a large bank of two-story windows at the end, and the only ornamentation is the carved wood and the varied colors of the books themselves. The ceiling is so high and the room so deep that shadows curl like big cats in the corner, even in daylight.
“The library is rather big,” Mr. Cremer states, in the bland tones of obvious understatement. “It might take you some time to find the book Merlin is looking for.”
The ice god has wandered inside the library, but he’s not gazing at the shelves with the slack-jawed wonder I am. He’s assessing everything with a cold, calculating gaze. Every now and again, he pulls a book off the shelf to examine its condition.
His efficiency and dismissive contempt of unworthy items is powerfully erotic. I have no idea why.
“Who is he?” I whisper-ask to the lawyer.
“Ah, yes. That’s Sidney Blount,” the lawyer replies. “From the auction house. He’s here to catalog the Guests’ artwork in anticipation of it being sold off.”
Sidney Blount. It sounded like a war name to me, or maybe something out of a 1930s pulp story about a soul-deadened detective who’s forgotten how to feel anything but bitterness and lust.
As opposed to Ryan Belvedere, which is a name that sounds happy and dutiful—at least it does to me.
Or at least it did.
“Mr. Blount doesn’t mind working this close to the holiday?” I ask, trying to push away from unhappy thoughts and move on to something else.
Mr. Cremer gives the world’s smallest one-shouldered shrug, so subtle I barely catch it. “Mr. Blount’s company stands to earn a substantial amount of money from this. And my client is eager to dispatch of the artwork—it was important to his father, and so Mr. Guest is compelled to remove it from the house.”
Even though Mr. Cremer’s tone of voice hasn’t changed, I can tell he disapproves.
“I’m guessing his father is no longer alive?”
“Correct.”
I think I can picture this Mr. Guest now, thin and sour and old, the kind of middle-aged man who pins all his dead dreams on his father . . . while making all the same choices his father did. I’m already dreading having to make conversation with him, but I remind myself that I’ve dealt with worse in the White House. I can handle the mulish petulance of an old man for a few days.
In the library, Sidney Blount is now leaning over a curio case with his hands folded behind his back. Without the wool coat, I can see how perfectly tailored his suit is, how it clings to the lean lines of his torso and hips. He’s tall and broad-shouldered, and even though I place him at about ten years older than me, in his late thirties, there’s plenty of muscle testing the seams of his shoulders and arms whenever he pulls something closer to get a better look.
“How do you know Merlin?” I ask Cremer. It’s random, it’s such a random thing to ask, but I feel like I’ve been staring at Sidney Blount long enough for it to be weird, and I don’t want the lawyer to notice.
“We went to school together,” Cremer answers. “We’ve kept in touch since then, and I help him look after some of his family’s property here in the UK. When he reached out to me about that book, I was more than happy to talk to Mr. Guest about letting Merlin buy it from him. And as I expected, Mr. Guest said—and I quote—he can have the whole damn library if he wants. I, of course, advised against that.”
