The Vampire Duke’s Forbidden Mate

Prepared for her

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The carriage rocked gently over roads far smoother than the ones that had carried them into the capital that morning—an eternity ago, it seemed now, though the sun had not yet risen twice since. Bryn had not stopped talking since they'd climbed inside, her voice pitched with the particular giddiness of too much wine and too much wonder crammed into a single night.

"Did you see the size of the chandeliers?" she said, for perhaps the third time, pressing her palms flat against her cheeks as though she could contain her own delight. "I've never seen so much crystal in my life. And the wine, Maren—did you taste it? It tasted like *plums*, but better than any plum that's ever grown on our land."

Maren hummed a vague agreement, only half-listening. Her fingers had found their way beneath the neckline of her borrowed gown, tracing the raised edges of the lotus now settled into her skin. It no longer burned. It pulsed instead, faint and warm, like a second, smaller heartbeat living just beneath her collarbone.

*I mean to give you everything,* Cassian had said, and some traitorous part of her wanted so badly to believe him.

"You're doing that thing again," Bryn said, quieter now, studying her sister's face in the dim lantern light. "Where you go somewhere else in your head."

"I'm here," Maren said.

"You're *thinking*," Bryn corrected, not unkindly. "You always think too much before you let yourself be happy. Just once, Maren, let yourself have the nice thing without picking it apart first."

Maren managed a small smile. Perhaps her sister was right. Perhaps, for one night, that was allowed.

The carriage slowed, and Bryn pressed her face eagerly to the window, gasping before the wheels had even fully stopped.

"Maren. *Maren.* Look."

She looked.

The estate rose out of the darkness like something conjured rather than built—not the cold, towering grandeur of the palace they'd left behind, but something gentler, warmer. Ivy climbed the pale stone in dark, glossy ribbons, and lantern light glowed gold from dozens of windows, spilling soft rectangles onto manicured gardens that stretched further than Maren could see in the dark. Somewhere close, water moved—a fountain, perhaps, its quiet murmur threading through the night air. It did not look like a vampire's lair. It looked like the kind of house a girl might dream about on long, tired nights bent over mending in a farmhouse kitchen.

"It's beautiful," Bryn breathed, and for once, even her voice had gone soft with something like reverence.

The carriage door opened before either of them could reach for it, and a footman offered his hand to help them down, his face carefully, professionally blank. Waiting at the top of a short flight of stone steps stood an older woman, silver-haired and sharp-eyed, her hands folded neatly at her waist.

"Miss Maren. Miss Bryn." She inclined her head, her voice warm despite its formality. "I am Odera, housekeeper of this estate. Lord Cassian sent word ahead. We've been expecting you."

"Expecting us?" Maren asked, before she could stop herself. "But the match was only decided tonight."

Something flickered across the housekeeper's face—there and gone so quickly Maren nearly convinced herself she'd imagined it. "Lord Cassian is not a man who leaves such things to chance," Odera said smoothly, and gestured toward the open doors behind her. "Come. You must be exhausted. Rooms have been prepared for you both."

Maren let the words settle over her without examining them too closely, the way Bryn had asked. *Not a man who leaves such things to chance.* It could mean anything. Hope, perhaps. Confidence. She chose, for tonight, to let it mean nothing at all.

The inside of the estate was, if anything, lovelier than the outside had promised—warm wood and soft candlelight, tapestries in deep autumn colors, none of the gilded excess of the palace but something that felt, impossibly, like a home built by someone who understood comfort rather than mere wealth. Bryn spun in a slow circle in the entryway, arms outstretched, laughing under her breath.

"I could live here forever," she declared.

"You'll have the chance to decide that after you've slept," Odera said dryly, though there was fondness beneath the words. "Come. Your room is this way, Miss Bryn."

Bryn's room, when they reached it, drew an actual gasp from her—a four-poster bed draped in pale gauze, a vanity crowded with little glass bottles that caught the candlelight, French doors leading out onto a private balcony overlooking the gardens. Bryn was already crossing to the vanity, lifting bottles to her nose one by one, exclaiming over bath oils and perfumes with the delight of a child let loose in a sweet-shop.

"Rosewater," she announced. "Maren, smell this—"

"Tomorrow," Maren said gently, though she was smiling now too, some of her sister's joy proving contagious despite herself. "Sleep, Bryn. It's been a very long day."

Bryn caught her hand before she could leave, squeezing it once, her eyes—still bright with wine and wonder, but softer now, sincere. "We did it, Maren. We're safe. We're going to be *happy* here."

Maren squeezed back. "Goodnight, Bryn."

Her own room lay at the end of the hall, and it was, if anything, grander still—a sitting room attached to the bedchamber, a hearth already lit and crackling low, deep green curtains drawn against tall windows. A gown, finer than anything she'd ever owned, had been laid across the bed, and beside it, a small vial of oil that smelled faintly of jasmine.

Odera lingered in the doorway. "If there is anything you require, you need only ring." She gestured to a small bell pull beside the bed. "Lord Cassian asked that I tell you—he hopes you slept well tonight. And that tomorrow, you will want for nothing."

"Thank you," Maren said, and meant it, even as some small, quiet part of her noted how carefully arranged everything felt. Not chosen. *Prepared.* As though her tastes had been catalogued and accounted for long before she'd ever set foot inside these walls.

She was still standing at the window, watching moonlight ripple across the fountain below, when a soft knock came at her door.

Cassian stood in the frame when she opened it, his dark coat traded for something looser, more intimate—a man settling into his own home rather than performing for a crowded hall. The pale grey of his eyes caught the firelight, warm and steady, no trace of the red she'd told herself she'd imagined.

"I couldn't retire without seeing you settled," he said, his voice low, almost shy in a way that didn't match the confidence he'd worn all night. "Are you comfortable?"

"More than comfortable," she admitted. "This is—Cassian, this is more than I ever imagined."

"Good." He reached out, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear, his fingers cool against her cheek, lingering there a moment longer than necessary. "You deserve far more than this, Maren. I intend to spend a very long time proving that to you."

She should have found the words too much, too soon, the way she'd told herself at the ball. Instead, standing in the glow of a fire he'd lit for her, in a room prepared with a care that bordered on unsettling if she let herself think too hard about it, she found herself leaning, just slightly, into his touch.

"Sleep well," he murmured, pressing a kiss to her forehead, soft as a promise. "No locked doors. No strangers in the halls. Only this, from now on."

He lingered a moment longer at the threshold, his gaze tracing over her—not with the hunger she'd glimpsed at the ball, but something quieter, something that looked almost like relief—before he turned and disappeared down the hall.

Maren closed the door softly behind him and pressed her palm against the wood, listening to the fade of his footsteps.

*No locked doors,* she thought.

She did not ask herself why a house so full of comfort had a bell pull instead of one.