Prelude (Underworld Lucian Fanfiction)

101 - Chapter CI: Blood and Linens

Three weeks later.

Reinette did not want to carry rocks. Nor did she want to rebuild a blacksmith's cottage from the ground up with a perfectionist foreman who could not control his face when watching someone hoist a rock without using what he would classify as "proper form." Perhaps having forgotten that—unlike some of them—she had no recollection whatsoever of having built anything.

But she had broken his floor.

And his Ming Dynasty tea bowl.

So she carried rocks.

Throughout the night, she carried rocks.

Uneven rocks for the wall. Gravel for the trenches. Stone for the pathways. Following his lead. Working without complaint until her hands grew tough. The tools and supplies becoming familiar as the problems began to mount. Damp throughout the network of cellars. Rot in parts of the timber. The work tiring enough that sleep ought to have become an easier affair.

She was too tired to think...or feel. And he was too tired to see things. Each night ending with her collapsing into the nest he'd built for her. A frame to keep her off the bare ground.

Splinters in her palms...

...and over time, his arm around her waist.

No longer a dream, but the reality of the most infamous leader of the Lycan horde now sleeping in the same bed as her. Asleep as soon as his head touched her back, nestled against her hair. But the feat of lying in that bed requiring six days of stopping and starting before they finally addressed the reason why he did not share a room with his mistresses.

First because—after she moved to the one clear room in the cottage cellar—he began sleeping outside during daylight hours, looking every evening as though he had not slept a wink and finally agreeing to share the only available room after she found him asleep in one of the trenches he was digging. Naturally once he started sharing the room, he then began sleeping on her floor in the farthest corner he could find. Looking surprisingly comfortable on stone, but making the room decidedly uncomfortable after retrieving the clock he'd repaired from the farm, so he could fastidiously wind it every evening.

It was worse than the rooster.

Every second, the pendulum would swing. Every fifteen minutes, the clock would chime. And every hour, an elaborate melody would play, jolting her out of sleep and causing him to simply yawn and placidly check the time. Because in his mind, he had solved the issue. The infamous hour of lashing out that caused the lycan-master to sleep alone.

In the old days, she simply had to risk having one of her chairs destroyed if he happened to sleep in it for longer than three hours.

Only once or twice...

...after which he'd then yawn and shuffle off to his own quarters. No apology of course. But inevitably there would be a new chair in its place the following evening. Only he seemed to think she was the chair now, and therefore warranted having a system in place.

Instead of fearing the third hour, he was simply waiting for it. No more lashing out. No more fear and trepidation. While she was silently cursing the chimes, he would force himself to wake fully after three hours. Silence the chimes. Drink some water. Go outside for a run...or a piss...or whatever he needed to do to get his energy out before returning to the room. Winding the blood-forsaken device again and starting the routine all over again. All of which lasted exactly thirty-two hours before there was a...disagreement...in which she rose from the bed...opened the face of the clock...

...and destroyed the clock.

This was followed by a second...disagreement...starting with him using the words, "Oh my fucking hell, Nette." This was followed by her using certain...words...to describe him and his clock, and ending with him storming out of the room and she spending the next thirty-two hours able to sleep, but sleeping...alone...in her room again. Starting to regret having destroyed the clock, despite having been prompted to do so after thirty-two hours without proper sleep. Because they had never...properly...shared a room before.