Total pages in book: 21
Estimated words: 19922 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 100(@200wpm)___ 80(@250wpm)___ 66(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 19922 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 100(@200wpm)___ 80(@250wpm)___ 66(@300wpm)
Maika turned around. Went right. Found another sitting room. This one had a fireplace, two couches, and a window the size of a small country. She was fairly certain she had not been in this room before, but at this point she wasn't certain of anything, including whether she'd been walking for five minutes or twenty.
She tried a door. Closet. She tried another door. Bathroom. Not her bathroom. A different bathroom. How many bathrooms did one house need?
She was going to starve to death in a mansion. This was going to be her obituary: College sophomore dies of starvation twenty feet from a kitchen she could not locate. Survived by her student loans.
"Mrs. Ravensworth."
Maika jumped. Spun around. Orion was standing behind her, which should have been impossible because the hallway was marble, his shoes were hard-soled, he was the size of a small building.
"How did you—" She pressed a hand to her chest. "Do you just...appear? Is that a skill they teach in security school? Teleporting?"
Orion simply smiled at her. "Where would you like to have breakfast?"
Her stomach growled at that moment, and all she could do was smile weakly. "Wherever is quickest?"
After breakfast, Orion asked her kindly if she wanted another tour of the house, and this time, Maika nodded so fast she nearly gave herself whiplash.
"Yes, please."
So off they went, and this time Maika also drew the layout on her phone for each floor. Library, kitchen, and dining room were on the ground floor with two sitting rooms, plus a study behind a locked door that only her husband had keys to. The master bedroom and all the guest rooms were on the second floor. There was also an atrium, a glasshouse, and a vegetable garden. A courtyard, a heated indoor pool, and Mr. Ravensworth's private gym in the basement.
The gym made her stop in her tracks.
It had a full-sized boxing ring. Heavy bags hanging from the ceiling. A speed bag mounted on the wall. And in the corner, a rack of gloves that looked well-worn and recently used.
Maika stared at the boxing ring for a long time, because it was one thing to know that her husband was dangerous, and another thing entirely to see where he practiced being dangerous. The mats were scuffed. The ropes were taut. This wasn't decorative.
"Mr. Ravensworth trains every morning," Orion told her. "Without fail."
Without fail. Meaning every single morning that she had woken up to his empty side of the bed, he had been down here. Hitting things. Staying in control.
I need you to keep me from becoming a monster.
Maika swallowed hard and decided she had seen enough of the basement.
"The library if that's alright?" she asked when Orion offered to have coffee brought somewhere.
"Of course, Mrs. Ravensworth. This is your home now."
Squee. Squee. Squee.
Orion hid a smile. His young mistress hadn't made a sound, but her eyes were very expressive, and right now, it was quite obvious she was squealing internally in delight.
While Orion went to have coffee prepared, Maika was left all alone to explore the library more leisurely, and oh, how fun it was to have an actual rolling ladder to use to peruse all the books on the upper shelves. She kicked off from the floor and let the ladder glide along the rail, and the sound it made—a low, satisfying rumble—was so ridiculously satisfying that she did it again. And then a third time, just because she could.
Everything was perfectly organized. Reference. Biographies. History. Suspense. True Crime. And shelf after shelf of first-edition classics, and oh my goodness!
There, behind a glass panel on the third shelf, was a leather-bound complete works of Shakespeare. The gold lettering on the spine had been worn smooth from handling, which meant this wasn't a collector's showpiece. Someone had actually read this, and she already knew who.
Maika carefully opened the glass. Pulled the volume out with both hands, the way you'd hold a newborn. Opened it to the front page.
An inscription, faded ink: For Mykos, on his tenth birthday. Read the histories first. —D.
Her throat closed.
A ten-year-old boy, given Shakespeare by his father. A father who had told him to read the histories first—the plays about kings, about power, about what happened to men who loved badly and led worse.
She closed the book. Put it back. Carefully. In the exact right spot.
And that was when she noticed there was one last shelf at the back of the library, tucked behind the reading chairs. It even had a lovely customized nameplate on top.
Maika's Corner.
The shelf was stocked full of Shakespeare's works in different forms and editions. Annotated Folios. A Midsummer Night's Dream pop-up book that made her let out a sound that could only be described as a squeak. A set of Shakespearean insult magnets. A hardcover collection of essays titled Shakespeare and the Art of Coping. Anything that had to do with the Bard, this shelf had it, and she couldn't even imagine how in the world Mykos had managed to have this ready in so short a time...and why.