They emerge into a little nook, not long enough to be called a hallway, with a door at the end leading to a bathroom (Rosy peeks) and a door opposite the secret passage leading to a walk-in closet (Rosy peeks again; it's empty). To their left is the bedroom, spacious and grand, with its own balcony, though the effect is a bit spoiled by all the dust covers. Behind them, the door to the secret passage is almost perfectly camouflaged in the wood-paneled wall once Rosy, thoughtfully, closes it.

She looks at the secret passage. She looks out at the bedroom. She looks, very thoughtfully, at the secret passage again.

"So," she says, "apparently my ancestors liked a good game of Fuck, Marry, Kill."

John blinks. "Sorry, I'm not sure what you mean." He knows the game, of course, but he's not sure how it applies... well unless the secret passage has to do with secretly sleeping with a guest? It might have to do wIth secretly sleeping with a guest. (Doesn't even need to be a guest, in fact!) "Or, wait, why kill?" 

"Look at it!" She gestures. "Why would you need the secret passage to be almost invisible to the person staying in the room if you weren't occasionally planning to use it to murder them in the dead of night?"

Oh, right. "Right, of course," he says, feeling slightly foolish. "I just thought it might be used to um, sleep around." He peers at the practically invisible door, only noticeable if you knew it was there in the first place. "This would make for a serious locked room murder mystery, wouldn't it. I wonder if it has ever been used that way. And how much?" He shouldn't be, but he's morbidly curious now. 

"I do also think it was probably used for sex! But if it was going to be used for nothing but sex it could be disguised as, like, a closet, something where it's not weird to have a door here and only someone who was trying to open the closet would even notice it was locked. With this level of effort put into disguising it, either my ancestors were being extra again or they were planning murders. Probably both."

He remembers the fact that her ancestors designed the spell so she could both cast it and be his slave afterwards. (And gets a little hard at the thought, she's going to be his, and soon.) "They could just be being well prepared," he says. "Wouldn't be the first time. But yeah, could be both." 

"It's always possible that they planned the murders but never actually did any!"

"True!" 

John is possibly a little bit weirded out by the concept of Rosy's ancestors planning murders, it turns out. This is silly, but it still seems to be happening. 

"Anyways," he says, by way of trying to change the subject, "where to next? Back downstairs, or somewhere up here?" 

"Hmm... tell you what, let's cross the second floor and go all the way up the tower. Then we can work our way back down from there and it'll be very systematic and also we'll get a great view of the woods before the sun goes down. Alternately, if you don't want to try to traverse the entire house tonight, we could go down to the basement and look at the theatre, which I'm told exists and I think might be a good place to put a stripper pole."

John (having seen the place from above) isn't entirely sure it's a good idea to try and traverse the whole place together in a single night. There's a lot of it! (And plus, the theatre sounds... well he's very interested in it, now. Stripper pole! Rosy is so good to him.) But it sounds like she wants to look at the whole place, and at the very least wants to go see the tower at the moment. So, "Let's go see the tower, then" he tells her. "Even if I do want to go see where we can put the, um, stripper pole. But we can do that later." 

"Okay! We can start in the tower and once we get down to the third floor I will ask again about whether you'd like to skip straight to the potential stripper pole site."

She leads the way across the second floor, around the top of that grand sweeping staircase (and thereby along a curved balcony looking out over that enormous quasi-ballroom), hesitates, then takes the right side of a forked path and passes the top of a flight of stairs to find the study, a cozy little room with a big fireplace in one wall. In one corner, just like the master bedroom, it has a curved wall with a door in it, and inside that curved wall is—well, it's a little smaller than the master suite's tower stair, but you know what it isn't? It isn't a dim, cramped secret passage! So she'll take it. She trots happily upward.

And upward, and upward, and upward again. There are four floors of tower counting the study, and above them a fifth that's just the top of the final flight of stairs with a pointed roof above and windows facing every direction.

Walking up a slightly cramped staircase is more annoying than he thought it would be (he may be slightly regretting his choices at the moment but Rosy is happy and that's the most important thing). When they're getting to the fourth floor he's glad that they're nearly there, and is dismayed to find that there's a floor above. At least that's finally the end. And it is, admittedly, a very pretty view, even if he might be somewhat more out of shape than he'd like. 

Rosy snugs her arm around his waist and leans her head on his shoulder and gazes out at the view. "It's pretty spectacular, isn't it?"

The sun is going down over the trees, casting long shadows over everything. The house (mansion? castle?) is just as pretty as before, prettier even, with the shadows and the orange tinted light from the sun. Between the wood and the house, there's a garden, overgrown, but some flowers have survived all the weeds, poking through the tangle, not yet blooming but their colors can still be seen. His legs are tired, but Rosy is snuggled up against him, and they're enjoying the view together, and he's glad to be up here. (He wouldn't say no to a chair, though.) He puts an arm around her, and watches with her. "Truly," he says. "Truly spectacular."

She rubs her cheek against his shoulder. "I love you," she says happily.

He shrinks a little, (it still feels weird), but he remembers what he's supposed to be saying. "I'm glad," he tells her. And squeezes her a little bit more tightly because now he doesn't want to let go. 

She turns toward him and wraps her arms around him and squeezes firmly but gently, pressing her cheek against his shoulder with a cozy little sigh.

He relaxes a little. She loves him. It's scary, and weird, and he feels like he should be giving back (that thought won't ever go away), but she loves him. And it's (probably) going to be ok. 

Cozy squeeze.

"Let's check out the rest of the tower?"

Down should be easier than up, right? "Sure," he tells her. "Lead the way!"

She kisses the end of his nose and heads down the stairs.

The fifth-floor door exits onto a little terrace, the roof of the floor below. Adorable miniature crenellations decorate the chest-high wall that serves as a safety rail. Besides the stair-cylinder, the other three corners of the square also have smaller turrets with their own doors, into which one can venture (and Rosy does) to get, frankly, a much worse view than either the terrace or the floor above offers, but they do look nice to sit in if it's raining or you're claustrophilic. There's also a broad chimney on one side, presumably the counterpart of the fireplace below.

He follows her into one of the doors, and finding a sittable bench there, well, sits. The windows aren't very good for looking out of compared to before, but, on the other hand, he's sitting down, which is very important. Plus he can still see Rosy out the door if she wanders around (well mostly) so this should be fine. He can get up when she wants to go down a level. 

After she tries all the other doors and finds them much the same and inspects the chimney and leans on the wall and admires the view, she comes back in to sit next to John on the bench that rings the wall of the turret. It's very cozy in here. A good place to lean one's head on one's boyfriend's shoulder, perhaps.

This is an added and unexpected benefit to sitting down! And the head on his shoulder is warm and comforting and nice. He threads an arm around her back and squeezes her to him gently. 

So cozy. 💖