Chapter 44
Chapter
Forty-Four
We step out into a mausoleum.
Moonlight falling through stained glass paints the dusty floor in shades of ruby and emerald. On either side of us, sarcophagi are stacked three high within the cracked walls.
I know this place. It’s the Fitzroy family tomb. For the men, at least. Granny Maggie’s grave is in the cemetery outside. I wonder why the door opened here? Is it because I was thinking of her when I walked through? Did the ring deliver me to her final resting place?
I turn to Lachlan, who’s still clutching my hand. We stare at each other as dried leaves scuttle across the floor.
We’re both a little shy, I suppose. It’s been weeks since we were last together, naked and spent in a warm embrace. He’s quieter than I’m used to. The kind of quiet he reserves for strangers. Is that all I am to him now?
“So,” he asks, “perhaps you should explain what I’ve gotten myself into?”
I laugh, breaking the tension, and before I can get a word out, he’s kissing me. A hand spears into my hair while the other splays across my back to pull me close. He smells of wind and rain and the acrid, metal scent of Otherworld magic.
I lose myself in his kiss, his touch, if only for a moment. One we probably cannot spare.
“I missed you,” I attempt in between strokes of his tongue into my mouth.
“Charlotte, you have no idea.”
“Why didn’t you contact me through the diamrhán?”
“It doesn’t work that far away.”
“And you didn’t feel it pertinent to inform me of that before you left?” I’m half-ashamed of my neediness, but so thankful to be in his arms again that I hardly care.
“I’m sorry, I thought it would be easier on both of us that way, but I was—” He groans when I bite his lip ring, a punishment.
He runs a hand down my body. “We should stop. I know we’ve done some wild things together, but fucking you on the floor in front of the dead feels a bit sacrilegious, even for me.
Also, and I probably should have asked this before I stepped through that door, but … are we in the human realm?”
I pull back—absolute torture—and press a hand against his chest. Even through his leather breastplate, his heart pounds against my palm.
And as much as I want to test his restraint, let him have me right here in this mausoleum, I am keenly aware of our timeline.
“I will explain, I promise.” I guide him out into the cemetery of the North Umberton Cathedral, less than five miles from Stillwater Hall.
We trek down a gravel path, then turn into a row of headstones, stopping at a grand one that’s nearly as tall as Lachlan himself.
There’s a sculpture on top, a wandering angel.
A nod to Granny’s adventurous side that I convinced Uncle Edward to add.
I hadn’t seen it until now—the sculptor was still working when I was pulled into the Otherworld.
Now, it’s dirt-smudged and moss-stained, reminding me that though I feel I’ve only been gone four months, two years have passed on this side.
I kneel in the wet grass, croak out a wet and wobbly, “Hello again, you old bat.”
God, I miss the way we used to tease each other.
Granny Maggie was my everything. Mother and father, guardian and enforcer, tutor and chief instigator.
She understood my need to create, my yearning for adventure.
I think that’s why she taught me to draw, so I could visit other worlds in my imagination whenever I wished.
“You’ve got some explaining to do,” I whisper, running my fingers along her name, the stone cool and damp.
It was early spring when I left the human realm, but now there’s an autumnal chill in the air.
Not the biting, relentless cold of winter, but enough to make me shiver beneath my wool jacket and leather pants.
“Come,” Lachlan whispers, pulling me from the ground. “We need to find shelter for the night. And I need to weave a glamour before anyone sees me.”
I rise, swiping wet leaves from my knees before kissing my fingers and touching the angel. Saying a silent prayer to Lachlan’s gods that Granny Maggie has found peace in the Afterlands. I have a suspicion she’d rather be there than in Breton’s heaven. Who knows? Maybe they’re one and the same.
“I know a place.” I pull the obscura compass from my pocket. “But don’t weave that glamour just yet.
“I have plans for you.”