Chapter 34
BILLY
London is a cold that doesn’t just bite, it burrows. It finds the cracks in your coat, your bones, your resolve.
December wind tunnels through the narrow streets like a living thing, gnawing at the edges of everyone it passes. Christmas lights try their best to soften it, little strings of gold, glowing in shop windows and strung between lamp posts, but the cold swallows even those.
I’ve been walking for hours. Maybe days. Time’s beginning to lose its meaning.
It’s been a month since Penelope disappeared, of following trails that lead nowhere, of questioning people who can’t look me in the eyes, of chasing ghosts. She slipped through The Obsidian’s fingers with a grace I didn’t know she was capable of, and through mine like smoke.
No one escapes Raven Ridge Hallow. No one outruns The Obsidian’s reach. No one vanishes completely.
Except her.
The woman who was never meant to be caged in the first place.
The air tastes like cold metal, sharp on the tongue, brittle in the lungs. Snow gathers in thin, whispery sheets along the pavements, just enough to make it feel like everything is covered in frostbite.
I walk with my hands shoved deep into my pockets, the hem of my long grey wool coat tickling along the backs of my calves with every step.
Scarf pulled high, covering my ears and nose as I dip my chin, looking up at the path ahead from beneath my lashes.
Thicker flakes of white fluff falling heavier now, crunching beneath my feet.
Christmas Eve crowds are thinning as people hurry home to warmth, to families, to places where they’re wanted.
I don’t have any of that.
Not without her.
My boots carry me without direction, driven by a desperation that feels more instinct than choice. My breath fogging out into clouds that vanish as quickly as they form.
I stop at a crossroads, shivering, scanning the streets for something, anything, that could mean she’s here, has been here. A sign. A movement. A ghost of her shadow.
Nothing.
Until bells.
Clear, bright, ringing through the snow-heavy air.
And suddenly I’m no longer breathing.
‘I liked listening to the bells. You can feel them in your bones when you’re inside the church.’
The way she spoke of them, just once, half-mad with delirium, smacking at her head with her hands.
‘Do you think they’ll ever ring for us?’
The bells ring again.
Louder this time.
Closer.
And I follow the sound like a man possessed.
It leads me down Cheapside until I see it, St Mary-le-Bow Church, rising out of the winter dark like something carved from moonlight. The tower is elegant, illuminated in pale gold, every chime vibrates down my spine.
The doors are flung open, warmth spills into the icy street, carrying with it the scent of pine and wax and mixed spice.
For a long moment, I just stand there. This place…
It feels wrong for someone like me. A man with blood on his hands, shadows in his lineage, and a Pairing forged under rituals and sacrifice.
But the bells keep ringing, and with every toll, something inside me whispers.
She heard these.
I step inside; the warmth hits hard, the kind that seeps into your ribs and reminds you that the world isn’t always dark.
Candles line the aisles. Families fill the pews.
Soft chatter drifts through the space like delicate ribbons.
I hover in the back corner, back pressed to a stone pillar, my breath still uneven from the cold and the crushing ache that never leaves me now.
A vicar stands at the front, white robes whispering as he moves.
His voice is gentle, steady, a sound that rises and folds over the congregation like a blanket. “…and on this night, we remember hope,” he says. “Hope even in the darkest places. Hope when the path forward isn’t visible, when we feel lost, when we fear we will not be found.”
The words hit me so hard I have to squeeze my eyes closed.
Lost.
Fear.
Not being found.
Penelope.
I see her face everywhere, my mind trying to create her out of shadows.
Where is she now?
Is she cold? Is she safe? Did she find shelter? Food? A way to disappear completely? Is she still in England? Or had she found her way onto a ferry, a train, a plane? Has she slipped into the arms of a different city while I chased her ghost through London?
The vicar continues speaking, but his words blur behind the roar in my head.
She’s pregnant.
And I have no idea if she’s even alive.
What if my father’s men already found her, what if they already disposed of her and I’m searching for a body that’s already buried.
My stomach twists so violently I have to brace a hand on the back pew. I press my fist against my sternum. The ache there is relentless, not grief anymore, but something more primitive. The sensation of a bond stretched so thin it could snap at any moment.
Carollers begin singing at the front. Their voices rising to the ceiling arches, echoing through centuries of stone, and I straighten, swallowing past the lump in my throat, pushing down the bile, forcing my eyes to open.
“God rest ye merry, gentlemen. Let nothing you dismay…”
Nothing you dismay.
Everything dismays me.
My chest tightens as another wave of grief slams into me, sharp, cutting, unrelenting. It feels like someone is carving out my ribs and leaving the hollow space raw.
I rub my palms together, trying to shake the cold that hasn’t left me since the day she disappeared. The ignorance is torture. Not knowing if she still breathes. Not knowing if our child still lives. Not knowing if she ran because she feared The Obsidian, or because she feared me.
I bow my head.
I don’t pray.
It would be blasphemy.
But I’m desperate.
I’ll try anything.
But even if I wanted to, I don’t know how.
The candles flicker, and the bells toll again, and despite everything, I understand something with a clarity that cuts so deep I fear I’ll bleed out all over this church floor. If I find her, when I find her, I might have to let her go.
Not drag her back.
Not trap her in a cage.
Not chain her to a future she didn’t choose.
I might have to watch her from a distance. Keep her safe without ever letting her know. Live in the shadow of her freedom, even if it kills me.
Like I had done for the twelve years that separated us.
Never knowing why I was ever sent to her in the first place.
Why me, why then, why there, why her.
But I know the ‘why there’, and the ‘why her’ now.
‘Why there’ because that’s the house that Clara, the woman Nellie slaughtered before our union, who also, it turns out, is, was, my mother’s sister, told Milus he would find her.
And the ‘why her’, because she is my mother’s stolen daughter.
It’s the ‘why me’ and ‘why then’, I still can’t figure out.
Regardless of my findings, something Mother had requested of me almost two years ago now; to find her only biological child, it doesn’t change anything.
Our souls are meant to be together, that’s what she whispered to me, trembling in the dark, her fingers tangled in mine refusing to let go, we were kids, but even then, as nothing more than innocent friends, we knew what we meant to each other.
The truth coils inside me like something feral, a hunger sharpened by loss. I can’t release her. I won’t. The very thought of her living a life where I’m not woven into the corners of every fucking moment makes something hideous and violent unfurl in my chest.
I need her, with a bone deep ache that threatens to crack through my skeleton, pluck out my lungs, and dagger my heart.
The idea of protecting her from afar tastes like ash; distance feels like death.
I know I should vanish from her horizon…
keep her away from The Obsidian, but I would rather burn the world to its bones than live as a ghost in her life.
I need her close enough to touch, close enough to breathe in, close enough that the darkness inside me has something warm to cling to. And I am too selfish, too ruined by love, to ever let her walk free.
I would kill her myself to stop her from ever leaving me.
That’s why I can’t stop searching.
Because somewhere, she is out there waiting for me to hunt her down, she wants me to find her, even if she doesn’t know it.
The vicar closes his sermon with a final gentle blessing. People begin to rise, gathering coats, tugging on gloves and hats for the walk home.
I remain where I am.
Unable to move.
Unable to breathe properly.
Unable to leave the place where, for just a moment, I felt something warm enough to thaw the edges of my grief.
Snow continues drifting through the open doors, small white ghosts settling onto the stone floor.
The last of the congregation filters out, their footsteps echoing toward the street. Music hums faintly from outside, carollers gathering somewhere nearby.
The church grows quiet.
I finally push off of the beam I leant against, my legs stiff, my hands numb despite the heat.
At the front of the church, the altar candle flickers.
A soft, steady flame. I step toward it without knowing why.
Maybe because the light feels like something she would follow.
Because the warmth reminds me of her hands on my cheeks, because standing in this quiet, holy space is the closest I’ve felt to her in a month. Because the bells brought me here.
I rest my fingers lightly against the pew.
“Penelope,” I whisper, voice cracking, “stay alive.” A drop of melted snow slides down the inside of my wrist like a tear.
“I will find you,” I murmur. “Even if it takes my whole life. Even if you don’t want to be found.
Even if you beg me to let you go when I do.
” My breath wavers. “Just don’t disappear. ”
I turn slowly and walk back toward the doors, the last of the candles flickering behind me. The bells ring again overhead, resonant and bright, echoing through the winter night like a promise.
That’s when I see her.