Chapter 31
CHAPTER 31
CLOVER
D amien stared at the priest’s house as we passed, letting me steer him into the woods. I didn’t have a bleeding clue where we were going. I only knew that if we went anywhere other than the woods that madman was going to come after us with a pitchfork.
“I know that house,” Damien muttered, pulling his eyes away just in time to lift a branch and duck under it. “I had a nightmare about it, back in the cave.”
“Sorry.” I frowned, stepping over a tree root. “You probably had nightmares from me reading those books to you. They’re very … vivid.”
“Vivid.” Damien let out a dark chuckle. “I’m the heir to the largest, most powerful Mafia organization on the planet, and I’m having nightmares over a fuckin’ fairy tale.”
I pulled Damien’s blazer closed over my chest as a shiver ran through my body. I didn’t know if it was from the drop in temperature when we entered the forest or the reminder of who exactly I was traveling with.
The only son of a Bratva kingpin.
A deserter from the Russian Navy.
A traitor who’d killed so many of his own men that I’d lost count.
This wasn’t going to be as easy as running away to America. The Bratva had endless power, connections, resources. They would never stop looking for him.
Never.
“Hey,” Damien said, pulling me to a stop. His silvery eyes, rimmed in black lashes and dark, worried brows, bored into mine as he gripped my shoulders. “You know that’s not who I really am, right?”
I nodded, trying to smooth my tense features as I forced a small, reassuring smile. “I know. I do.”
“Then, what were ya thinkin’ about? You got quiet.”
I looked around, finally taking in our new surroundings. The forest was dark and green and soft around the edges. Every boulder and tree trunk—every hard, jagged thing—was wrapped in a blanket of velvety moss. The lake at the bottom of the hill was green, too, mirroring the trees, even through a layer of mist. The light was so filtered by the canopy and clouds that it seemed as though it had no source at all. It simply swirled in the air, like the breeze that rustled the leaves and played with my hair.
It was as if we’d found a portal to a secret world.
To the otherworld .
And it was exactly the way I’d pictured it.
“Clo?”
Reaching for his face, already prickly with late afternoon stubble, I pulled Damien toward me and kissed his frowning mouth. Our lips met for only a moment, but in that one held breath, I felt an eternity of stillness, of peace, that I knew I’d never feel with anyone else.
“Let’s just stay here,” I whispered, my hands sliding from his cheeks down to the hard expanse of his chest. “We can build a cabin, live off of squirrels.”
The corner of Damien’s mouth curled up, exposing that dimple I loved so much. “I hope you’re better at catchin’ squirrels than ya are fish.”
I smacked his chest with a scoff. “I kept you alive in the cave with my food-catching skills, didn’t I?”
Damien’s eyes darkened, and his smile disappeared. A sizzle that had nothing to do with the gathering clouds charged the air as his hands wove into my hair, pulling the wind-whipped strands away from my face.
“You did,” he said, his voice rough with emotion as he tilted my head back, capturing me in the steel trap of his stare. “You saved me in every possible way, Clo. I owe you my life.” Placing his hands over mine, he pressed them harder against his solid, thumping chest. “This blackened heart”—he glanced down the length of his torso—“this bullet-shredded body, every drop of hate pumping through these veins—it all belongs to you.”
He’d meant it as a warning, a self-loathing commentary about the extent of his damage, inside and out, but I didn’t hear it that way. All I heard were the words heart , body , and you .
“Promise?” I asked.
Damien’s stormy gaze collided with mine, and before my smirk could widen into a full-blown grin, he dived for my mouth and kissed it right off.
“Took ya long enough.”
Before I finished gasping at the sudden, unknown voice, Damien had already broken our kiss, spun around to face the stranger, and tucked me behind his back.
I peeked around his shoulder and discovered that we weren’t where I’d thought we were. I could have sworn that Damien and I had only been halfway down the hill when I’d kissed him, but now, we were all the way at the bottom, standing on the bank of a murky, stagnant lake. In front of us stood an old stone cottage with a thatched roof—the kind people lived in during medieval times—and a woman who appeared to be even older than that. Her body curled like a question mark over a twisted cane and was dripping with the pelts of a hundred woodland creatures, stitched together, claws and all.
I recognized her immediately from Darby Donovan’s book, The Witch in the Woods —scraggly gray hair, milky-white eyes, that grotesque fur cloak, and a voice that was both high and rough, like a child who’d been screaming for days.
Glancing up at the swirling sky, the gnarled old thing smirked. “She’s none too happy with you, young fella. Made a fine mess of things, didn’t ya?” She clicked her tongue in disapproval.
“To which fine mess would ya be referrin’?” Damien asked, keeping his voice neutral. “I’ve made quite a few of ’em here lately.”
He stood even straighter, causing the sack of food on his shoulder to shift.
The woman’s cloudy, pupil-less eyes narrowed at the sound. “I hope ya got somethin’ reeeal shiny in there. Ya know how she gets when she’s mad.”
Damien and I shared a glance, and the old woman let out a cackle that sent a flock of birds tearing into the sky.
“You don’t know, do ya?”
Her laugh devolved into a hacking cough.
“I … I’m sorry, but …” I took a small step out from behind Damien’s body. “I’m afraid you have us mistaken for someone else.”
If there was any truth to the book, the old woman was an illusionist and a trickster—a meddling gossip with a flair for the dramatic—but she wasn’t malicious. At least, Darby hadn’t thought so.
“Mistaken?” she mocked before erupting into another fit of cackles. “I might be half-blind, but I don’t need eyes to know that you two bear her mark.” Lifting a gnarled finger to the sky, a clap of thunder boomed in response. “ She knows it too. She’s been pitchin’ a fit since ya got here.”
“Well then, she must be mistaken,” I stated as politely as possible, assuming that she must be this woman’s imaginary friend. I knew all too well how real one of those could seem. “We’ve honestly never been here before in our lives.” I glanced around the woods as a deep, heavy dread settled into my stomach. “In fact, I don’t even know if we can find our way out.”
“ Never in our lives , she says!” The old woman snorted, doubling over her cane in hysterics and tapping it on the ground, like the slapping of a knee.
“Can you … perhaps tell us how to get back to town?” Damien asked, guiding me back behind him with a strong hand. “Please.”
“I’ll do ya one better.” The old woman closed her eyes as her spine began to uncurl, vertebra by vertebra.
Damien clutched my hip as we watched her body straighten and stretch to a height nearly as tall as the thatch-roofed cottage behind her. And when she reopened her eyes, they were a bright, burning blue.
“Run!” Damien grabbed my hand and bolted up the hill, but we didn’t get more than a few meters away before some invisible force—like a wrecking ball made of air—sent us flying backward.
And into the lake.
I braced myself for the lung-seizing cold—I’d only ever swum in the sea, which was freezing, even in June—but the water was cool and still.
Relieved, I began pumping my arms and kicking my legs, eager to get to the surface, find Damien, and get the hell out of Glenshire, but the harder I swam, the faster I sank.
And sank.
And sank.
My muscles screamed as I thrashed against the pull.
My heart pounded.
My ears popped.
But it was no use.
When my feet finally touched the bottom, my eyes flew open to find a trove of glittering treasures spread out before me, illuminated by a pulsing, shapeless, ambient blue light.
Saoirse .
That was the she the witch had been talking about. I’d read about her in The Lady in the Lough .
Legend had it that Saoirse lived in the village nearly a thousand years ago and was married off to the richest, meanest man in the village. He knew she didn’t love him, and one night, in a jealous, drunken rage over some imagined indiscretion, he dragged her to the lake and drowned her. After Saoirse’s death and her husband’s complete lack of consequences, the other women in the village realized that the same thing could happen to them. They regarded Saoirse as their patron saint almost and began tossing gifts into the lake to earn her favor and protection. They would even bring their suitors for a stroll around the lake in the hopes that Saoirse would judge their hearts and let them know if the man was good or evil.
Generations later, couples began getting married there. They would wade into the water and prick their fingers on a blackberry thorn, shedding a few drops of blood in an attempt to earn Saoirse’s ultimate blessing—an eternal, unbreakable bond. But Saoirse only granted that bond once every few centuries, when she found a love that was truly pure. The rest of the time, she was a moody, bitter thing, but she did love a good gift.
The blue glow condensed into a shapeless orb and slithered toward me, plunging the rest of the lake into murky darkness as it gathered around my feet. My heart slammed against my ribs as my panic turned to terror. I had nothing to offer her. Nothing.
Reaching out in all directions, my fingertips finally grazed Damien’s, and the moment they did, he held on tight. I could feel him pulling and fighting against the gravity that had bound us to the bottom, but as the light rose up my body, I no longer felt the same sense of urgency. A sense of peace enveloped me, along with that light, like a welcoming hug after a long, hard trip.
I felt Saoirse’s presence all around me—the radiant warmth of her embrace, the gentle caress against my cheek, the graceful serenity that washed over me, telling me without words that I was safe. I was loved.
And that I had definitely been there before.
My terror melted away, along with my need to breathe, as the most beautiful images flooded my consciousness. They could have been straight from the pages of Darby Donovan’s books. A boy with gray eyes, a cottage, a church. A blue-and-white tea set perched on a stump. A rope swing, a blackberry bush, two bloody palms and four innocent lips pressed together in the lake.
Then, the images darkened.
Day turned to night. The boy, now a man. Curls, gone. Smile, gone. But his eyes still warmed when he looked at me. In fact, they glowed like the moon that lit our way as he watched me from the driver’s seat of a car that I knew wasn’t his. Three freckles slashed across his ring finger, where it draped over the steering wheel. Three freckles slashed across mine, where it draped over his. The taste of vanilla coated my tongue as I watched our naked bodies clutch and claw and cling to one another. As I felt our hearts do the same. Then darker still as gunshots rang out. Screaming. Bleeding. Running. Killing. So much killing.
Then, nothing.
Pressure weighed on my pounding heart as if Saoirse was pressing a hand against it. The blue aura around me brightened, like the tightening of a hug, and what I saw next made my unbreathing chest ache with a loss I hadn’t felt since I was seven years old.
I saw that same man again, only he was different. Lighter. Happier. I saw him laughing as I helped him shear a rowdy black sheep. I saw him in a workshop, carving things out of wood, his glossy, grown-out curls held back by a pair of safety goggles. And when he looked up and smiled at me, I saw Damien’s eyes in his face. Felt his strength and love and devotion radiate from their silvery depths. Bubbles danced around my body as I struggled to make sense of what Saoirse was showing me, but when they concentrated in front of my stomach, one last image nearly brought me to my knees.
I was standing in a bathroom, staring at down at a pregnancy test—the kind that produced two pink lines if it was positive. I watched that shy second line emerge, silently announcing that my life was about to change, but when I lifted my head, the smiling woman reflected in the mirror wasn’t me.
It was the face printed on the inside cover of all my favorite books.
Then, the energy around me shifted violently. The images disappeared, ripped away from me, along with Saoirse’s light and warmth as those bubbles darted from my abdomen to Damien’s face like a swarm of murderous bees.
I clung to his fisted hand with both of mine as the bubbles engulfed him. Saoirse was hurting him. I could feel it in his jerking arm and see it in the way his body contorted and his head arched back. A helpless scream echoed in my worthless, burning lungs as I watched her exact revenge for something I couldn’t remember.
But deep inside, I knew that wasn’t true.
I already had remembered. Those images were more than just pictures from Darby’s books. They were memories. My memories. I’d been there before. I’d met Saoirse before. I’d met Damien, and loved him, and married him … before .
And I’d watched him kill before too.
Saoirse was said to judge men’s hearts. To protect the women of the village from monsters like her husband.
But she’d made a mistake. The sweet boy she’d bonded me to had grown up to become a killer.
Twice .
And she was absolutely furious about it.