Chapter 30
“But I do not wish to go,” Nora said.
Evander flinched at the childlike tone in his mother’s voice.
Adrian had warned him about what she experienced while they had thought him dead; how her mind, like his, sometimes seemed trapped between this world and another.
That was why, after he had given up his solitude and returned to London, he did not say a word when she announced she would be moving in with him.
Things were different now, though. After what he, Adrian, and Damien had discovered. Danger was coming, and he had to keep his family safe.
“I promise you it is only temporary,” Evander assured her as he kneeled down before her. “But for now, you must. I will not be moved on this.”
Nora studied his face for a long moment, and then, without warning, she reached out and pulled him into her arms, holding him as tightly as her small frame allowed. Evander went still with surprise before he let himself sink into it, his large shoulders curling forward so she could reach.
“I lost you once already,” she whispered against his shoulder. “I will not survive it a second time, Evander. Do you understand me?”
“You will not have to,” he murmured, his voice rougher than he intended. “I promise you that.”
She pulled back just enough to hold his face in both hands, searching his eyes the way she had done so many times since his return, as if she still could not quite believe he was real.
“Then go and finish whatever this is,” she said, her voice steadying. “But you come home to me. Both of my boys. Do you understand?”
“I promise,” he said. “You have nothing to worry about.”
“Caroline needs your help anyway,” Adrian spoke up from behind his big brother. “Bridget and Elara are with her, but the baby is coming soon, and they need you, Mother. You must go to them while we take care of this.”
At this, the sadness in Nora’s eyes dissipated, and a look of determination took over.
“Yes, of course. I shall go to be there for our dear Caroline,” Nora answered as she rose from her chair.
Evander unleashed a breath of relief as he sent a silent prayer of thanks to God and rose with her.
“Very good,” he replied. “This will not take long.”
It would not, if Evander had anything to do with it.
With the help of Mr. Forks and Mr. Ridge, they had finally found the base of the trafficking operation Augustus had been involved with: an old, unassuming mill that sat on the edge of southern London’s shore.
He had no proof yet, but Evander was certain that was where his letters—and the person writing them—had come from.
“I shall have Patty fetch Aggie,” Nora stated, already walking out of the parlor. “So I may get dressed faster.”
“I will send another maid to assist you, Mother,” Evander countered. “Aggie will need to assist Helena.”
He had sought out his mother first, only because he had not yet found the words to tell his wife what was happening.
Difficult as the conversation with his mother had been, he suspected Helena would put up an even greater fight, insisting on helping him herself, and he wanted the privacy to reason with her alone.
“Helena is not here, my darling,” Nora said.
Evander froze. Even his heart seemed to pause in its beating. He spared a glance toward Damien and Adrian, who appeared equally concerned.
“What do you mean she is not here?” he asked, forcing his rising panic to stay out of his voice. “Where is she?”
“She left quite early this morning,” Nora answered. “Though why, I am not certain. That maid of hers would not tell me. I am assuming it had something to do with her family, though, as she has no other place to be.”
Evander moved, not wasting another second in conversation, and raced past his slow-paced mother toward the stairs. As he reached her room, he flung the door open, startling Helena’s maid Aggie as he did so.
“Your Grace!” Aggie exclaimed, stumbling back from him.
“Where is my wife?” he demanded.
Aggie’s face paled as she shook her head.
“With you… Your letter… I do not understand!” she stammered.
Something sharp twisted in Evander’s gut as Aggie struggled to make out her words, and that beast he had been so good at leashing lately snapped its tether.
“What are you saying, Aggie? I wrote no letter, and she is clearly not with me,” he snarled, stalking toward her. “Where is my wife?”
Aggie flung herself to Helena’s writing desk and, with trembling hands, picked up a piece of paper. She pressed it into his hands before she fell to her knees and began to beg for forgiveness.
“Forgive me, Your Grace,” she sobbed, clutching at the hem of his coat. “She made me swear not to wake anyone. She said you needed her, that it could not wait, and I let her go alone. I should never have let her go alone—”
Evander could not hear her, though. The rushing of his blood was too loud in his ears to make out any other sound as he read over those three familiarly scripted lines over and over again. He knew that handwriting. Had an entire drawer full of it.
“Which way?” he demanded, hauling Aggie up by the arm. “Which way did the carriage go?”
“The north road, Your Grace, toward the old mill. I heard the driver say so myself—”
He bellowed Adrian and Damien’s names as he raced back down the stairs. Trusting that his friends would follow him, he yanked open the front door, swung himself back up onto his horse, and took off toward the mill.
The ride was a blur of pounding hooves and dark countryside, far too slow for his liking, until finally the mill’s crooked shape appeared against the night sky.
“Evander, wait!” Damien shouted, his horse thundering up alongside him as they crested the last hill. “We do not know what is waiting for us in there. We need a plan before we…”
It was not his friends’ shouted pleas to stop that made Evander go stock-still in front of the mill. It was the heat. The flames. It was the threat of fire being brandished upon him again that had given him pause.
The mill was on fire. Black, choking smoke billowed from the age-weathered wood. Licks of fire several feet high crackled and popped as such wood turned black and ashen.
Before him, the fire raged, and for one terrible second, he was in two places at once.
In the past, chained and screaming as ropes soaked in alcohol were set alight against his skin.
And in the present, where if he did not move, if he let the past hold him a moment longer, Helena would burn in his place.
Helena would feel that pain that clung to him like smoke clings to lungs.
Then a scream erupted into the air. A scream belonging to a voice he knew and loved, and Evander moved, allowing that beast inside of him to swallow that fire and pain awaiting him, and charged into the flames.
Heat licked at him, singeing and burning the arms of his jacket along his back as heat and smoke choked him.
Yet he continued, ignoring the way his eyes began to water and how the familiar taste of ash landed on his tongue.
Things were different now. There were no chains holding him back, no sense of defiance to keep him silent.
He bellowed Helena’s name, walking through the fire as he searched the smoke and flames to find her.
“Evander!”
Helena’s scream was full of choking fright as it filled the air, and he rushed forth as the beams above him groaned and threatened to fall upon him.
He ran toward the scream, through the smoke until, to his surprise, he came to an opening in the back of the mill.
Large, old double doors had been pushed out, pulling the flames and smoke toward the open air—and there, standing between them, was Helena, Lord Ingram, and a man he did not at first recognize.
Helena let out a cry, her wide green eyes finding his through the smoke, and she lurched toward him.
But the man he was only now beginning to recognize as Lord Robinson, supposedly dead these four years, wrenched her back by her hair.
Helena’s scream tore through the roar of the flames as her face, streaked with tears and ash, was yanked skyward.
Rage erupted within Evander, and he struck out.
Ingram approached him, a pistol pointed at his chest, but he had no time to fire as Evander tackled him to the ground.
He wrested the gun away and struck Ingram’s temple with the wooden grip.
The man collapsed, his eyelids fluttering as he lay sprawled on the ground.
Evander stood up with the gun in his hand, aiming at Helena’s father, but as he pulled back the hammer, he froze.
Robinson might have had one hand fisting Helena’s hair, but his other was holding a dagger to her throat.
“You would kill your own daughter?” Evander gritted out.
“I do not want to,” he replied, inching backward and away from the flames. “But I will. You have a choice. Walk into those flames and accept your fate. Or have my daughter’s death on your hands before I kill you.”
“Kill me because I will not keep your awful secret for you!” Helena snarled, her eyes narrowing with rage as she tried to look back at her father.
“Do not tempt me, girl,” her father growled, jerking her head back once again as the edge of the blade cut into her flesh.
“You will let her go!” Evander roared, feeling the flames grow closer at his back.
“This is all your doing!” Robinson snapped. “If you had minded your own business, none of this would have happened! I would not have had to fake my death and stay away from them. My family would not have mourned me. You never would have been taken! You have brought all of it upon yourself!”
Evander moved, taking advantage of the man’s distracted state as he ranted, and lunged.
He gripped the blade pressed to Helena’s neck with his bare hand, ignoring the fire hissing at his back, and let out a snarl of pain as the edge cut clean through his glove and into his palm.
Blood welled hot and immediate, but he did not let go.
He wrenched the blade backward with everything he had.