25. Willow
When I open my eyes to find sunlight streaming through the window, it disorients me. I blink several times, glancing around the bed, noting I’m back in Azrael’s room. I don’t remember walking up here last night.
Did he carry me?
“You’re awake.” His voice startles me.
I lean up on my elbows, meeting his gaze from across the room.
“What are you doing?” I ask him.
He’s just… sitting there like a sentry. It looks like he’s been watching me, and judging by the tension in his jaw, something has shifted since last night.
“I could ask you the same question.” He rises to his full height, stalking over to the bed to dump a stack of familiar letters onto the sheet beside me. “When were you planning to tell me about these?”
I swallow, dread curdling anything sweet we may have had between us last night. Whatever that moment was, it was clearly fleeting, and now it’s been swept away by his anger. It has the immediate effect of putting me on guard as I sit up.
“It’s my business,” I tell him. “Not yours.”
“I’m your goddamned husband,” he growls. “I have a right to know. I can’t protect you if you aren’t honest with me.”
His words soften me, but that feeling is snatched away a moment later when he continues.
“You aren’t just putting yourself in danger. You’re exposing any vulnerable member of this house. What if they came here? What if they saw Bec on the grounds? Did you ever think of that?”
“They don’t know where I am,” I choke out. “And it’s me they’re after.”
The muscles in his neck strain as he tries to calm himself, and I can’t help my reaction. I shrink into myself, going back to what I know. Closing myself off. Burying the pain and refusing to let it come out.
Last night, Azrael told me I could trust him. But right now, all I feel is the sting of his words and the heat of his scathing gaze.
“Tell me why,” he grits out. “I need to know how this happened. How long has it been going on?”
I tear my gaze from his, tension coiling in my body as I stare out the window. There’s no way I could possibly be vulnerable with him right now. Not when he’s like this.
“Tell me,” he barks. “I’m done playing games with you, Willow.”
“It’s not a fucking game to me.” My voice wavers, despite my efforts to keep my emotions in check. The fact that he would think so hurts more than anything.
“Then tell me the truth. How do you know The Disciples? How did you end up on their radar?”
“Haven’t you heard?” I toss my angry words back at him. “I’m a fucking witch, Azrael. That’s how I’m on their radar.”
He considers it for a moment before he shakes his head. “No, there’s more to it than that. They don’t leave letters like this. Something had to have happened to provoke them.”
I stare at him, empty. That word, provoke, feels like a blade to the heart. He couldn’t know what he’s saying, that I somehow provoked Caleb Church into trying to rape and murder me. That, in some way… this is my fault.
I can’t bring myself to tell him the truth. Maybe he does deserve it, but I can’t handle the possibility of opening up to him only for him to cast blame on me. He knows I was supposed to stay pure for him. He wouldn’t understand why I ever thought it was okay to sneak around with a boy when I was sixteen. Even if nothing happened, despite Caleb’s attempt, would Azrael believe me? Or would he see that as a provocation too?
I can’t take the chance of him lobbing more accusations at me. My heart can’t weather that. So, I do the only thing I’ve ever known how to do. I keep my mouth shut.
“Goddammit, Willow,” he snarls. “You will tell me?—”
A sharp knock on the door interrupts him, and he casts a murderous glare in that direction before he sighs. “What is it?” he calls out.
“It’s Bec,” Emmanuel responds from behind the door. “You need to come now.”
“What’s wrong with her?”Panic bleeds into Azrael’s voice as he joins Emmanuel in the hallway, me trailing behind in my nightgown.
“She took a turn this morning,” Emmanuel says. “The doctor’s here with her now.” He pauses to look back at his brother. “It’s not good, Azrael.”
They quicken their pace, and I follow in their wake, my bare feet slapping against the floor as I try to keep up. Azrael doesn’t look at me, and I’m glad for it. I couldn’t bear it if he told me not to come along, and there’s no way I could abide by it either.
A strange feeling settles in my gut as I think of Bec, and I know it’s related to her illness. It isn’t right what I’m feeling, and Elizabeth’s whispering voice confirms it.
Protect her.
I nearly stop cold at that, but I catch myself and keep going, straggling after the brothers as Emmanuel leads us downstairs.
“She was at breakfast when it happened,” he explains.
It’s all he manages to get out before the sitting room comes into view, and we see the chaos unfolding before us. A doctor and several nurses are working frantically around Bec, one checking her vitals while the other shines a light into her eyes. She looks halfway catatonic, and it sends a cascade of fear through me.
“We need to get her to a hospital,” I tell them.
Salomé glowers at me from her position above the sofa. “We have everything we need here. This is none of your business.”
I stare at Azrael in disbelief. He shifts, the muscles in his throat working as Salomé meets his gaze in challenge. She wants him to choose between us right now of all times. But it’s about Bec, and I can’t believe they’d even consider letting her stay here when she’s in this state.
“You don’t understand our ways,” Azrael says, barely sparing me a glance. “We have everything we need at our disposal and the finest doctors money can buy. All the medical equipment Bec requires is upstairs.”
“Then let’s get her up there,” Emmanuel interjects.
I want to scream out my frustration, but I can only watch in a daze as the two men lift Bec from the couch and carry her slight frame toward the stairs. I move to follow when Salomé wraps her claws around my arm, trying to halt me.
“This doesn’t concern you, witch.”
“Fuck you,” I snap at her as I yank away. “Don’t ever touch me again.”
Mocking laughter echoes behind me as I dart after Azrael, Emmanuel, and Bec’s medical team. Not only is it wildly inappropriate at a time like this, but it makes me wonder if Salomé even cares how ill Bec is.
Everyone filters into one of the spare rooms upstairs, and I almost stop short when I see all the medical equipment there. Azrael wasn’t lying about that. But still, I can’t help feeling this isn’t right. That Bec shouldn’t be in this house. That, in fact, she needs to be far, far away from here.
I don’t always understand these feelings when I get them, but right now, it’s more potent than ever. I can’t help myself. I know Azrael doesn’t understand it. He couldn’t possibly feel the same sense of desperation clawing at my insides. The warning bells are going off in my head. My intuition has never led me astray, even when I chose to ignore it.
“Azrael.” I grab him by the arm, glancing up at him with the hope that I can still appeal to him. “Please, you have to take her to a hospital. I know you think this is the best place for her, but I’m telling you, something isn’t right in this house. I can feel it. I can sense it?—”
“Enough.” He shrugs me off with a glare colder than I’ve ever seen from him. “You want me to listen to you now? You made it clear where the lines were drawn this morning, and this doesn’t concern you.”
“This isn’t about that.” My voice cracks. “It’s about Bec.”
“Yes, and she’s my family,” he snarls. “Not yours.”
His words are meant to wound, and they do. But it isn’t even the final blow.
“Go back to the room,” he orders. “As of now, you are on lockdown in this house.”
Horror washes over me as I shake my head. “No, you can’t do that. I have to see my sisters. We have to do a binding spell for Bec. Please, Azrael, I’m begging you to listen?—”
“Fuck your spells!” he roars. “They have no meaning here.”
I know his words come from a place of helplessness and rage over Bec’s illness, but it doesn’t make them any less painful when he inflicts them. I can see that hope is lost in his eyes, and it guts me all the same. But whoever my husband was last night when he held me in his arms, that man has disappeared. He’s going to remove me from the room, shut me away from Bec—and I don’t know how to stop it.
So, with one last desperate effort, I hurl myself toward the bed, nearly knocking the nurse out of the way as I grab Bec’s hand.
She blinks up at me, her eyes at half-mast, and I don’t know if she can even understand what’s happening right now. But I have to do the only thing I can at this point.
“Mother Goddess, please protect her,” I whisper. “Stop the evil in this house from bringing further harm to her. Bless her body with your healing powers. Bind the evil, bind the evil, bind the evil.”
“Enough,” Azrael bites out, his arm latching around mine.
“Wait!” I meet Bec’s gaze, my voice panicked. “Your protection stone.”
“I… have it,” she answers, her voice barely a whisper. “It was working. It was. And then…” Her words drift off, her mouth too dry to speak.
“Bec,” I choke out.
Azrael yanks me back, effectively separating us when his arm bands around my waist, and he begins to haul me from the room.
“You can’t do this!” I scream at him. “Something evil is working here. I’m telling you, it’s not natural!”
Azrael doesn’t respond, making it clear he won’t listen to what I say right now.
But it doesn’t stop me from trying again. “Salomé was in Bec’s room last night,” I blurt out.
He pauses at the door to his bedroom, his fingers wrapping around my jaw. “What are you trying to say?”
His question isn’t a question. It’s a challenge. He’s daring me to speak ill of Salomé, to cast the accusation he can feel brewing beneath the surface.
“I’m saying Bec has been okay all week,” I clip out. “And after Salomé snuck into her room in the middle of the night while she was sleeping, she’s not okay anymore. You figure it out, Azrael. Your loyalty to that horrible woman has skewed your perception. She’s fucking deranged?—”
His eyes flash, and before I can even make sense of it, he shoves me inside the room and slams the door in my face. A second later, a lock engages, and when I rattle the door handle, terror claws its way through me.
My first instinct is to run through the connecting door to my room, but the moment I do, I hear another lock engaging on the main door.
“Azrael, please!” I beat my fists against the wood. “You have to listen to me!”
The echo of his footsteps drifts away and leaves me colder and more shattered than I ever thought I could be.
He told me I could trust him.
Now I know that was a lie.