Better than that? #2
He paused. Blinked. Then hastily moved around to his side of the table and took his seat. But his wife’s gaze watched him closely, even as she lifted her cup from its saucer. She blew gently at her already-cool tea, her eyes narrowing.
“You liked that one,” she said and took a little sip.
“Well . . .” Nigel turned his cup around a few times, taking care not to slosh.
“Do you like that I think you’re handsome?”
His eyebrows rose, and he shot her a quick glance across the table. “You do?”
“Oh, very much. Have I not mentioned this before?”
He shook his head, his gaze dropping again. He stared rather intently at his cup.
“Is that so? Well, I do, you know. Fiendishly handsome. It used to make things rather difficult for me around the shop sometimes.”
“Really?”
“Oh, it was quite dreadful!” Luna took another little sip, shrugging slightly.
“I would often step back into the kitchen, have a little scream, and give myself a stern talking-to. ‘He’s your boss!’ I would remind myself.
‘He’s off limits!’ But then you’d come in from Garden all disheveled and sweaty, and it would set me right off again. ”
Nigel gaped at her. Stunned by these revelations, which seemed to rock his very understanding of himself, the world, the universe and all its workings.
“Don’t worry,” she continued. “I find you just as devastating in your waistcoat and tie. You’d come down from the shower smelling all sandalwood-and-cinnamony, and I’d think to myself how unfair it was that you could be so sexy both ways: put-together and disaster-mode.”
“You think I’m sexy?”
She grinned at him over the rim of her cup. “Did I not mention this either?”
His blood heated. It never really stopped heating, maintaining a low simmer at even the calmest of moments. But that look of hers, combined with her reddened lips and messy hair and the way that strap of hers was teetering just on the edge of another disastrous plummet, well . . .
His teacup clattered into his saucer, tea sloshing.
He rose from his chair, strode around the table, and pulled her up into his arms. She uttered a little yelp of, “Nigel!” And he loved it.
The sound of his name on her lips. The laughter and delight with which she spoke it.
The trust. The confidence. It was too beautiful.
“Say it again,” he rasped, his mouth hovering over hers.
“Say what?” she queried back, breathless. Her chest rose and fell swiftly, and her eyes fixated on his lips, lashes fluttering.
“That you love me.”
“I love you.”
“How? How could you love me? How can this be?”
“Probably because you’re so handsome.”
A deep-throated growl rumbled in his throat even as other parts of him reacted.
“Oooh! You really like it when I say that, don’t you? You vain beast!”
He kissed her. Hard. Tasted the orange llarmi on her lips, tasted her own eager response to his hunger, tasted all the beautiful things they were going to be and do and create together.
He tasted a future so delicious, his very soul seemed to groan with a great longing which, for the first time in his life, he believed could be fulfilled.
And it was in that precise moment that Darkness fell.
Luna froze in his arms, her laughter cut off abruptly. She gasped and shrank into him, huddling into his chest. Nigel wrapped his arms around her, his amorous grasp transformed into one of protection as he turned his head to stare out the nearest window.
The beautiful, clear, winter sunshine was gone. Not in the way of overcasting clouds. No, this was no cloud-cover. This was Darkness. Deep as night. Deeper even. Deep as Dire.
Luna trembled so hard, he feared she would fall to pieces. “They’re here!” she whispered, her words a cold blast of terror. “They’re here already!”
Angling her behind him but taking care not to let go of her for an instant, Nigel stepped to the kitchen window.
Reaching out with one hand, he pulled back the eyelet curtain and peered out into the cottage yard.
His sorcerous gaze pierced the darkness well enough.
He could see down to where the stone wall marked the bordering atmosphere around Tealeaf Cottage.
The borders of protection as well—he’d sensed the warding spells upon his initial arrival, powerful Green Magic.
Very powerful. Still powerful enough that it remained undamaged, despite the pressing, writhing, roiling Dire force surrounding it, covering the cottage like a dome.
For an instant, Nigel took heart in the presence of those wards. While they couldn’t transmatterport out of here through that dark spellworking, neither could any sorcerers come through. They were trapped, but they were safe. Safe-ish, anyway.
Then he blinked. His gaze extended a little farther, beyond the stone wall, out into the darkness itself. And he realized, with a plunging of his gut, that the warding spells didn’t matter anymore.
Luna moved behind him. He wanted to stop her.
Wanted to shield her. Wanted to prevent her from looking, from realizing the inadvertently foolish decision they had made.
He wanted not to let this last moment come to its end, knowing that the moments to follow would mark a shift in the dynamic forever.
“Don’t,” he said, turning to her, taking hold of her elbows.
But she pushed past him as though she didn’t even hear and drew back the eyelet curtain for herself.
A shuddering gasp dragged through her lips.
She saw what he had seen—down there, standing on the far side of the ward-wall.
Thirteen cowled figures. Not the seventeen from the granary; their numbers were reduced.
But thirteen remained, along with Calista Anguish, who looked much the worse for wear following her exposure to severmist. Her lovely face was ravaged, almost skeletal, and her lipstick was smeared like blood, framing her snarling mouth.
But these details scarcely mattered. What mattered was that her long, manicured fingers were clenched ferociously around Auntie Arabella’s forearm, and she held a knife to the old lady’s throat.
Auntie Aurora was there as well, standing a little to one side, gripped firmly by two faceless members of the Brotherhood.
Neither she nor Arabella looked unduly perturbed.
Their expressions were stern and sweet as ever, respectively.
As though they could not fully grasp the gravity of their situation.
“I know you’re in there, tea witch!” Calista’s voice called out, echoing strangely through the writhing Dire. “Come out to us now. Alone! Come out, and your kin will be spared.”