Chapter 23 Temple in Ruins #2
“Exactly… what…” Each word a difficulty as his face mottled, the edges of his lips going white. “I’m… here… for.”
Temple threw him to the floor. “I fucking should!” He stormed through the stables to his forge and used the heat of his hand to move the internal metal of the lock.
The door swung wildly on its hinges as he slammed through it.
The forge fire roared to life, illuminating the space with memories of Diana, laughing at the worktable, watching him curiously at the anvil, studying the depiction of Vulcan on the walls, delighting at the gems in their little drawers on the far side of the forge. Diana. His. Diana. Gone.
Iron leapt in his blood, and he tested the hammer’s weight. Heavy. Lethal.
The cursed traitor was at his back, begging.
“I tried to kill my own cousin. I deserve it. I put a knife to your sister’s neck. Kill me. You want to.”
Temple snatched up a hammer. Big and brutal. One good swing… “Damn you to hell!” he roared.
“Send me there!” Chester’s plea screamed across the space between them.
Temple swung the hammer up and back. By Juno, he’d get this right, he’d end this man’s life in one swing. Too late, too fucking late for Diana. He squeezed his hand more tightly, so tightly it felt like the bone of his knuckles might slice through his skin.
“Don’t you dare hesitate,” Chester cried. “I’m nothing more than an opium-addled sot! I’ve lived off nothing but potions since my grandfather’s death, trying to… to…” He slammed his palms down on the worktable. Tools rattled all along it. Chester’s blue eyes glowed gold. Like Diana’s eyes could.
He had it in him somewhere. That cursed transcendent talent. Maybe like Temple’s iron, he could find it if he tried, digging deep through layers of dirt. No inheritance necessary. He’d be able to make lightning streak across the sky.
Temple’s grip on the hammer tightened. He neither lowered it nor swung.
“I’m not worthy of living.” Chester’s head hung low, his long, damp hair limp, dirty. “It’s why it went to her and not me. She deserved it. And I tried to hurt her. I do nothing but hurt others. Good God, man, end my pitiful life.”
Temple’s hand relaxed. Hell. He’d felt the same damn way so many times. Not good enough. Everything his fault. He’d ruined his family’s happiness. He’d put Diana in danger. He’d been saying the same thing not moments ago.
He dropped the hammer with a thunk and ran shaking hands through his hair.
“Damn you, Fordham.” But there was no heat in it.
He sighed, he cursed, he leaned against the worktable on the opposite side of his wife’s cousin.
They didn’t face each other. He couldn’t face that worm.
But he certainly couldn’t kill him. “You are pitiful.
You have threatened my wife, hurt her, over and over again, and I swear if you do it again, I will put that hammer through your skull.
“Do it now,” Chester ground out. “You coward!”
“Killing you is the easy way out. If you think it’s your fault, if you think you’re not good enough, then be better.
Try harder, you bloody prick.” He wrapped his hands around the edge of the table, let the bite of the wood into his palms steady him.
“I don’t want you around her again. Ever.
And as soon as you leave here, I’m notifying the constable.
There are other ways to die in London. Hope you run into one of them. Because it won’t be by my hand.”
“Coward.” Chester threw the word at Temple’s feet like a glove, in invitation to a duel, pistols at dawn that would end with Chester’s body in the ground. Exactly what the coward wanted.
Temple wouldn’t give it to him. “I’m done with you. I’ve more important things to do. A wife to save from the gallows. So unless you have any ideas about how I’m going to do that, get out of my fucking sight.”
Pale as a ghost, Chester backed out of the forge and disappeared into the mews. He wouldn’t last another day in London.
Temple couldn’t bring himself to care.
He collapsed against his anvil, body heavy, and finally, his sorrow broke free.
His sobs shook the forge, and his tears threatened to the flood the fire.
It leapt and roared, its flames shooting skyward with each howl Temple loosed into the hot air.
When he could no longer hold himself up, he collapsed to the floor, digging the heels of his hands into his eyes.
I am a temple to Diana.
But the foundations were cracking. The columns falling down.
When his throat ached and his eyes burned, and the fire of his grief had dried up all his tears, he lay on the floor of his forge, looking out the window to the smallest sliver of sky visible between two buildings.
Stars winked there in that inky dark. Was Diana looking on them, too? It was possible. What else would she have to do in a musty, old room, in a dank old tower that had imprisoned man and beast alike, received traitors and witnessed the beheadings of women.
Diana wasn’t a traitor. She was a little queen with dust on her nose and moons in her eyes, and she’d trusted him.
She’d trusted him, and he’d failed her.
He lifted his hand to look at the alchemist ring on his finger. It glowed a soft yellow in the gathering moonlight that only slightly spilled in through the window. A warm glow, like the softness of her hand in his. He kissed it and made a promise.
He’d do whatever it took to free her. Whatever it took to keep her safe.
Through the iron came a feeling not his own—trust. And hope.