Chapter 13
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
HOOK
Bloody hell. If I didn’t love Wendy as much as I do, and if I had no vested interest in her continued happiness, I would not have agreed to her superstitions.
We’ve been living together for months, but on the eve of our wedding, we’re not allowed to see each other?
For what reason? To avoid a catastrophe?
Disaster will strike, superstition or not.
Roc rented me the finest room in The Dorian House, but I still found the bed sorely lacking in comfort and warmth. Or perhaps it was the emptiness of the bed. I’ve come to expect Wendy and Roc beside me at night and the sudden solitude bristled like a sea urchin.
It didn’t help that the wine selection, while sensible, was not fine, and the food, while edible, was just mediocre. Our cooks have clearly ruined my taste for any other dining.
Because I tossed and turned half the night, I wake late for my own damn wedding and have to dash out of the hotel with no coffee and nothing to eat. Which is just as well. I don’t relish the idea of standing at the altar and vomiting on Roc’s shoes.
No, no, I will not vomit. I will not be nervous. I will not be a blustering ball of anxiety and—
I turn the next street corner, fighting with my hook, trying to get it latched on my arm, when I slam into someone. My hook is bumped off and it clatters down the sidewalk.
“Bloody fucking hell, you idiot! Watch where you’re going!”
A pistol arm clicks as it’s pulled back. A barrel is pointed at my nose.
“Keep your voice down,” the man says, half his face hidden in the shadow of his wide-brimmed hat.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Into the carriage.”
“I’m not—” I’m cut off when a glass bottle is thrust into my face and a cool mist sprays out, filling my nose with its acrid sweetness.
My vision swims and my ears ring.
I stagger to the side and several arms collect me, feet shuffling me forward.
“Get ‘em into the carriage!” someone whispers.
“I’m fucking trying!” another says.
“Before someone sees!”
I can’t feel my feet or my arms, and I’m buoyed up into a tottering carriage.
“Hey…unhand…me,” I say, but the words come out garbled.
I’m dumped onto a bench. The world spins. I try to open my eyes, but my vision is ringed in black, and my eyes are watering.
“Shut the door!”
There’s a loud slam. A thump. We lurch forward.
“I have a…” wedding. I can’t get the word out.
I swing forward, trying to get myself free, but I roll off the bench.
Someone curses above me.
“Get the fogshade!”
Oh bloody hell. That’s what they sprayed me with. A sleeping poison.
I swing again, but my head is still pounding, my vision still swimming. I’m fucking useless. Like a newborn fawn trying to get its feet beneath it.
Another burst of mist and the sweet, pungent elixir of the fogshade hits my senses, and instantly, I’m out.
What did I say?
Disaster will strike, superstition or not.