3. Chapter 3 #3
“They’ve started calling it the Madness,” I explained, quickly unbuttoning her blood-speckled dress. She would have found out soon enough, so there was no reason to lie to her. “An infection that makes a vampire go into a violent blood rut.”
“An infection,” she mumbled, looking down at herself as I pulled her dress off.
“We don’t know how it spreads,” I explained. “Better to be safe.”
Her eyes widened. I fumbled a few steps back when she grasped my vest and gloves. It didn’t occur to me that she’d managed to get them off my body and into the fire until the leather gloves were shrivelling in the flames.
My wife stood there, only in her thin shift, shivering as she watched the fire eat away at everything, quietly chanting the spell over and over again until the fire grew larger and larger.
She gasped when I put a hand over her mouth and pulled her against me.
Big, round eyes lifted up to mine. “What did I tell you about magic?”
I’d realised a moment too late that my men had drawn closer and closer to us.
Magic to a vampire was like blood to a shark. We could smell it from miles away. It activated every hunting sense in our bodies, emptying our minds until we were only filled with hunger—it turned us into animals.
The itch on the roof of my mouth grew severe and my fangs ached, pounding and radiating down the entire axis of my maxilla. A red veil had fallen over my gaze, obscuring everything in sight but her.
“Back the fuck away,” I ordered, holding her tightly against me. “I swear to your God, Art, I will shoot you through your throat. Back. The fuck. Away.”
They all forced themselves to pause, breathing in and out heavily, struggling to grasp enough air to feed their lungs which were burning as badly as mine were.
“Logan?” Henry carefully said, still shaking from the dark haze that had grasped every inch of colour from his eyes. “Something’s not right with your witch.”
It grew entirely too quiet, and every pair of eyes turned in Willow’s direction as she swayed on her feet. She looked paler, and not from fright.
She turned around to face me, her lashes fluttering fast. “Green,” she murmured, falling limply into my arms. “But not like grass green. Or broccoli. Or grasshoppers. Copper arsenite green.” Her voice grew smaller and smaller with each word.
“Sometimes, I like rosaniline shades, particularly fuchsine. It makes me happy.”
“What?”
“My favourite colour,” she mumbled, fainting in my arms.
The tear that had slipped to the middle of her cheek was still warm as I brushed my thumb over it. What the Hell had I gotten myself into?
“Oh, man,” Arthur grumbled, crouching to the ground with his hands to his head. “The parliament’s going to hound us to death if we go back with another dead witch.”
I lowered her on my lap and traced my fingers down the length of her pulse. “She’s not dead.”
Her heart was the loudest thing in this forest tonight, despite the harsh winds, the wolves in the distance, and the blaring, crackling fire still burning. All I could hear was the steady thud of the organ beating against her breast bone. Frankly, it was starting to drive me a little nuts.
She didn’t strike me as someone easily scared, considering what her position in Agnes’s court was. Maybe tonight had been too much for her. The dark circles under her eyes and the constant nail picking also told me she probably hadn’t slept in a while.
“Maybe stop fondling your witch and get her something to wear before she freezes, too?” Henry said, wearing a smirk as he pointed at the carriage. He lifted his hands up when I shot him a glare. “Not your witch.” Then I heard him mumble to himself, “Sure touching her like she’s yours.”
I laid her on the coach seat and grabbed her bag out of the back of the carriage. Nights in Mortdale were not the same as those in Meridian, despite being late June. And the goosebumps down her arms told me she wasn’t accustomed to it.
The weight of the bag should have been the first sign that it was nearly empty; there were only a few items resting loosely at the bottom of it.
That’s all she had taken with her? A couple nightgowns and a dress?
On top of the neatly folded black dress was a portrait photograph of hers.
Sat straight and grinning ear to ear, she’d posed for the camera.
She was smiling like someone who knew the mechanics of a smile well, but it had not reached her sad brown eyes.
Whoever had taken it looked like they’d trapped dread in that small piece of paper.
As I set the photograph down, my attention caught on the document tucked under the black dress.
A Certificate of Burial Rights dated nearly five years ago for a plot in Nymerian, a small city somewhere south of Meridian.
And…a receipt of service for a funeral reception.
She’d paid for a casket, the venue, catering, florals, too—white peonies specifically.
All that, and also including one-hundred-forty-nine paid mourners.
Who needed one-hundred-forty-nine strangers at their funeral?
My thumb slid to the end of the receipt.
Deceased: Willow Rose Briar