21. Chapter 21 #2
Ulric laughed, sputtering bits of comfit all over himself.
“He nearly brought war on my door step when Agnes would not let go of you. He’d told the old witch ‘I want her or fuck the Blood Pact’.
You should read the letter your Holy Mother had sent for me.
You’d think it was a declaration of war!
” The old monarch chuckled, wiggling his finger at me.
“If Agnes had not yielded, I would have let my dogs chew your husband up to tiny little bits.”
If Agnes had not yielded, he’d be dead. It was by her grace that he lived. If Agnes had not let go of Willow, I would have come back with a broken Blood Pact.
I’d spent the past four days knowing her, learning her, studying her in close proximity.
I could tell when she was happy just by the way the air entered her lungs in long, smooth gulps.
And I could tell she was terrified solely by the way she held stale air in her lungs for a long beat before she exhaled.
“What is this demented old idiot talking about?”
Fuck.
Coughing and sputtering onto his napkin, Urlic got to his feet and grabbed his belt. “I need to take a piss.”
He stumbled out of the room, helped by his soldiers, and left us to stew in the buzzing silence. The truth had finally stopped pressing against my stomach, but there was no relief from the pain. Now she knew that I’d ripped her apart from the two things she loved; Ethel and her work.
The floor beneath us might as well have cracked in half when she took just the smallest step away from me. “Logan? What did he mean?”
“He meant that I chose you myself,” I said, lighting a cigarette, half tempted to throw the lighter at the curtains and set this whole place on fire.
I couldn’t look at her, but I knew what I’d see in her face.
I could imagine the discomfort in her dark eyes, the way her lips parted because she had so many questions sitting at the tip of her tongue but she couldn’t find the strength to let go of them.
“I thought…I thought Agnes…offered me to you.”
My footsteps echoed as I walked to the cellarette, filling two glasses of whiskey.
“Did you know that the far window from Agnes’s study has a great view into your workroom—the old orangery adjoined to the far end of the coven?
” I asked, swinging back the entirety of my glass before filling it again.
She just stared at me when I handed her a glass.
When I’d met with Agnes that day, I had not planned for anything.
I was going to marry and bring home whoever she’d picked for me.
I’d already prepared myself for whatever order she’d given to the red maiden she'd picked to enter my household—I wasn’t some old rich fuck with a dick for a brain, I’d handled worse.
But then, as I’d stepped near a window to light a cigarette, I’d seen her.
At least the few inches of her that had been visible—mainly her big brown eyes.
Her face had been covered by a white mask, her hair tucked under a white hat, and the rest of her covered in a bloodied white apron.
She’d moved around the necropsy table, dragging her scalpel over the corpse's chest with so much finesse and refinement. She had not been just a coroner, someone far more artistic in nature. Watching her pull that man apart might have been the second most fascinating thing I’d ever witnessed, second only to seeing her up close that day I married her.
“I want her,” I’d told Agnes before I could register what had come out of my mouth.
The Holy Mother had rejected that request only a short beat later. She’d told me, “Willow is not up for offer. I have plenty of good girls for you to pick from. Moira is excellent—”
“That’s her name? Willow?”
The Holy Mother had sputtered, her smug smile finally replaced with something similar to apprehension. “Willow…she’s…she’s promised to someone.”
The lie had stank up the room before it had even left her lips. “I want her. No one else.”
“This is ridiculous. Making demands in my home. In my kingdom.”
The more she had tried to keep her from me, the more I’d wanted her.
“The deal’s off,” I’d said, leaving her study.
“Off? What deal? What are you talking about?”
“The Blood Pact. It’s done.”
She’d chased me down the coven corridors. “Have you lost your damn mind?”
“I want her.”
She’d stared at me like I’d lost my mind when I said, “Either you bring her to the chapel in an hour, or I will order my men to return to Mortdale with no bride today.”
There had been an unjustifiable amount of terror in her expression. Disgust, too. She wasn’t good at hiding what she meant or what she felt. Maybe she’d wanted me to see it—the revulsion she felt about the union. “Why her?”
“One hour,” I’d told her. “That’s all you’ll get.”
I couldn’t remember how long I’d stayed against the orangery walls after I’d made that request, listening to her mellow footsteps, the rubbery sound of her gloves each time she reached for something, the paced and controlled breaths leaving and entering her lungs, the maddening way her heart worked, and then her conversation with her dark-haired friend.
That’s also where I’d found out about her gift of talking to the dead.
Where I’d found out how they’d been treating her because of this curse, as she’d called it.
My unusual bride had made me smile before she’d even seen me; before she’d even known about my existence.
My wife’s eyes were not the same as the day I’d seen her and forced her to be mine. They’d lost some of the shine. “Why me?”
“Because I am a horrible man,” I answered, tucking a strand of loose grey hair behind her ear, “who loves lovely things.”
Her lips parted as she drew one deep inhale and turned away from me, grabbing her glass and taking a long drink. “It doesn’t make sense,” she muttered to herself, her pulse suddenly growing unsteady. “I—” Her shaking hand came to her throat. “I think I need to use the lavatory.”
And then she was gone.
Closing my eyes, I stepped into the cloud of perfume she’d left behind, nuzzling the scent until my lungs were drowned in it.
She’d not reappeared after that. Lu and Ulric had left sometime after, too.
I knew better than to invade her space when she needed time to process everything, but something felt wrong. Her thundering pulse had slowly moved away from the vicinity of the estate. The moment it vanished entirely, there was no quieting my brain.
Getting up, I left my study, stopping when I spotted Liam sat on the stairs, reading a book.
“Where’s Willow? Why are you not with her?”
He frowned, hiding the book he was reading behind his back. “She said she was going on a walk with Henry.”
“Who?” Henry asked, leaning against a pillar as we chewed on an apple. Whatever was written on my face had him straighten up. “She’s with Art. They left me a note.”
Liam stood from the stairs. “Arthur? No, he’s in charge of training today. He’s at the drill halls.”
Fuck.
I crossed the corridor to her room where her scent still lingered. Piper sat on her bed, playing with Willow’s rat who now wore a set of pink pants and a blouse that I was sure belonged to one of her dolls.
My niece squealed when I hauled her off the bed and kissed her over a dozen times. “Bunny, where’s Willow?”
She thought about it for a moment, sighed gravely, and thought about it some more. Tracing a finger on her palm as if she was recalling things, she said, “Boo said to tell you that she’s alright and that…that there’s something she needs to do before she has to go.”
Something cold sank at the bottom of my stomach. “Go where, Bunny?”
“To a very nice place.” She itched her cheek. “She told me, but I forgot the name. She said there’s many flowers and it’s always warm—but not too warm because it burns the skin.” She blinked up at me. “But it’s a nice place, Bear. She should go. You’ll let her go, Bear. Please.”
“Bunny,” I pleaded. “Where is she? Sweetheart, you have to tell me.”
Her face suddenly filled with worry. “She write letters,” she said, reaching under the pillow to hand me a folded piece of paper.
“Christof!” I called, taking the stairs down two at a time as I unfolded my wife’s note. “Get Edwin to ready my horse. Now!”
I need to know, Logan.
I need answers.
Nothing makes sense.
I need something to make sense.
Fuck.
Nightshade Cemetery was warm at night. Fireflies dipping in and out of the pale mist, hopping from one grey gravestone to the other, circling around the dark-coloured flowers that had sprouted around the footstones.
The grey fog stirred as I broke through it, heading in the direction of the most deafening sound in the night. The same sound that had led me here.
Loose grey hair cascaded down her face, soaked by the rain and clumped with wet soil. She sat with her legs folded under her at the foot of a grave, bracing her shoulder against a shovel.
Three graves were dug up, and her fingertips were bleeding into the wet wooden handle.
I threw my jacket around her shoulders, resting my forehead against her temple as I held her tightly to me, trying to offer her any bit of warmth I could muster.
Her voice was hoarse, lost and fragile when she finally said, “Why wouldn’t you just tell me?
Why would you let me believe you had a hand in it?
” she bellowed, throwing the shovel to the ground, breathing so heavily I thought her lungs would burst. “Is that why you had me watched at every hour of the day?
Why…why I couldn't be near even a fork or a butter knife? Why Christof was always there when I stood at the top of the stairs, why Liam tracked every step I took, why Arthur and Henry always spawned out of nowhere to be with me? Did you think I was going to lose my mind and kill myself like the rest of the witches? Like Cassandra?”
She covered her face with her hands as she shook her head. “Why wouldn’t you just tell me, Logan?”
“I was going to,” I admitted. “I tried, several times. But your friend’s life was at stake, and—”
“And you couldn’t trust me with it.”