Chapter 15
AUGUST
Ibolted the front door and set the cross-bar—an unnecessary precaution on most nights, but not tonight. Not after the alley.
Lily hadn’t moved from the foyer. My coat draped over her torn dress, her boots streaked with mud, her collarbone already purpling. The lamplight gilded her hair—fire and shadow—but her knuckles were bone-white on the lapels of my coat. She was trembling.
“Come,” I said softly. “The study room is warmer.”
I took a cautious step closer, palms open, as though approaching a cornered animal. “Lily.”
Her gaze snapped to mine, feral, suspicious—like she wasn’t certain whether I was here to save or to cage.
God, she had no idea how close to the truth that cut.
How I'd been trained my entire life to hunt people exactly like her—different.
How every instinct my father had beaten into me screamed that she was dangerous, unnatural, a threat that needed to be eliminated.
And yet all I wanted to do was gather her close and promise she'd never be hurt again.
“A chair,” I said, quietly. “And tea. Nothing more.”
After a long pause, she nodded. I guided her into the study, my hand hovering near the small of her back not quite touching.
The hearth still glowed with embers, and I crouched to coax flame from them.
Grateful for a task that let me turn away from the sight of her devastation.
My hands shook as I fed kindling to the coals.
Get yourself together, I ordered silently. She needs you steady.
When I rose, she stood rigid, clutching my coat like armor, her eyes tracking my every movement with wary distrust.
I couldn't blame her. I was a Hunter. The enemy. She had no reason to feel safe with me.
The fact that I desperately wanted her to feel safe was a problem I couldn’t afford to examine.
I poured brandy instead of tea, my father's voice echoing in my head: Sentiment is weakness. Mercy is failure. I pushed it aside and pressed the glass into her hand. “Drink.”
Her throat bobbed as she obeyed, coughing when it burned. I caught the glass before she dropped it, my fingers closing over hers. “Easy,” I murmured.
“Sit.” This time she obeyed. The coat shifted, revealing the jagged tear of her bodice, the swell of her breasts, the ugly bruising already spreading across her collarbone.
White-hot rage flooded through me. I wanted to find those men again. Wanted to make them pay for every mark on her skin, every moment of fear they'd caused. The violence of the impulse shocked me—I'd killed before, but always coldly, efficiently. This was different. This was personal.
From the writing desk, I fetched a small medical tin: salve, bandages, a vial of laudanum I rarely touched. When I returned, Lily’s gaze tracked the items with weary suspicion, and I realized how this must look to her. A Hunter. Medical supplies. A woman at his mercy.
“I’m not dosing you,” I said quickly. “Let me see your shoulder.”
She hesitated, then let the coat slide aside, one arm guarding her chest. The bruise was dark and spreading fast.
My jaw clenched so hard my teeth ached.
“May I?” I asked, my fingers hovering over her skin, waiting. I wouldn't touch her without permission. I refused to be another man who took without asking.
After a moment, she nodded barely, just a small tilt of her chin.
I touched her as gently as I knew how, fingers ghosting over the bruise, assessing the damage. Her skin was warm beneath my palm, and I felt her pulse fluttering like a trapped bird. My own heart hammered in response, though whether from anger or something else entirely, I couldn't say.
Every gentle touch was like a betrayal. Of my father.
My duty. Everything I'd been raised to be.
I was supposed to be interrogating her, discovering what she was.
Not kneeling at her feet like a penitent, fighting the urge to press my lips to each bruise and beg forgiveness for belonging to the same species as the men who'd hurt her.
She flinched when my fingers brushed a particularly tender spot, breath hissing between her teeth. But she didn't pull away.
“Salve first.” I smoothed it in careful strokes, and her lashes fluttered closed.
I found myself unable to look away. The firelight painted gold across her features. The curve of her cheek, the line of her throat, the way her lips parted slightly as she breathed. She was beautiful. Heartbreakingly so. And I had absolutely no right to notice.
“Does that help?”
“It helps that they’re not here,” she whispered. “Thank you.”
Two words. Such simple words. But they unmade me completely.
My throat tightened. I couldn't speak, couldn't trust my voice not to break, so I simply nodded and focused on the task at hand. I set the salve aside and reached for a bandage.
She was silent, but the tension in her body shifted. Less resistance. More surrender. The trust implicit in that small change made my chest ache.
I didn't deserve it. God, I didn't deserve it.
“They said awful things,” she murmured.
“You shouldn’t have had to hear it,” I said. “You shouldn't have had to endure any of it.”
She met my eyes, steady. “Men can be vile creatures. But that doesn’t mean I’ll get used to it.”
“Nor should you.” The words came out sharper than I meant, almost vehement. “You should never have to become accustomed to cruelty. Lily,” I said, more softly. “You are safe here. With me. I swear it on everything.”
“I hope that’s the truth,” she whispered, but her eyes said she wasn't certain. That she wanted to believe me but didn't quite dare.
The silence that followed was thick and brittle. She pressed her lips together, blinking hard against the wetness gathering in her eyes. Her jaw worked like she was biting back words—or perhaps sobs.
Then came a sharp, broken exhale, like air tearing free after being held too long. Her hand flew to her mouth, but the sobs came anyway—wrenching, desperate sounds that seemed torn from somewhere deep.
“I. . . I don’t know what’s happening,” she choked out between gasps. “None of this makes sense. I was at my gran’s flat. . . and then I wasn’t. And now—”
She shook her head hard, as if she could knock the panic loose.
“Now everyone looks at me like I'm supposed to know something, and I don't, I swear I don't. I don’t know who these Weavers are or what I’m supposed to have done.
I don't know why I'm here or how to get home or if I even can go home.” Her breathing was coming faster now, shallow and panicked.
“I keep waiting to wake up. To find out this is just some fever dream or mental breakdown.
But it's not, is it? This is real. I'm really here.
And everyone wants me dead for something I didn't even do, and I can't. . . I can't breathe.”
“Lily.”
Her eyes were wild, drowning, pupils blown wide with panic. My hands hovered uselessly in the air before instinct overrode hesitation. I caught her hand—that cold, shaking hand—and pressed it flat against my chest, over my heart.
“Here,” I said, low and steady, though my own pulse was thundering beneath her palm. “Feel that? I'm here. You're here. You're safe. Just breathe with me. In—”
I inhaled slowly, deeply, letting her feel the rise and fall of my chest beneath her fingers.
“And out.”
Her chest hitched, but she followed. Once. Twice. Her palm was warm now against my shirt, and I covered it with my own hand, holding it in place.
“That's it,” I murmured. “Just like that. In. And out. You're doing so well.”
Slowly—so slowly—the tremors eased. Her breathing evened. The wild look in her eyes faded to something more present, more aware. But she didn't pull her hand away, and neither did I.
The hush that followed was too close, too heavy. I should have stepped back. Should have released her hand and put proper distance between us. Every rule of propriety, every lesson my father had drilled into me, demanded I retreat.
I didn't.
I couldn't.
Her hand still rested against my chest, her palm a brand over my heart. I could feel my pulse jumping beneath her touch, could see her registering each beat. Too fast. Too hard. Giving away everything I was trying so desperately to hide.
Slowly—carefully, like she might startle—I reached up. My fingers lingered at her temple, then traced down to tuck the strand behind her ear. The gesture was far more intimate than tending her injuries had been, and we both knew it.
Her eyes widened slightly, lips parting on a soft exhale.
If my father commanded me to cut her down this moment, I would have disobeyed.
Not from loyalty. Not from any grand principle.
Simply because I couldn't bear it. Couldn't bear to add one more wound to a woman already breaking apart in my hands.
Couldn't bear to be the instrument of her destruction when every fiber of my being was screaming at me to protect her instead.
The realization should have terrified me. It did terrify me.
But not enough to make me let go.
Her eyes met mine, luminous in the firelight, unguarded in a way I suspected she rarely allowed herself to be.
I could see everything in that gaze—the fear, yes, but also confusion, exhaustion, and beneath it all, something that looked almost like hope.
Like she wanted to believe I meant what I'd promised. That she was safe with me.
And god help me—enemy or not, Weaver or not, threat or not—I wanted her.
Not just her body, though I was keenly aware of how close we were, of the bare skin beneath my coat, of the way her breath quickened when my thumb accidentally brushed her cheekbone.
I wanted her trust. Her laughter. Her sharp mind and sharper tongue. I wanted to know what made her smile, what she dreamed about, what her life had been like in that impossible future she'd come from.
I wanted to protect her from everything.
Even—especially—from myself.
“Earlier,” I began, “you said historians dig for what others bury.”
She watched me, wary. “I did.”
“Then dig.” The words surprised even me. “Tell me about the Oxford you know. Tell me why Magdalen Road is wrong. Why the fire matters. Give me something I can cross-reference.”
Her eyes widened, bright as sea-glass in the firelight. “You’d believe me?”
“Yes, if I have proof. I will believe you.”
Something flickered across her face—hope or something more fragile. She looked at me like I'd just offered her something precious, something she'd stopped expecting.
“You mean that?”
“I do.”
She paused for a moment. “Come mid-June, Osney’s canal-side streets will glow under electric lamps. They’re switching on the power plant on the eighteenth.”
The words landed with a strange kind of weight.
“Lily, that’s months away. I don’t have months.”
She didn’t flinch. Didn’t argue. Just looked at me like she already knew how this would end—and pitied me for it. She’d given me details I could test, dates I could confirm. Facts. That should have been enough. But proof meant consequences I wasn't ready to face.
Because if she was telling the truth about the future, what else had she been right about? The questions she'd asked that I'd tried to ignore. About whether disappearing from records was the same as being guilty. About whether we knew for certain every person we'd hunted was a threat.
She hadn't accused anyone. She'd just asked questions I'd never let myself consider. And if I believed her about electric lamps and altered streets, I'd have to face those questions honestly.
I wasn't ready for that. Not tonight. Maybe not ever.
“You should rest,” I said, the words coming out rougher than I intended. “Mrs. Hartley will have left fresh linens in your room.”
I stood, needing distance before I said something I couldn't take back. Before I admitted that months felt impossibly far away not because I didn't have time—but because I wasn't sure I'd be able to let her go when the time came.
She rose slowly, my coat still wrapped around her shoulders. At the doorway, she paused.
“August?”
I looked up.
“Thank you. For tonight. For. . .” Her voice caught. “For believing I'm worth saving.”
The truth nearly escaped—that I didn't know if she was worth saving or if I was just too compromised to see clearly. I locked it down. “Get some rest, Lily.”
She nodded and disappeared into the hallway. I listened to her footsteps climb the stairs—slow, exhausted, safe.
For tonight, at least, she was safe.
I poured myself another brandy and stood at the window, watching the empty street. Tomorrow I'd have to decide what to do about the electric lamps, about proof, about the growing certainty that keeping Lily Whitmore alive was going to cost me everything.
But tonight, I let myself pretend that protecting her and doing my duty could somehow be the same thing. Even though I already knew they couldn't.