Chapter 25
Cain
A stillness settled over the castle, like the thick, oppressive calm before a nor’easter.
Four nights since I’d brought Nyx back to Lilith Island, and Nazaire still hadn’t come for her.
We’d laid the bait: the texts I’d sent him, posing as Nyx; the breadcrumbs we’d scattered, carefully planted lies about the castle’s supposed vulnerabilities.
Security was on high alert, the ferry watched on every run to and from the mainland, and the few inlets where you could beach a boat without shattering it against the rocks were under covert surveillance.
As for me, I didn’t go anywhere without a couple of blades.
What in the name of the Dark Gods was the bastard waiting for? He wouldn’t go away quietly. Not Nazaire.
No, he was plotting something. I could feel it like a spider crawling under my skin, making me twitchy, tight.
Gods, I hated these waiting games. But the next move was Nazaire’s. I just hoped we’d done enough to provoke him.
To add to my tension, Nyx had blocked me. Those flashes of emotions I’d been getting from her? They’d stopped, like she’d thrown up a wall between us and locked the gate.
And I missed it. Missed her.
She seemed further away now than when she’d lived in Quebec.
Monday bled into Tuesday. When I awoke that evening, I took Nyx a box of chocolates and her favorite blood-wine.
Like the night before, she was hunched over her sketchpad, laying down a drawing with fast, urgent strokes, like she couldn’t get it on the page fast enough.
This time she didn’t even register me, and when I returned later that night, the wine and chocolate sat untouched on the kitchenette counter and she was still hunched over the pad.
I was pretty sure she hadn’t moved since I’d left her.
I studied the drawing over her shoulder.
Castle Leclerc crouched in the fog like the photo I’d taken, only transformed.
Vines rose from the mist to snake their way up the black walls, winged creatures flapped against a midnight sky, and a sliver of a moon lurked behind a tower like it was keeping a secret.
It was so her, classic The Haunt—dark and moody as an old-style fairytale.
She finally noticed me standing there. She jumped and slammed the pad shut before pasting on one of those bright smiles that didn’t touch her eyes.
It made me want to punch a wall—again.
“Hey,” I said. “Everything okay?”
“Yes, thank you,” she said, so polite my teeth clamped together.
I loosened my jaw and scanned the living room for something else to say. At the French door, Demon was on her hind legs, batting at the glass in a frenzy of feline indignation.
I glanced at Nyx. “Wanna go outside?”
“Outside?” she echoed, her gaze going to the specially darkened glass. “The garden, you mean?”
“Yeah.”
She bit her lip—hard enough to leave a dent—and I caught myself holding my breath. When she said, “Yes,” it felt like I’d won something I hadn’t known I was playing for.
“C’mon then.” I thumbed open the security app and unlocked the door.
Outside the castle walls, the March wind shrieked off the ocean, but inside the enclosed garden, the air was cool, almost gentle.
Nyx walked beside me, taking everything in—the early buds, the tiny lights threaded through the bushes, the narrow stream ending in a frozen waterfall above a small, ice-covered pool—but her shoulders stayed tight, her expression guarded.
It wasn’t until Demon slinked up beside her, brushing against her leg, that I saw her ease.
“Salut, belle,” she murmured in French, crouching to rub the small white devil behind the ears.
Demon—who usually treated me like furniture—melted against Nyx’s leg, purring like they’d been soulmates in another life.
Nyx glanced up at me. “What’s her name?”
“Demon.”
“Ah, a perfect name for une belle chat.”
“She’s Brien’s. She ignores everyone else except Twilight.”
“You’re particular, aren’t you, pretty cat?” Nyx combed her fingers through Demon’s soft fur.
The cat leaned into her, eyes slitted.
“She likes you,” I said.
“Mm.”
“Cat’s got good instincts.”
Nyx flicked me a look. “Better than some people.”
I winced. “Sometimes you don’t listen to your gut because your head’s telling you something else.”
She just shrugged, eyes fixed on the garden. The moon cast shifting shadows over her beautiful, off-beat face—her long cheekbones, her full mouth, the diamond in her nostril—like it couldn’t decide what version of her to show me.
“Look,” I told her, “I’m sorry it came to this. But I’m not sorry for getting you away from that bastard. Maybe I wanted to use you—fine. But only to protect my friends. What’s his excuse?”
Her fingers stilled in Demon’s fur.
“You can’t even put your name on your own art,” I said. “You’re hiding the best part of yourself from your own father. That’s fucked.”
A beat passed and I thought she wasn’t going to say anything.
Then she met my eyes. “I wanted him to love me. I kept thinking if I was only good enough, worked a little harder…” One corner of her mouth lifted in a self-mocking smile.
Something hot and ugly twisted in my gut. I’d been there, been in her situation, but I’d gotten out by joining the Maritime Syndicate. She hadn’t had that option. She’d been stuck in that SOB’s sticky web.
My voice came out a low growl. “And you’ll never be good enough, will you?”
She briefly closed her eyes. “No.”
“That’s what I thought,” I said. “And I would’ve taken you away from him for that alone. Even without the history between him and us. If that makes me the bad guy, fine. Hate me. Because I’d do it again.”
Her gaze lifted to mine. “I don’t hate you,” she said, so quiet I had to strain to hear her.
I stared down at her, fighting the urge to haul her against me and claim what my instincts already knew was mine. But it was too soon. Push now, and I might lose what little ground I’d managed to take.
“So where do we go from here?” I said.
“I don’t know.” She rose, chin lifting that fraction that always sparked something primitive in me. Not fear. Defiance. A reminder she was her own woman, with her own agenda.
“I’m still your prisoner, even if the cage is more comfortable. You’re still using me as bait. Maybe you don’t need me to get to my father, but you haven’t let me go. So you tell me.”
“I have to see this through. We both know that.”
“Yeah.” Her nod was small, resigned. The look on her face—the hopelessness, the understanding that nothing had changed—hurt. The fake smile was gone, a small mercy. But I’d do almost anything to see the real one again. “You made your choice. And I’ve made mine.”
“Nyx…”
Her shoulders hunched. “Leave it, Cain.” She headed for the door, Demon trotting alongside her.
Yeah, I really wanted to punch something.
Back inside, my gaze fell on the sketchpad, thick with the pictures she’d made in the past couple of nights.
That was it. That was what she needed.
She wasn’t just sketching to pass the time. She was an artist, starving for the tools she didn’t have.
I couldn’t give her freedom. Things with Nazaire had gone too far; letting her leave now would paint a target on her back.
But this? I could give her.
As soon as I left her, I contacted an art shop on the mainland and paid extra to have art supplies expressed to the island on the Tuesday ferry: canvases, paints, brushes, a palette and a palette knife, the whole arsenal. That night, I brought them to her myself.
When I let myself in, she was stretched out on the couch, dark red curls spilling around shoulders, glowing against the deep blue cashmere sweater I’d bought her. She glanced up—eyes dull, flat—until she saw the canvases under my arm.
“What’s that?” She sat up, gaze flicking from the three canvases to the bag in my other hand.
“A gift.” I put the canvases on the floor beside the couch and handed her the bag.
When she peeked inside, her breath hitched. “You brought me paints?”
She brushed her fingertips over the tubes, slow and reverent, like they were something precious. And for the first time in days, her hazel eyes had some light in them. Just a flicker, but something in my chest warmed in response.
I crouched beside the couch, looking into the bag along with her. “I don’t know if they’re the right kind, but—”
“No, these are perfect.” She lifted one of the brushes. “This is even the brand I use. And bristle brushes, not synthetic. How did you know?”
“I asked the owner of the store. She’s a painter herself—seemed to know what she was doing.”
She nodded. “Well, thanks.
“You can thank me by painting something.”
My reward was a brief, real smile. “I will, yeah.”
Our gazes snagged, and my own lips lifted in response. The warmth in my chest flared brighter. My heart smacked against my ribcage, a near-painful beat.
For an instant, I caught a flash of emotion from her—hope and something else, like recognition. Like she was seeing something she hadn’t let herself believe.
An answering hope ignited in me.
A curl had fallen forward over her shoulder. I reached out, taking my time, giving her a chance to pull away. When she didn’t, I rubbed the silky strands between my thumb and forefinger.
Her chest expanded in a slow breath. Then she rolled her lips in and leaned away. The curl slid from my fingers.
I sank back onto my haunches, reminding myself to be patient. We were on opposite sides of a war, and no amount of touches or gifts could change that. I had to see this thing with Nazaire through and hope that someday she’d forgive me.
She turned back to the paints, lifting each tube from the bag and lining them up on the coffee table with the brushes and the rest of the supplies. Focused. Careful. Already slipping away from me again.
I pushed to my feet. “I should go. Let you paint.”
Another jolt of emotion, disappointment this time. “Oh,” she said.
“Unless you want me to stay—”
She looked up. “Only if you let me sketch you.”
I blinked. “Sketch me?”
“Mm-hm. I prefer a live model.” She was already reaching for her pad.
I dropped into the armchair across from her. “This feels like a setup. Tell me you’re not going to give me horns and a tail.”
She glanced up, eyes gleaming now, and I wanted to high-five myself for putting that playful spark there. “Depends.”
“On what?”
“On how nice you are.” Her voice had a huskiness that slid over my skin like a slow, hot lick.
I slung an arm over the chairback, pretending I wasn’t reacting, that she hadn’t just flipped the power between us with a single line. “How nice do you want me to be?”
She cocked her head, a subtle challenge that made everything masculine in me go tight. “Nice enough to sit still. Nice enough not to ask to see what I’m drawing.”
“Done,” I said immediately.
Her lips tilted up, like she hadn’t expected me to fold that fast. But she flipped open the pad and took out what looked like a black piece of chalk, although it was rectangular, not round.
“Don’t move,” she muttered and started sketching.
I watched her watching me, long glances from beneath thick lashes. From anyone else, it would’ve made me edgy. But when it was Nyx, I wanted to preen like a peacock, give her something worth looking at.
The primitive creature in me growled.
Go ahead and stare, firefly.
This attraction—this electric pull—between us wasn’t one-sided. I could work with that.
“When I make a picture,” she said, “I tell myself stories about what I’m painting.”
“Yeah?”
She nodded. “It’s part of my process. You’re definitely a prince, maybe a faerie royal with those blue eyes and platinum hair. You’re on your throne, your court around you. But you’re bored.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Bored?”
“That’s right.” A corner of her mouth lifted. She was teasing—and yet she wasn’t. “Restless. You can have anything you want, but it’s never enough.”
Her strokes grew sharper, more deliberate. The gray chalk left smudges on her long, elegant fingers, but she didn’t seem to notice.
“You’re powerful,” she continued, voice dreamy. “But something’s missing. You’re waiting for something.”
I held still, willing her to go on. She wasn’t talking about the sketch anymore, and I wanted—no, needed—to see what she’d say next.
“Maybe someone,” she added, eyes flicking up to meet mine.
Something in my chest kicked hard.
“Maybe I’ve already met her,” I said. “Maybe I’m waiting for her to catch up.”