Chapter 22 Moira #3
Leena bolted upright, her hands massaging her neck, both the ghost’s memory and her own creating a phantom pain. She was lying on the floor; someone had thrown a blanket over her. She jerked around, but the fair-haired phantom was nowhere to be found.
The ghost had left Leena a memory, but it had been so real, so horrible, that she felt sick with it. She could not shake the terrible weight of the girl’s trust in her lover as he betrayed her. As Lord Avon murdered her. All to keep a secret.
But what secret? What had they hidden, and who could not learn of it?
“What happened?” St. Silas asked her quietly.
She couldn’t speak. It was the second time Leena had been strangled—once in real time, the other in a distant memory—and both times she had been powerless to stop it.
Her hands went to her throat as if to check for bruises.
St. Silas didn’t miss the gesture; she could see from his eyes that he was already trying to reach some conclusions.
The ghost’s invasion left a lingering rot in Leena’s body, and she wanted to rip her own skin off. It was all too much.
Demons. Murder. Secrets.
Saints.
“Did a ghost just possess you?” St. Silas pressed. “Is that possible?” His keen mind probed her like he would a confessor, almost reaching the final truth.
She jolted, then scrambled away from him.
Very rarely did this happen anymore—not since she’d discovered the power of her copper coins.
Usually she was more vigilant, preemptively sensing when a ghost was gearing up to attack her and striking her coins.
This time, she’d been distracted by the phantom’s captivating anger, and she’d been too late.
St. Silas must never learn how far her ability went, that she could be a channel for the dead. How would he use her then? How many more ways could she become his pawn?
“No,” she rasped, wanting to redirect his thoughts. “I saw a ghost—a fair-haired woman. She…was very angry with you. I think her anger must have overwhelmed me.” Leena touched her own forehead. “She wanted to choke you.”
It was the second time since stepping onto Avon land that a ghost had been obsessed with the Saint of Silence. And yet it was more elusive than ever how St. Silas held secrets over both the living and the dead.
Leena looked around, her eyes once more roving the room in search of the ghost.
Why? Why was Moira so violently angry at St. Silas?
He didn’t look the least disturbed. “Well, evidently she didn’t succeed.”
“Her name was Moira,” Leena pressed.
St. Silas looked sharply at her. “How do you know her name? I thought you said you cannot hear ghosts speak.”
Leena’s heart pounded in her chest. “I-I saw her name written on a locket she was wearing. I assumed it was hers.”
St. Silas looked entirely disbelieving.
Leena scrambled to control the conversation once more. “Well, do you know her?”
He straightened. “There are many waiting in line to wring my neck, madam. Must I be expected to recall all of them?”
“But do you know her?”
St. Silas furrowed his brow in thought, then finally shook his head. It was always difficult to read St. Silas, and as always she could not be certain he was speaking the truth.
Leena rose tentatively, smoothing her crumpled skirts. She knew her hair was in disarray, but there was no looking glass with which to tidy it, so she swept a hurried hand across her escaped ringlets.
What was taking Rami so long? Leena desperately wanted to find her room, lie down, and sleep dreamlessly. Her head was throbbing in excruciating pain.
“What would’ve happened if your brother hadn’t handed me the copper coins to strike together?” St. Silas walked toward the door, opening it slightly, but refusing to let her leave.
Leena tensed, not meeting his gaze.
“And what of the humming?” He would not be deterred.
“Can you step aside, Mr. St. Silas? I am very weary and would like to lie down now.”
“And if you’d been alone, madam?” There was an edge to his tone that she could not understand and she was too tired to try.
“Nothing would’ve happened.” She sighed, struggling to keep standing straight when her entire equilibrium was in chaos. She didn’t appreciate him attempting to drag out her secrets when he held so tightly to his own.
After a moment he stepped aside curtly and let her pass. At first she wasn’t sure if he was following her down the corridor or had stayed behind in the study, but his footsteps finally sounded on the hard marble floor behind her.
She needed to find a servant, anyone, to lead her to her room before she collapsed.
“Do not go searching for ghosts on your own anymore.”
She halted and turned to look at him in astonishment; there was a rigidity to his jaw that amazed her.
“What do you mean? I’m always alone with ghosts.”
“Then come seek me.” He took a step closer to her, the intensity of his gaze jarringly akin to what Moira had seen when she looked at Percival Avon.
“Come seek you…?” For a moment Leena was not sure if it was Moira’s voice or her own that had spoken. “Why?”
There was a tense silence, and his eyes held a look that she had never seen before. Then, as if the words had been wrestled from him, he spoke, “Deny it as much as you like. If you are possessed again, it is clear you cannot come out of it yourself—”
“I was not—”
“But I will drag you out—even if I have to perform the exorcism myself.”
His words ignited shocks across her skin.
If Leena was not careful, she would fall into the same trap Moira had in looking at Percival Avon: feeling utterly protected, cherished.
That feeling was intoxicating. And Leena would know; only moments before, she had been suffused with it in another woman’s memory.
Both men, so different in looks and bearing, and yet sharing the same dark magnetism. Each with the same fierceness in their eyes, declaring a vow that could lead to her ruin.
Leena shook her head, unsure if she was denying Percival, Moira, St. Silas, or herself.
“You are mistaken, Mr. St. Silas. I have never been possessed, but I thank you for your words. I will survive to ensure Lord Avon is found, so you should have no fear of our contract ending prematurely.” A phrase reminiscent of what he’d once said to her.
She turned to go, shaking slightly.
He grabbed her arm. “Do you understand? Come find me.”
“Please,” she whispered with equal fierceness, unclasping his hand. “What do you want from me?”
The undoing in her voice and the exhaustion in her eyes must have reached him, for he let go and didn’t follow her even as she left him behind, standing alone in the marbled hallway of Weavingshaw.