Chapter 30 The Cave #2
“If this is to be a fair fight”—his voice was gruff, that unguarded look in his expression again—“then my concentration cannot be shredded to pieces.” He reached for Leena’s coat buttons and roughly fastened them, one at a time. “This cannot remain open.”
It took all her strength not to redden further as she stood rigid, allowing him to perform the task intently, not daring even to breathe.
The intimacy of having a man—this man—slowly fasten the buttons of his own coat on her, his hands large and focused on their task, caused a maddening havoc to momentarily overtake her mind.
She let out a staggered exhalation. His gaze pinned itself to her mouth before he abruptly dropped his hands and stepped away, a high color on his cheeks.
“Did you not hear what I just said?” When Leena spoke again, she sounded hoarse to her own ears, even as the threads of frustration still tugged at her.
“The First Marquess of Avon made a contract—bound by blood—that every Avon henceforth would be irrevocably tied to that cursed demon until it killed them. And that includes you.”
The return of the resolute gleam in his eyes told her what his silence did not—that he would not give up Weavingshaw even if his own death walked hand in hand with it.
For a moment, they were engulfed in the sound of crashing waves and violent wind.
Leena could not stop herself this time. She turned away from him first and started to furiously pace the tight enclosure of the cave. She found an old, corroded kerosene lamp. The oil in the reservoir was depleted, but she opened the cap to check, just to have something to do.
She heard his movements as he came up beside her, gently taking the lamp from her hands and putting it back down on the ground.
“How did you find out?” he asked, and Leena knew that the mild curiosity in his voice belied a much deeper void that he needed to fill.
She withdrew the timepiece and thrust it toward him.
Leena still could not understand the meaning behind these timepieces—why Margery and Lord Avon had both possessed one—but she sensed that this was not the time to question St. Silas.
The moment Leena returned to Golborne, she would go to Margery and demand some answers.
“Avons can cross,” Leena said. “The old housekeeper—your old housekeeper—told me that the current Lord Bramwell Avon had visited her. That was all.” The night they had both followed Lady Hargreaves flashed into her mind with clarity.
When she had met St. Silas just outside the inn, boots caked in mud, cravat undone, mood alight.
He had been returning from his visit to the housekeeper.
And, as the old lady had boasted, had restocked her firewood while he was there.
St. Silas took the timepiece, staring hard at the engraved message for a long moment, before giving it back to her wordlessly. “That is not all,” he said roughly. “You’ve been watching me like I’m one of your phantoms.”
“My phantoms,” she whispered, clutching the timepiece in her cold fingers, “are far less stubborn, reticent, guarded, unholy…” Bewitching, she thought desperately, remembering Moira again and her destruction at the hands of an Avon man who put Weavingshaw above all else.
“If you continue down this path, my lord, it will not be long before you become a phantom, and I will have to spend my days trying to release you.”
The return of the intensity in his eyes was so harrowing that Leena brought a hand to her chest to steady the ache.
His words were slow, guttural. “Is that why I found you half frozen in the ocean? Because you are afraid you will grieve my loss?”
She could not tell a convincing lie; of that they were both certain. It was not only her voice but also Moira’s, spanning across a decade, that at last answered, “I would grieve it.”
His eyes flashed. But there was no satisfaction in his look, no victory, only starvation for more.
“I won’t come back to haunt you.” He made this vow like it was a cursed thing, burning his tongue on its way out. His head imperceptibly tilted toward her as he drank her in, his eyes lingering on her lips. “The contract forbids me to.”
She didn’t take a step away this time. Her pulse pounded, and she imagined what it would feel like if he closed the space between them, if his unyielding mouth met her own. If this would soften the iron of their bitter contract.
She was deaf to the sounds of the downpour calming and the snow finally starting its descent, nor did she see the last orange rays of the sun break through the black clouds.
Leena, who had never been kissed before—not while ghosts haunted her every step—wanted to experience for the first time in her life the abandon of doing something she wanted. Not for survival, not because it was the right thing to do, but because she needed to.
Yet his mouth never met hers.
St. Silas jerked away before it could happen, his breathing ragged. He dragged a hand down his face. For a moment, he looked undone. Conquered.
Like she had bewitched him.
“This can’t—” The words tore from his throat unevenly.
Leena stared at him, her own breaths harsher than normal.
She brought a quick hand to her lips as if they were bruised. In spite of himself, he followed the gesture, his eyes darkening—swallowing her whole.
Leena turned away from him, toward the opening of the cave, looking at the sea that had begun to soothe itself after its show of righteous fury.
She struggled to keep her tone brusque; it was an insult to them both to pretend after what had occurred between them.
“I won’t tell a soul of what I’ve learned today. ”
She could feel his stare burning into her profile.
“Not even the Wake?” he asked quietly, knowing that a promise from her would mean a betrayal of her father.
Leena felt her gut twist at his words. The Saint of Silence was a powerful man and notoriously reclusive.
Any secret about him could surely be used as a bargaining chip with any group that wanted power over him.
Leena also knew, with a certainty that dug deep into the marrow of her bones, that she would never do this, and that was precisely where the pain was seeping from. “What did the Wake do to you?”
He didn’t answer. Even now, he kept his secrets close to his chest.
“It was Lord Hargreaves and your father. They were the Wake.” All of Leena’s questions and the unsolved riddles written in her notes started to fall into place.
She looked at St. Silas with both dawning understanding and wretched sympathy.
“The Wake traded in prisoners.” Her hand stung with the urge to reach out to him.
“Did they also trade you? Did Lord Avon trade you—his only son, his only heir—to a demon?”
“Promise me, Leena, that you will not seek him. Hargreaves.” His voice was at war with his body. Leena could see he was trying to sound calm, but the clench of his fist and the hardness of his shoulders gave him away.
She continued, unable to comprehend the cruelty of his past. “Is that why you have those ledgers? Is that why you collect confessions? For them? For the demons?”
He took her by the shoulders, his thumbs brushing her collarbones. “Promise me. Do not seek the Wake.”
The horror deepened in her throat, scorching her. She could not tear her wild gaze from the ferocious set of his face.
Leena could not find a homeland on any map, but she’d found it in her father’s booming laugh, in his kind hands, in the brown eyes she’d known from the moment she was born. And what St. Silas was asking of her would inevitably turn her into an exile again.
He shook her lightly. “Not just for my sake.”
“I promise never to reveal a word about you.” Leena repeated the oath in a whisper, much like kneeling at the altar before a holy Saint.
His words were vehement, a low command. “Promise for yourself.”
She stepped away from him, already feeling the loss of the warmth of his hand on her skin. She walked toward the light snow, the dropping temperature sending goosebumps over her spine.
She was silent as she bent forward, slowly unlacing the shoes that St. Silas had brought with him from the beach.
It was only when she wore them that she turned back to face him once more.
“You seek to reclaim a home, my lord. Well, so do I. But I won’t seek the Wake until we’ve concluded our business.
” She nodded at him. “We should head back now before it turns fully dark.”
He didn’t immediately follow her into the open air. Leena took her first steps into the freshly fallen snow, the twilight obscuring her footsteps as she started to climb her way back, her heart immeasurably heavy.
What she left behind in that cave was yet another promise—to herself this time—that she would survive this, no matter how painful, no matter how never-healing the wound would be. Unlike ill-fated Moira, she would eventually walk away from Bramwell Avon without turning back.