8. Chapter 8

Three more days she'd managed to avoid Callum.

She'd written Thomas several letters, still pleading her case—that she was in no danger and Callum wasn't necessary.

None of them had been answered.

The likelihood of getting rid of Callum anytime soon was slim, what with Thomas's notorious stubbornness. So this was the next best option.

Avoidance.

She'd managed that very thing, day after day. Telling Callum after breakfast she was drowsy and going back to bed, then veering out the eastern door. Slipping out of the library when he was talking with her butler, Mr. Flourin, about an impending storm. Outright telling Callum to meet her at the stables for a ride after she changed into her riding habit, and then scampering out to a trail in the forest instead.

His glowering face when he found her each and every time didn't even faze her anymore. It was actually somewhat endearing, the simmering rage vibrating under his skin when he would finally set eyes on her.

For as brutal as he appeared when he was vexed by her, there was not any true, vicious malice in him. She hoped.

After yesterday and slipping away from him three times, she almost figured he'd given up on traipsing after her. She wasn't worth the effort. Exactly what she'd been telling him during dinner every night.

So when she had her boots in her hand and slipped in the east door of the manor, she wasn't expecting Callum's hulking form to be waiting in the shadows of the corridor.

"It's dark out. Where have you been?"

She jumped at his voice—his voice that wasn't pitched to his usual bark.

No, this time, his voice was low, lethal. Something she'd never heard from him before.

Setting her brightest smile on her face, her voice went sweet as she attempted to move past him in the corridor. "None of your business."

He caught her arm as she darted past him, stopping her cold. His grip tight, his fingertips dug into her muscles. He leaned down over her, his words slow and low. "You cannot continue to disappear on me like this, Nemity."

"Why not? It suits me rather fine. Thomas is the one that wanted you here. I did not."

"I've asked you time and again to cease this…this…this infantile game you are playing at hiding from me at every corner." The growl in his words was unmistakable.

He'd reached his limit. Finally.

All he needed was a few more pushes to topple him over the edge and he would leave her, leave Springfell. Leave in disgust, yes, but he would leave.

Her gaze dove down to his hand gripping her arm, then lifted to him as she batted her eyelashes. "Infantile?"

His lips pulled tight. "Yes. Infantile, immature, foolish."

"Or maybe I just don't like you hovering over me."

"Or maybe you're a spoiled rotten chit that needs to be locked in her room."

"Or maybe you're an overbearing ogre with nothing better to do than make my life miserable. You don't need to be here, Callum. Go. Go to Ravenstone Castle. Go to London. I don't care. I'll tell Thomas to pay off your debts and he will. At this point I don't think he cares if he marries me off or if I die, as long as I'm no longer his responsibility."

He seethed in a breath. "If he wanted you dead, why in the world would he bother to have me here? I'm here to keep you safe, and you're making a mockery of it."

She glared up at him. "How many times do I have to tell you? What Thomas thinks is safe and what I think is safe are very different things."

"No, they're not. There is one route and one route only, and that is the cautious route after you were abducted. It isn't too much to ask, it isn't outside the realm of common sense. Thomas hired me because he's doing the bare minimum to keep you alive and well. While you're running around here without a care for your own safety when you don't have the first clue as to what can happen to someone like you."

"Someone like me? What does that mean?" She dropped her boots to the floor, ready to wedge her arm out of his grasp.

He leaned over her, the rage simmering below his skin starting to bleed out. "It means you are small and weak and easily overpowered and you never look around at your surroundings to make sure they are safe. You wander through life assuming—no, I don't even think you are assuming anything, I think you just believe it to your core—that someone is always watching out for you. That someone is going to save you from yourself. You don't know the cruelty that the world has in store for someone like you."

Her head snapped back, stung. The ass didn't know the first thing about her. "I don't?"

"No."

Her top lip curled, a sudden boiling ball of anger surging into her chest. "You don't know the first thing about what I do or don't know."

His voice rose to match her own. "You don't know anything of the horrors. If you did, you wouldn't be acting this way."

"No. You do not get to tell me who I am, what I know." She yanked her arm free from his grip, stumbling a step backward with the force, her voice pitching in a scream. "For I know exactly the cruelty this world holds. I saw my mother gutted—a knife splitting her open. I saw her die slowly. Blood pooling around her. I saw that."

Her hand thumped onto her chest with every other word. "I was the one that felt the life in her blood soaking into my fingers, knowing I couldn't do anything to save her. I'm the one that had to watch the tears in her eyes when she told me she loved me for the last time. Told me to never bow, never settle. I'm the one that lived that horror. So yes. Yes. I damn well know what this world can do to someone weak and ignorant and stupid like myself."

His face had shifted from rage to shock in a matter of seconds. "Nem?—"

"No." Her hand flew up to stop him. "Knowing what this world can deliver—what evil can do—and living in fear of it are very different things. And I will never…" Her eyes closed, her head shaking. "I will never, as long as I have breath in my body, choose the fear. I do so, and I fail my mother. I fail her in everything she taught me, in everything she was. She was a beautiful diamond that embraced life—on her own terms—and she made damn sure I did as well."

She whipped around and ran down the corridor, tears blinding her as she took a right and aimed for the closest servants' stairs. Fumbling with the small doorknob, she yanked the door open and stumbled into the tight, dark space, then sank onto the second step, leaning against the wall, tears streaming down her face.

She heaved a breath. Then another one.

She'd never told anyone that.

How she'd watched her mother die.

That her mother was alive when she'd entered the room.

Mrs. Jorge had travelled back to Springfell with her that day, instead of travelling with her mother. Mrs. Jorge was the one that had found Nemity curled into her dead mother's side. Pulled her away. Held her.

But even Mrs. Jorge didn't know Nemity had watched her mother die.

Had heard the gurgled breaths, the last fight for life in her lungs. In her eyes.

She'd wanted to live so badly. She had so much still to tell her. Nemity could see it in her eyes, and then watched it all…just…slip…away.

She'd never spoken a word of it, of those moments twisting between the planes of life and death with her mother. It was her time to hold just to herself, for she could never afford to let it bleed outward.

Except she just had.

She crumpled over, pulling herself into a little ball, heaving sobs wracking her body as her mother's blood washed everything in her mind a tinge of red.

Out of nowhere a hand on her back.

A thick hand. Warm. Fingertips curling into her.

She didn't look up. Couldn't.

Couldn't bear to face the pity in Callum's eyes.

A handkerchief appeared, wedged in just under her fingertips.

And then the warm hand disappeared, footsteps receding and the door to the staircase closed.

Leaving her be.