Chapter Sixteen. A Spot of Golf

C HAPTER S IXTEEN

A Spot of Golf

“KEEP your voice down!”

I startled awake, rubbing my eyes, trapped in that liminal space between dream and reality.

“I’ll do what I bloody well please, Owen. As you’ve always done,” the second voice said.

Not a dream then . Blinking in the dim morning light, I looked around my room half expecting to find the arguing pair standing at the foot of my bed—but there was no one there. Which meant the voices were coming from the hall or Mr. Owen’s room. My money was on the latter.

The voices grew quiet again as I padded my way to the door, placing my ear to the wood.

“I will not allow it. Do you hear me?” Mr. Owen said.

The other speaker was quieter, his voice unfamiliar. A male with a deep Scottish burr—which fortunately limited the number of people it could have been. “You shouldn’t have come back here…” There was muffled silence as I strained to hear more. “… her blood will be on your head.”

Whose blood?

There was a rattling of something from beyond the door as I pressed myself tighter against the panel, desperate to hear more.

“And you’ll kill me too? Because you don’t agree with my methods.”

“I’ll kill you because you deserve it, you great big bastard. Now get out and leave her alone! She’s mine to care for.” Mr. Owen growled.

“As you cared for Mariah? We all know what happened there, brother.” There was slight scuffling from the other side, followed by the slamming of a door loud enough I winced.

I pushed open the door between our rooms. “Is everything all right?”

“Ruby…” My name came out almost a sigh as he looked me over from head to toe. “You should be asleep.”

“I heard a crash.” He was holding a dinner knife in his hand, knuckles white.

“It was nothing, go back to sleep, my lamb.” His voice was tender, but his jaw remained tight.

I took a step backward and nodded, not at all sure what to make of what I’d witnessed.

“I heard voices…”

A flicker of guilt crossed his face. “Nothing for you to worry about. I have it in hand. You will be safe here. I promise you that.”

My gaze dropped to the knife in his hand. “Are you certain you’re all right?”

“Go back to bed,” he repeated. There was a steel edge in his voice that I knew better than to question, so I returned to my room.

Despite what he said, something was terribly wrong.

As I wasn’t going to be getting any more sleep this morning, I had better get started finding out what that something was. I dressed myself in a rather fetching hunter-green drop-waist dress and started for Ruan’s room to tell him what I’d overheard this morning and to see if he could make any more sense of it than I.

Just as I approached his door, I spotted the White Witch standing in the threshold between his room and the hall. Her unnerving amber eyes fixed upon me. “He is gone, Morvoren.”

“Gone?” A frisson of tension crawled up my spine as I peered into Ruan’s empty room. “What do you mean gone ?”

“As in he is not here. But I was looking for you.” She lifted her hand, the brightly colored bracelets jingling with the movement. I did not pause to wonder why she would look for me in Ruan’s room at this hour. “The other medium. She is not what she seems.”

I let out a strangled sound at the thought of adding this medium to Mr. Owen and Mr. Sharpe—or Elijah—whichever one he might truly be. This place was a den of deception masquerading as a resort.

A strange look of sympathy crossed her icy features. “None of us are who we pretend to be. Some simply do not know what they are, others are afraid of their truth, others still are afraid of what that truth might mean. We should pity them, Morvoren.”

Fabulous. The White Witch was now giving me mysteriously phrased life lessons. “Do you know who she is, this other medium? Is she connected to Mr. Sharpe, the hotelier, at all?” The image of the pair of them on the bridge returned to my mind. They certainly looked acquainted, yet there was fear in her face and Ruan had sensed the same.

“I am not certain. But I do not believe she is Russian. I will keep looking. We must find the answers you seek and you must leave soon. Quickly, before what I have seen comes to pass. That vision must not happen.”

Right. Before I kill Ruan. I sighed in frustration. At least she wasn’t repeating that dire warning anymore and was being moderately helpful. I should be grateful for small mercies. “Thank you. I mean it.”

Her head cocked unnaturally toward the corridor behind me. “Someone comes, Morvoren. Hurry. Go before they find you.”

I saw no one. “What is it you sense?” But when I turned back to face her, the White Witch had disappeared and the air before me smelled vaguely of lightning. Lovely. This was precisely what happened when dealing with witches.

U NABLE TO FIND Ruan in the castle, I went outside to clear my head, pulled by some sort of unearthly call. Was it the water? I’d always loved the seaside, spending as much time in the ocean as possible—even to the point of having built a bathing pool in Mr. Owen’s rose garden back in Exeter. But this was more than that—much more.

The October wind was crisp and the sky bright and clear as I set off across the pasture. The early morning birdsong was periodically punctuated by the distant crack of a shotgun and the shatter of clay targets. I pushed through the reeds, traipsing down into the thick mud near the water’s edge. I was grateful for my boots, as the soles of my feet still ached from the thorns and brambles I’d walked over the night before.

This was where Ruan had found me. Not ten feet from where I’d pulled Lucy from the lake. It had to mean something, didn’t it? Though more likely than not, this place was simply driving us all mad. Mr. Owen’s changing moods, Ruan’s inability to control his powers, my returning dreams—could Manhurst itself have something to do with it? Perhaps Mariah hadn’t run away at all—she’d simply been driven mad.

I swallowed the thought down, unwilling to even think that a place could have such power over man. The lake was still as a painting with golden light coming through the white clouds, reflecting on the mirrorlike surface. The slight indentation of where my body had been pressed into the mud by Ruan’s remained. As did the tracks we made—his and mine—on our way back to the castle.

And that was when I saw the second pair of tracks.

Once again, we were not alone.

Her blood will be on your hands, Malachi had said to Mr. Owen this morning. Had it been me that they were discussing?

Had my mysterious follower watched me go into the water as they had Lucy, waiting on me to die? Or were these the prints of whoever was on the bridge last night, seeking something they thought Lucy had left behind?

I pinched the bridge of my nose, struggling to connect the dots. Someone wanted us at the estate, someone was trying to frame me for the murder of Lucy, and presumably the photographs have something to do with all of it. I could cry—if I were the crying sort. Simply flop down on the mud and weep for all the frustration growing in my chest.

Balling my fist, I started back to the house when I noticed a figure on the bridge. It was dreadfully early for anyone to be awake, but I made my way up the muddy embankment to see who it was. As I reached the bridge, I recognized the woman at once—the youngest medium. She sat on a stone bench looking out over the water, her thoughts a thousand miles away.

She is not who she pretends to be. That’s what the White Witch had said. But who was she? The witch did not believe the medium to be Russian, and considering the number of people who had fled the revolution in Russia, it would be a sensible enough disguise to assume. Or, she could simply be a woman displaced by her own country’s unrest, seeking to start over.

There was only one way to find out which side of the coin was true. The medium was dressed this morning in a pale butter-colored dress with her auburn hair swept back into a delicate knot at the nape of her neck. She looked vastly more peaceful than when I’d seen her here yesterday, angry and afraid and quarreling with Mr. Sharpe. Could Mr. Sharpe be my mysterious shadow? If he truly was Elijah, and I was growing certain he must be, then he’d likely take umbrage with my knowing his identity. But framing me for murder seemed a bit drastic.

Admittedly, I was not the best gauge of character. Mother said it was my nature to love ferociously, claiming it to be a strength rather than a weakness, but I disagreed. My nature had caused me nothing but pain and was part of the reason for my current predicament. If I didn’t care for Mr. Owen, I wouldn’t be at Manhurst at all.

I’d not gotten a good look at the medium before, but up close, she was quite possibly the most beautiful woman I’d seen in my life with the sort of loveliness that only grew with age. Her hair was a medium shade of brown, shot through with strands of gold and copper that shone in the early morning sun—with not a single strand of silver in it, despite the fact she had to be at least a decade older than I. Her skin was flawless, giving me the impression of one of those delicate French dolls I played with as a girl.

“I cannot believe she is dead,” the medium whispered.

If she was Russian, she must not have been there in quite some time as her voice carried only the faintest of accents and her diction was that of someone who had been at the finest of schools. A mark in the White Witch’s column. Now who or what the youngest medium truly was—that was an entirely different question.

I took a step closer and leaned against the rail, crossing my ankles. “It’s a terrible thing. Did you know her long, Miss…?”

She turned the cigarette over in her fingers, studying it intently before patting the bench beside her. “Demidov. Genevieve Demidov. They say you pulled her from the water.” Her voice broke as she turned around. “Thank you for that. It was a kindness.”

“I thought she was alive. I am sorry she wasn’t. I mean to find out who did that to her—who killed her.”

Genevieve let out a surprisingly bitter laugh as she stubbed her cigarette on the bench. “Better you than those two”—she struggled for the word before saying something in Russian I didn’t understand—“who are supposed to be investigating.”

“Are they giving you trouble too?”

She shrugged as a pair of ducks landed on the water behind her, disturbing the smooth surface. “Nothing I am not used to. Women who make their own way often deal with such… men. They think to frighten me into admitting to something. It is strange though.” A flicker of something flashed through her rich brown eyes, the color of a pot of hot chocolate.

“What is strange?”

She looked up at me in surprise, as if I ought to have known what she was about to say. “That they are not looking for the other medium.”

What other medium? She must have seen the question in my face.

“Abigail. Abigail was the third Fate. We had been doing several shows a week, traveling the countryside—shows like the other night. Well…” She winced at the memory. “Not exactly like that night. It had never been like that before.” She flexed her fingers. “The spirits do not usually come, I do not know if it was the stranger’s presence or if it was—”

I straightened, turning to face her. “Which stranger?”

“Hecate.”

“Hecate?” First Abigail, now this? The woman was starting to remind me of Mr. Owen with the way she talked in circles.

She inclined her head back to the house. “The dark-haired witch. She arrived a few days before you, looking for work. She fit into Abigail’s costume. Lucy said that it made sense for her to step into the role. It was important to Lucy that the séance take place no matter the cost.”

The White Witch had a name after all. Hecate . It made her seem more human. “What happened to the other medium? To this… Abigail woman?”

“We do not know. She disappeared. Lucy believed she was murdered—we found her valise on her dresser as if she was about to leave.”

The picture she drew mirrored the one I’d stumbled across in Lucy’s room.

“Packed?”

Genevieve nodded. “Everything was in her case. She’d been acting peculiar before she disappeared. She said she’d found something important, but wanted to be certain what it was.”

“Do you have any idea what she’d found?”

She shook her head. “Lucy went all the way to Edinburgh to seek help after Abigail vanished, but no one would come to Manhurst. No one cared about the disappearance of a woman like us.”

The thought enraged me, and yet I was familiar enough with the situation. It was a sad fact of life that many men considered women disposable. Poorer women, or those who fell outside the proper bounds of society—well, to certain sorts of men, we were a nuisance at best. “And then Hecate appeared…”

She nodded.

“How much do you know about her?” Several swallows on the wing soared up into the early morning sun, out of sight. I wondered briefly if Hecate herself, the White Witch, could be involved in the crime though I quickly pushed the notion away. She wanted to be rid of me; the very last thing she’d do is create a situation in which I was trapped within five miles of her precious Ruan Kivell.

“Not much. The witch keeps to herself. I’m not even certain why she is still here. Hecate is nothing like Lucy. Lucy was a true spiritualist and was patient trying to teach me her ways. She believed the dead used her as a conduit and that she could teach me to do the same. I never put much meaning in it, but it pays the rent and I’ve always been good at reading people. Abigail didn’t have Lucy’s gifts either. No one did and I’ve never met another like her. Not when I lived in Petrograd, Paris, nor Rome.” She stared at the cigarette in her hand as she twisted it between her fingers.

“But you said the other night was different from earlier séances…”

“It was beyond anything I’ve ever seen. I do not know if it was the presence of the stranger, or if the spirits are as angry as Lucy kept warning. She told me that they demanded vengeance. That’s what she said. That the spirits would not be denied their due.”

I drew in a sharp breath. “Do you think that’s what happened here? That the spirits were angry at Lucy for some reason?”

She shook her head, giving me a gimlet eye. “No. I think the spirits told Lucy the truth. I think they told her something that someone here didn’t want known.”

“Why are you telling me all this?”

She sniffed and looked away, picking at the edge of her finely polished nail. “I cannot help myself. There is something about you that makes me…”

I followed her gaze and spotted a group of men coming onto the bridge. I recognized the first instantly. The lithe form of Andrew Lennox and next to him was his father, Malachi. The dreadful man had his stringy gray hair tied back in a queue and looked as miserable this morning as all the other times I’d crossed his path.

His expression turned to pure malice as he spied me. There was no doubt in my mind that he was the person quarreling with Mr. Owen this morning. I noted a nick at his jaw, with dried blood scabbing it over. My mind suddenly recalled the knife in Mr. Owen’s hand when I entered his room.

Distracted by Malachi’s sudden appearance on the bridge, I nearly overlooked the Duke of Biddlesford, who followed behind with easy grace alongside Mr. Sharpe. Sharpe, for his part, kept his distance from me, dropping to the back of the group. I studied every inch of his face for some tell. Some evidence that he truly was Elijah. Perhaps I’d get word from Hari today. That would be a boon.

All four men were dressed for golf, with a pair of young boys of fourteen or more lumbering along with the clubs slung over their shoulders.

“Miss Vaughn!” Andrew’s eyes lit up and he reached out to embrace me. I kissed his cheek in greeting, feeling his father’s barely tethered rage radiating beside him. “How is my uncle this morning?”

The silence that fell on the bridge was deafening. The ill blood between Mr. Owen and Malachi was clearly no surprise to the duke, nor to Mr. Sharpe who wandered on ahead of the group away from my line of sight.

Malachi grumbled to himself as he followed after the hotelier.

“You shouldn’t goad your father.”

“I am genuinely inquiring. Their quarrel is between the two of them. My affection for my uncle is yet another in a litany of things about my life that my father disapproves of.” Andrew paused, turning to look at Genevieve, who was seated on the bench behind me. Had I not known it was her, I would scarcely believe it to be the same woman. The slump of her shoulders, her downcast eyes—she appeared every inch a beleaguered servant and not the sparkling woman who had been speaking with me moments before. It was a remarkable trick.

“Captain Lennox, have you met Miss Demidov?” I asked hesitantly.

She scrambled to her feet, reminding me of an animal that had grown used to being mistreated. Who or what had caused such a reaction in her? I turned quickly to see where Mr. Sharpe had gone, but he was no longer anywhere to be found. Neither was Malachi.

Andrew furrowed his brow and shifted his weight on his cane as he watched her. “Have we met?”

She shook her head, eyes fixed on her shoes. “I must go back…” Her accent had shifted again, to one far thicker than before. She made a polite bow before hurrying back in the direction of Manhurst. Andrew and I watched after her, waiting until she was out of earshot before speaking.

“Do you truly think you know her?”

Andrew frowned. “Apparently not. She looks deuced familiar, that’s all. Though I’m sure it’s nothing. It’s only… Ah, Ruby, where are my manners?” He straightened, holding out his arm to me. “Have you met the duke?”

I hadn’t. Not officially, at least, unless one counted colliding with him in a hallway.

“So we meet again,” the duke said, a faint smile spread across his affable face. “You seem recovered from when we last met.” He tapped his ornately carved walking stick gently on his palm. The carved jade pommel bore a distinct insignia with a stylized thistle, the rich green color catching my eye.

“I hope the inspector didn’t keep you too long for questioning.”

He smiled at me. “An hour at most. It appears my duchess had informed him where I’d been the previous evening. I had no idea she’d already spoken to him, it was simply confirming what he knew. I do not mind. Not if it helps find who harmed that poor old woman.” He looked out over the water. “It was here, where the woman was killed, wasn’t it?”

I nodded. “Yes, Your Grace.”

He made a sound of sympathy and shook his head. “Dreadful business. Tell Hawick I hope to see him at supper, will you?”

“Hawick?” I started to ask, before I remembered that that was Mr. Owen’s name. He was not Mr. Owen at all—he was known to these people as Lord Hawick. “He mentioned he knew you as a boy.”

He smiled, tapping his walking stick. “He had some business dealings with my father. Whenever he’d come out to Rivenly, I’d always be underfoot. I think my father, the previous duke, hoped that Hawick’s more studious habits would rub off. I confess, I did not expect to see him here, but I am glad of it. It has been too long since I’ve had such fine company.”

He glanced over his shoulder, having noticed half the party had moved on. “Ah. It seems they have left us. Shall we, Andy?”

Andrew nodded, staring off in the direction Genevieve had disappeared.

And with that the two men disappeared back over the bridge and out of my line of sight.

I GREW MORE and more confused by the interplay between Mr. Sharpe and Genevieve on the bridge. Combined with what I’d overheard this morning between Mr. Owen and his brother, and Genevieve’s suspicions about Abigail’s fate, I began to wonder exactly how gnarled this knot had become. Perhaps Lucy’s death was the culmination of events, not the beginning of them as I’d initially believed.

Genevieve said the other medium—this Abigail woman—had been packed as Lucy had been. If that was the case, then we now had three presumably dead women, not two. Mariah, then Abigail, now Lucy. I grew ill at the thought.

I checked my pin watch before snapping it shut. It was nearly nine in the morning, as reasonable a time as any to seek out Ruan to see if he’d come to any conclusions in the handful of hours since we’d last spoken. I rounded the corner at the bottom of the back stair and hurried past a legion of uniformed staff, starched and polished to within an inch of their lives and made my way up to the east wing of the castle. I counted the doors, my fingers absently tracing the smooth paper, a geometric treat of jet, emerald, and gold, until I found myself outside Ruan’s. I could get used to relying on him—seeking him out like this.

From down the hall, I heard some of the other guests making their way back to their rooms after breakfast, the voices growing marginally closer. I knocked again, waiting patiently—as the last time I’d gone in without asking I’d embarrassed the both of us.

He didn’t answer. I huffed out a breath. The irritating man was likely holed up with a grimoire. Subtle rustling came from the other side of the door.

I knocked again.

It still didn’t open.

The footsteps behind me grew nearer and I dared not wait any longer, I didn’t need the horrid constable or the inspector to come across me lurking outside a man’s bedroom. They already thought I was Mr. Owen’s mistress, I could only imagine what they’d make of this. I tried the handle and the door opened inward.

I slipped inside, closing it behind me, and prepared to launch in to Ruan on proper etiquette for answering one’s door in a timely manner. However, the room was empty.

Impossible. I’d heard someone rustling around in here only seconds before. Not to mention there was still an indentation on the bed where he’d been, with an ancient Cornish grimoire lying open exactly as I’d expected. Mercifully the pages in that book had not been dog-eared like his medical text.

On the bedside table a cup of tea sat abandoned, steam curling up in the chilly autumn morning. Where was he?

I was about to question my doubt in the existence of ghosts, when a large hand clamped itself over my mouth and I was yanked into the darkness. The great wardrobe door shut behind me with a soft click. I squirmed against my assailant, fully prepared to bite the hand that held me until I caught a familiar verdant scent.

Ruan.

My body instantly slacked against him. Strange that even in the darkness I could be certain it was he, but it wasn’t the first time I’d been in such close proximity to the infuriating man. His breath was hot on my neck as his fingers loosened against my lips. Before I could gather my senses, another sound came from his room. Someone else was there too. For several heartbeats I remained, nestled against Ruan’s chest. His one arm clamped tight around my stomach, his left palm gently over my mouth. I willed away the inconvenient sensations this closeness brought. This was not the time, nor the place to have said sensations.

“Mr. Kivell… Mr. Kivell, are you here? It is important.”

What was Lady Amelia doing here? I had scarcely seen her after she lured me to the orangery. Since then she’d obediently made herself scarce as instructed. If the girl had a lick of sense she’d continue to do so until the killer was caught. Then again, who at sixteen has any sense? I certainly didn’t—having fallen in love with the first honey-tongued would-be bigamist who crossed my path.

At least I’d been marginally wiser the second time around.

Ruan’s chest quaked again in amusement.

Stop eavesdropping.

I squirmed against Ruan’s grasp, but he tightened his hold on me.

Lady Amelia said something softly to herself, before turning and leaving. The door closing behind her. The muscles in Ruan’s palm flinched against my skin in warning to stay silent. He must be making certain she stayed gone. I breathed in against his palm, inadvertently flooding my senses with him. It was entirely unfair how good he smelled.

Several more seconds passed in silence before Ruan released me and I scrambled out of the closet into the glaringly bright morning light of his room. We’d been tucked away with his clothes for probably a half hour. Long enough for my legs to grow stiff. I stretched, smoothing my irreparably wrinkled skirt as he pried himself out of the tight spot.

It was an entertaining sight to behold, with his fingers wrapped around the wooden opening, one leg out and the other still inside. “The great Pellar of Lothlel Green hiding from debutantes in a cupboard.”

Ruan, for his part, was unamused by the situation. He raked a hand through his dark hair, placing much-needed space between the two of us. “I was not hiding. I was…” He prowled to the window, angrily thrusting his thumbs into the waistband of his trousers.

“Just lurking in your wardrobe waiting on me to come by for tea?” The echo of his fingers remained warm on my skin.

“Ruby, I am not amused by any of this,” he snapped, turning to face me. “A woman was killed here three days ago, you’re suspected of killing her, and every time I leave my room I’m being tracked down by every woman between sixteen and sixty like some kind of bloody badger. Do you not have the sense of a hoverfly?”

I sniffed indignantly. “You could lock the door. It keeps them out.”

“Why bother when you’ll pick the lock?”

His words stung more than they should. Surely, he didn’t want to keep me away. “It’s because you’re different. Intriguing. How can you blame them? The parties and scheming of well-bred men out for one’s inheritance or frankly just to get under one’s skirt. It’s all tiresome. I wouldn’t pay them any mind, they’re out for a lark. You’re an adventure for them. That’s all.”

He took a step closer, looking down at me, his eyes bright. “Is that what I am to you? A lark .” The bitterness dripped from the final word. I had struck a nerve.

“Of course not—you’re… I’m simply saying that I understand what they want from you—”

“Do you…?”

I swallowed hard. I ought to take a step back. I really ought to, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

“Believe me, I know what they want too. Gods know I’ve caught my share of their fanciful imaginings since I’ve been here. But that one…” He pointed toward the door, his nostrils flaring slightly. “The girl dresses like a strawberry scone but her mother ought to know the things going on her in her head.”

Bravo Lady Amelia. Honestly, I couldn’t blame her. She had exquisite taste if she was admiring my Pellar. “Ruan… women are allowed to have carnal thoughts too. It’s perfectly normal. Natural even for girls of that age to want to… explore.”

“I don’t mind them having the thoughts, but I’d rather they not have them about me where I can hear them.”

Well, that would be a problem. “Ah. Yes, I could see how that would be uncomfortable.”

He raised his brows to underscore the point. Suddenly he recalled something, slapping his hand on his thigh before moving to his grimoire. He flipped to the cover and pulled out a telegram, handing it to me. “You were right about your solicitor.”

My heart leapt in my chest. “I told you Hari could work miracles.” I quickly scanned the missive. Short and to the point. Hari was never one to mince words—a trait I valued above all else in a friend.

Ruby, I regret to inform you I have no conclusive news at this point. I traced your acquaintance until 1917 when he disappeared entirely from the record. Prior to his disappearance he’d embarked upon an ill-advised business venture with one C. S. Something to do with manufacturing during the war. The business was a front. Though I have not been able to determine what for.

C. S. My blood ran cold. That meant Elijah had been working with Christopher years after I left New York. I bit hard on the inside of my mouth, willing myself to read on.

There was a messy affair in the summer of ’17 where it appears that your acquaintance was utterly ruined. His reputation in tatters, some believe he took his own life, though no grave or death record has been found. He simply disappears along with approximately two hundred thousand American dollars. C. S. however escaped scandal-free and is currently rumored to be considering running for governor of the state of New York. I will continue to investigate. Would you like me to look into the business dealings of Mr. S.?

Your faithful friend (and occasional solicitor)

Hari

Good God. Could it be that Elijah ran off with the money and has hidden himself away here in Scotland? The timeline matches, but a great deal could have occurred between 1917 and 1922.

Ruan touched the scar on my brow with his thumb gently. “Is that the news you hoped to hear?”

“I don’t know what I hoped to hear—but it helps to know it’s plausible.” And that I’m not going mad. I took a half step back toward the door, where it was safer and a girl could gather her thoughts. “I talked to Hecate this morning.”

Ruan’s eyes widened at my use of the White Witch’s name.

So you know her true name too.

He nodded again, resting his hip on the windowsill. “She thinks that she can help me, teach me how to control it.”

It. The breath left my lungs as my brain started to trip along through all the things I knew about him and the strange power he could not control. He had saved me with his abilities in Cornwall, and yet he had no idea how it was done. “Do you know why she’s here?”

He shook his head. “I have suspicions. The old ones do as they will. Hecate is no different. She comes and goes as she pleases. Her kind do not follow the same laws as we do. She called on me once… back in Lothlel Green not long after you left the village.”

My eyes widened, though I had no right to be surprised that he had dealings with the White Witch. “And you didn’t think to tell me?”

He whipped around on his heels, green eyes flashing almost silver. “I didn’t plan to see you again. To be close to you like this—having you invade every bloody sense I possess!” He raked his hand through his short hair before growling. “Gods, it’s enough to drive a mortal mad if he isn’t there already.”

My jaw dropped, an unpleasant sensation settling in my throat.

His voice cracked as he took a step closer. “You terrify me. I do not know what lives between us. I have seen more things in this world than I care to admit but I cannot explain what this is.” He reached for my cheek, his tone tender enough to break a girl’s heart. “You are everywhere and everything to me, flooding my senses and I cannot understand it. Not one bit. I have read every book I can get my hands on. Scoured every source looking for a reason for this inexplicable thread between us and for this power you hold over me—” His breath hitched. “I don’t know if…”

“Don’t know what…?” My voice trembled as his thumb trailed its way down my jaw to the hollow of my throat and for half a moment I thought he might kiss me, but the moment passed.

He closed his eyes. “I simply don’t know. Go, Ruby. I’ll come to you and we can talk about whatever it was you came for. I just need a moment…”

My limbs grew weak. But I nodded and cowardly ran away.