Her throat closed. She tucked herself against him, his heart steady beneath her palm, wanting to stay like this forever, knowing their time flew too fast.
A faint, wrong draft crept under the door then, cold as the inside of a well. It licked her ankles and withdrew, a serpent’s tongue testing the air for prey.
Chapter Twenty
The draft lingered. Isabella’s skin prickled. Beside her, Rhys tensed. They both felt it, the tentative slither of Catrin’s strength, returning in inches.
“Do you smell it?” Isabella whispered. “Wet ashes and …”
“Roses, soured by rot,” he finished.
Lifting her head, she met Rhys’s gaze. His dark hair lay mussed against the pillow, his mouth softened by what they had just shared, but his eyes had already gone flint-hard.
“We do not have long,” he said quietly.
She wanted to argue, to insist on just a moment more of stolen peace, but the words dissolved. He was right. Catrin would not leave them their reprieve.
“We must not waste it,” Isabella said.
The air itself had altered…charged, insistent, impatient. Rhys swung his legs over the side of the bed, pulling on his trousers with rough, purposeful movements.
“She gathers strength,” he said.
A shiver ran the length of her spine, not wholly fear. Resolve, too.
She had never thought she would know a man’s touch. Always, she had believed such things belonged to other women, that attraction was relegated to the realm of poets, words she read on a page. That love would never be hers.
Yet here it was. Startling. Searing. Undeniable.
She loved Rhys Caradoc. Loved his strength and resilience, the way pain had not broken him but forged him stronger. She loved that he saw her as his equal, not expecting her to be less than she was. She loved his tender caress and his fierce kiss. She loved him.
She dared acknowledge the truth in her heart, in her mind. She would not say it, not now with Catrin waking and the house listening. But the beauty of her love burned bright in her chest all the same.
And if she was to step into the dark, if she was to be conduit and gate and tether, then she would carry that love with her as her anchor. Her gift.
Rhys reached for his shirt and dragged it over his head as Isabella turned away to dress. She fumbled with the laces. He crossed to her and wordlessly set them right. His touch was steady, practical, but his fingertips lingered on the tiny knobs of her spine for a moment. She smoothed his waistcoat flat, fastening the last obstinate button, and pressed her hand to his heart, brief and sure.
When at last her bodice was straight and her skirt fell smooth, she looked up to find him tying his cravat, hair still tousled, eyes hard and sharp. He looked every inch a man ready for battle, not with sword or pistol or saber, but with will and determination.
The quiet between them had no awkwardness. It was a calm stillness, a prelude to what would come.
Isabella gathered Papa’s half of the grimoire while Rhys left to fetch his own. When he returned, they stepped into the corridor, carrying the two halves not as weapons but as guides, an ink and vellum record of those who had faced the darkness before them.
The air shivered and undulated, too cold at Isabella’s ankles, too hot on her cheeks. Somewhere below, a stair tread flexed and settled, the house testing its weight.
“Where?” Isabella asked, lifting the lamp to cast a bowl of light.
“Not the library,” Rhys said, and she felt grateful for that, for his tacit recognition of all the work she had done there and his decision not to bring this battle to a place where she found comfort.
“The nursery?” she asked, thinking of his brother, murdered there by Catrin’s malice and too much laudanum, each breath coming shallower until it came not at all.
“No,” he said after a moment then took her hand. He led her not up toward the nursery, but down. And then toward the north wing.
Barred doors with bolts rusted in place blocked their way. Rhys released Isabella’s hand to work them free, using the poker he had brought from her chamber. Fitting it beneath the lowest bolt, he levered hard until metal screeched and rust flaked away, the bar shifting by grudging inches. The second bolt yielded only when he set his boot to the wall and wrenched with both hands.
At last, the bar clanged down, the sound echoing in the silent, ruined wing. He angled his shoulder to the panel and shoved until the warped timbers gave, the hinges making a long groan as the door swung wide.
The corridor beyond was starved of light, the air stale and fetid. The sconces held no lamps, the plaster marked by black halos of soot. Dust stirred around their ankles, a thin gray mist that made Isabella’s throat itch. Their footfalls made the boards creak and bow.
