“Yes, Daddy.” I snicker, drunk on steeped herbs and something hot and fizzy within my veins.
A smile slips onto his lips as he tucks the blanket beneath my sides.
The room feels warmer, cozier. The tea is working, dulling the pain, blending my thoughts into soup.
Yum, soup. Whatever he’s making smells so good.
Maybe it’s magickal soup that will open a portal and take me back to my real job.
I’m not the cure. I can’t even present a thoughtfully planned, winning idea to a client.I snort, and Kane looks at me like he did when I asked about outlets.
“This is all a mistake,” I mumble, the words thick on my tongue.
“Magick doesn’t make mistakes. The Tower doesn’t make mistakes. You were chosen,” Kane says with unwavering certainty, his voice a steady anchor in the storm of my thoughts.
“How? Why?” I manage to ask through the confusion and fatigue.
“Things fall through the realms. Talismans. They find the help they need and bring it back.”
“Talismans?” The word triggers a memory, razor-sharp and sudden.
The card!
I should have never followed the advice of a self-help book and done something unexpected. Then I wouldn’t have ended up in Luna’s Twilight Tarot and Healing Arts with a dick in my face and an enchanted tarot card shoved into my hands.
“The woman on the tarot card. She’s the—the—”
“The Empress.”
“Did you see her too?” My head lulls back against the stiff pillows. I’m melting, drifting back under, the warmth of the fire and the soothing rhythm of his voice lulling me to sleep. “I don’t want to have six children.”
“I shall keep that in mind.”
“Don’t leave.” The words sound distant and borrowed as sleep curls its petals around me like a closing bud.
“I won’t.”
Even as exhaustion pulls me into its black embrace,my thoughts spin chaotically. I plot and plan in the hazy space between wakefulness and sleep, combing through every partially read article and clickbait headline filed away in my memory for a way out of this mess and back home.
Eight
When I wake up again, the fire is nothing but smoldering embers as daylight filters through the windows. This time, when I sit up, I’m pain-free. More than that, I feel so great that I wouldn’t hesitate to be front row in a spin class.
The chair in front of the hearth is empty, and Kane’s nowhere to be seen. Confident I’m alone, I shuck off the coarse woolen blanket and tentatively reach for the dressing wrapped tightly around my waist. Dried blood flakes off the fabric and scatters onto the lumpy mattress as I unwrap layer after layer. Finally, the bandage falls away. I suck in an astonished breath and trace my fingers along the delicate shimmering-gold line where the brutal knife wound used to be. The tip of my finger skates against the soft, smooth scar. Like a velvet brushstroke, the gold glints in the sunlight, beautiful and surreal.
The door to the cottage creaks open, and Kane steps over the threshold carrying a leather pouch weighteddown in the center. A warm breeze blows in around him, bringing with it the earthy scent of rain-soaked dirt and a faint hint of pine. Light and shadows fall across his face, enhancing the sharp line of his nose, the fullness of his mouth.
Shit, he’s gorgeous.
Like I haven’t been almost completely naked in front of him for the past however many days, I rush to wrap the scratchy wool blanket around me, fashioning it into a lumpy, unflattering dress.
He lifts a single black brow, and the corner of his mouth twitches before settling back into an unreadable mask. “As I said, you needed rest and magick. Perhaps next time, you won’t fight me.”
“There won’t be a next time,” I say, crossing my arms over my chest.
“No?” Kane smirks as if keeping a secret and kicks the door closed to stride toward the fireplace. He sets the bag on the mantel before grabbing an armful of split logs and tossing them onto the spent timber like they’re hollow sticks. He strikes a match, and just like before, he whispers to the flame and throws it onto the wood. The fire instantly crackles and pops, roaring to life.
“That’s magick, isn’t it?” With one hand, I point to the flames, while I dip the fingers of the other inside the layers of blanket to find my gilded scar.
