A coarse growl rumbled from him and she tentatively lifted her pained lids.
No expression of pity or disgust scored his features, only unabashed fury, lips torn back in a snarl, fist scrunching, gaze raging like a Treloor midsummer bonfire.
“J-Jack?”
Fearsome eyes met hers. “If that fiend lives still, then you have my word, he will die a thousand deaths for this evil.”
Oh.
His fist unclenched; she saw half-moons in his palm, and his unsteady finger reached out to trace the scarring above her right breast.
F T – the letters carved deep, less raw than once but still a livid scorch to her skin.
“You…you couldn’t tell they were letters until some time had passed,” she rasped, words stronger now the worst was over. “He cut so deep and the stitches were…” She couldn’t bear to remember the agony, the laudanum they’d dosed her with, Father holding her down, Ruan crying, the devil doctor and his burning needle.
“Tam–” Now it was Jack’s voice that caught.
“The stitches were ragged,” she stammered, “skin so torn and bloody like…frenzied slashes.”
Endless weeks had become months as infection had set in, and when finally the skin had begun to heal, the scars still aflame, she’d ceased looking, ceased wishing them away in the mirror. Covered them. Refused to think of them. Think of him.
“I rarely looked at my reflection so didn’t see the wound heal, see what had emerged.”
A curse spilled from him. One she didn’t know so it must have been foul.
“It was Lowdy,” she whispered, “who recognised the slashes as letters or maybe…initials, but it seemed unimportant by then.”
No words, he simply stared, and she could bear it no longer, the silence, the compassion, the pity, and so began to draw up her gown with fumbling fingers.
Suddenly a hand grasped, hauling her forward, velvet softness meeting the damaged skin above her breast, and her eyes snapped shut.
With mind ablur, Jack traced the ragged outline with his lips, heard a sob, continued, never to cease.
The whoreson had marked her, as though his animal to brand and claim, the agony, the blood loss she’d suffered as she’d lain unconscious in that damp cave for hours, her beloved lying dead by her side – two stone effigies in a rock-cut church.
When Tamsyn had tugged her bodice down, he’d thought heaven had taken him. Then his gaze had shifted, hellish rage igniting, wicked and blistering.
Yet he’d seen the anguish on Tam’s beautiful face, realised his destructive temper held no place this night. Instead, he’d battled to quash it, breathed deep and sought peace. Sought life.
Now drawing back from her skin, he encountered eyes so fiercely closed that ridges had emerged on her lids, tears seeping beneath the gold-tipped lashes to trail her cheek. He pressed another kiss and stared at those scars.
They represented cruelty, death and fear. He would change that forever.
He would twist it, turn it upon its head.
“Feathered Thorn,” he murmured.
Blue-soaked eyes unlocked. “What?”
He traced the letters again, felt her shudder. “These are no scars of darkness, Tamsyn, but of victory and life, and as such, you should make them part of you, part of who you are.”
She stared at him dismayed, and he realised he wasn’t explaining himself well at all, the silver-tongued libertine making a botch of it.
“You must embrace them and break the bonds that tie that fiend to them.”
“They’re so ugly,” she cried. “You don’t under–”
“No, Tamsyn, they are not ugly.” Reaching out, he began to pull the pins from her hair. “They are part of a beautiful whole, beautiful within and without. No more will they represent that evil. He may have carved them but now they represent…the Feathered Thorn, the winged creature you adore, the one we watched that night, darting free and wild.”
