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Chapter Three
Tamsin
Blake’s words ring in my ears with heartbreaking finality. Heat blazes off of him. He’s mad, and I can’t blame him. But when he turns to go, I grab his arm.
“Blake, wait!”
He turns, slowly. Those sapphire eyes hit me, and I have to take in a steadying breath. I didn’t think it would be this hard. Which, in retrospect, is dumb as hell. All these years I’ve been telling myself he was just a childhood sweetheart, nothing more, someone firmly in my past. Someone I’ve gotten over.
I’m a gigantic liar.
Standing there in the moonlight, he looks like an ancient god from legend. Pale skin, raven hair. He’s bulked out, not the lanky teen he was before, and he has a shadow of stubble on his jaw that’s incredibly sexy. But my stomach isn’t doing flips because he’s gorgeous. It’s his magic wrapping around mine. I can feel his spirit wolf, can taste the steel and stone of his power. We’d merged our magic once, in the most spiritual of ways. There’s a familiarity about it, like part of my own essence that’s been missing this whole time.
“I don’t think we have anything else to discuss,” he growls, looking down at my hand on his arm like he’s going to bite me.
I withdraw my hand slowly. “Just—please know I wouldn’t have come back here, stirred everything up again, if it wasn’t absolutely vital. I don’t take it lightly.”
“Well, clearly you don’t even trust me enough to tell me what’s going on. That says a lot, Tamsin.” His eyes flash.
“It’s for your own good,” I say. “The less people who know I’m here, the better.”
Blake throws his hands in the air and begins to pace again. “It’s one thing for you to come back here, but then to act like I’m some stranger?”
“I—I just didn’t want to start anything since I’m going to be leaving again. Soon, hopefully. I have to get back to Manhattan.”
He spins, locking me in that azure gaze again. “So, nothing has changed in all these years? It’s been two decades, Tamsin. Surely you realize now it wasn’t your fault what happened to your parents.”
My heart stops and I close my eyes. This is exactly what I’d wanted to avoid. Diving into memories that are far too painful to process.
“I should have been able to heal them,” I say through gritted teeth, my eyes still closed. “My magic failed. I failed.”
And there it is. The reason I’d bound my magic and fled to Manhattan. Early on, even as a child, my magic made me a strong healer. I’d mended broken bird wings and rabbits whose legs had been caught in traps. At the age of twelve, I’d begun to apprentice with Nessa, who’s the best healer in our coven. But then, when I needed my magic the most, the day of the accident, it failed me. It hadn’t been enough to save them. I’d sworn that day to abandon magic, as it had abandoned me, and I’d left for Manhattan the next morning. Ever since, I’d devoted my life to healing people through science and medicine.
Blake reaches out and runs a finger down the side of my cheek, lifting my chin. “Their injuries were too severe. Not even modern medicine could have saved them at that point.”
“We’ll never know, will we?” My voice shakes as it comes out.
“I wish you would trust me,” he says, his voice a low rumble. His Scottish brogue is doing strange things to my heart. “Let me help you with whatever’s going on.”
“I do trust you. I trust you not to tell anyone that we’re here.” I take in a breath, summoning my inner doctor to keep my voice steady and professional, and then I say, “And I trust you to let me work in peace. I need to focus on Luciana.”
His face storms over. “I can do that. It’s no doubt for the best that we don’t see each other.”
“No doubt,” I say with a nod.
This time he doesn’t say goodbye. He simply turns and stalks across the moorlands toward the lake. After a few dozen yards, he shifts back into wolf form and breaks into a run, creating a tremor across the earth.
I watch him go, feeling a tightness crushing my chest and cracks forming through my heart. How had I ever thought I could handle coming back here?
But I truly didn’t have a choice. Luciana is all that matters. Especially because I’d abandoned her, too, in the same horrible way I’d left Blake. Fled to New York after our parents died. Shut her out because she reminded me of them, and of magic, and of home. We hadn’t spoken more than a handful of times in the last two decades. And now, because of me, she’s been turned into a demon. I have to cure her. I have to. Because otherwise, I’ll never get to tell her how sorry I am. For all of it.
I call on every ounce of willpower and resolve in my body, and I pull myself together. Then I turn and make my way back to the house. Blake Blackstock is the least of my problems. I don’t have time to worry about him.
When I get back inside, I go check on Luciana and my other patients. Ainsley is there watching over them. With her pale skin and red hair, for a half moment when I enter the room, I think she’s my friend Ven. Ven and her boyfriend Ryder helped me escape the Night Guild’s secret lab. Ever since that day two weeks ago, we’ve been texting each other updates. Ven is a member of the Raven Society, the largest society of witches in the world, and she’d tapped into her contacts there to help me make it here to Scotland. We’re also trying to keep an ear out for what the Night Guild is planning next. So far, it’s been eerily silent.
“Hey,” I say to Ainsley. “I didn’t mean to stick you with demon-sitting duty. Sorry about that.”
Ainsley offers a warm smile. “It’s okay. I figured you needed to see him.”
