AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Round. Copper.
He stopped worshipping her breasts and lifted the pendant. There was something very familiar about the design on the pendant. “Is this...the Minerva coin I chose for you?” he asked, his heart filling with pride that she wore his parting memento around her throat, hidden between her breasts.
She snatched the coin away from his hand and backed away, pulling up her bodice. “Yes. But I don’t wear it for sentimental reasons.”
Gown fastened now, necklace hidden. Heart hidden. Her expression solemn and face shadowed.
You hurt her. You betrayed her.
Stop wishing that she remembered you as the boy who believed in love and happy endings.
She smoothed a hand over her hair. “I wear the coin to remind myself never to trust anyone ever again.”
Her voice so flat and emotionless.
“Good.” He adjusted his shirt. “People aren’t to be trusted.”
“Believe me, I don’t trust anyone except myself. And I have the coin and the scar to remind me of why.” The bitter edge to her words sliced through his heart.
Literal scar. He’d traced the edge of the faint ridge along her breastbone as they kissed.
“I have a scar along my breastbone,” she clarified.
And because he had to feign no knowledge of her life, even though he knew far more than she thought he did, he asked, “You have a scar?”
“Yes, and I’m happy to tell you how I received it. I’m not ashamed of it. It happened in London. I was nineteen, walking by myself through a marketplace in Whitechapel, proudly carrying the dagger that Lady Catherine had gifted to me. I thought I was so invincible with that dagger at my hip.” She laughed briefly. “I was dreadfully young and naïve.”
She fell silent.
“If you don’t want to relive the memory you don’t have to.”
“A man appeared out of nowhere, dragged me down a side alley and pulled the knife from my belt and turned it on me. Held it to my throat and demanded all my money.”
Again, he had to feign ignorance. “That must have been terrifying.”
“It’s true what they say.” She lifted her hand in front of her face. “Scenes from your life do play before your eyes like a theatrical production when you face the prospect of death. I remembered Edgar holding my hand and leading me into the bathing pond when we were children and I was frightened of the water.”
When Raven had lain in that church in Athens he’d seen Indy’s face but it hadn’t been a memory. It had been a fantasy from a different life.
“I didn’t want to die,” she whispered.
He reached for her hand. He couldn’t not touch her when her voice was laced with so much suffering. He wanted to fold her into his arms.
“I thought about all of the things I would never do.” Her grasp around his fingers strengthened. “I surrendered what little coin I had. I asked him not to kill me. I’d like to say I had a plan to break his hold and make my escape, but I didn’t. I did try to run but he caught me easily and dragged me deeper into a narrow passageway between two buildings. Just like the alleyway we were in yesterday.”
“Perhaps we shouldn’t have been mock fighting in an alleyway.”
She shivered. “He sliced a line across my hairline, here.” She lifted the hair from her forehead. “And one along my collarbone. Deep enough to draw blood. I thought it was all over for me. I prepared to fight as hard as I could but I knew I didn’t have the skill or the strength to throw him off. Blood dripped into my eyes and I couldn’t see anything.”
He stroked her fingers. “It sounds like a nightmare.”
“It was. Until something wonderful happened. My assailant lifted into the air like he’d suddenly learned how to fly. Just flew into the air and smacked against the opposite brick wall.”
Raven made a sympathetic sound. He knew how the story ended.
“Someone threw him off me,” she continued. “I wiped the blood from my eyes but I couldn’t see my savior. My assailant lay on the ground. I ran and I didn’t stop running.”
Raven remembered that day so well. He was rarely in London but when he was, he couldn’t help but shadow Indy, just to be close to her.
