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Sinking to her haunches, she worked the lock with the flat of a knife she’d cadged from dinner. One snick of a sprung catch, and she was in.
Within the chest, a bundle of letters tied with a frayed ribbon. A deteriorating set of bound Shakespeare. A fan with one broken stick. A folded length of watered silk. A second of muslin in a pale green. A bouquet of dried flowers.
She placed each item aside as she searched, trying not to think of the woman who once owned this chest. A woman whose life had been torn apart in the initial struggle to bring Arthur back. Now, six years later, Cat refused to let one more Douglas be sacrificed to the obsession. Not if she could prevent it.
A book lay at the bottom of the drawer. Cloth wrapped. Heavy with secrets.
Her heart galloped as she withdrew it, palms moist, fingers trembling. She drew in a steadying breath as the cloth fell away. Tracing the spread-winged bird perched atop its crooked sword, she mouthed the Douglas motto like a mantra—luck favors the strong.
Carrying it to the hearth, she knelt before the grate. Placed paper at the bottom. Added kindling. A few choice pieces of coal from the bucket.
This was it, then. She could taste success.
Again she called forth the mage energy swimming within her blood. A magic passed down from her ancestors in a continuous timeline of Other. Sons and daughters who’d tread the dangerous line between the worlds of Mortal and Fey.
The kindling caught, snapping sparks up the black chimney.
Would she ever hold another child of her own and know she had become a link in a chain stretching into the past? Reaching into the future? Or would her father’s Other blood end with her death? No one left to remember.
The coal caught next. Smoke stinging her nose. Flames licking up over the grate. Reflecting off the gothic irons. Burning high.
She closed her eyes, seeing William’s blue-tipped features, the tiny clenched fists. His name and his face no longer holding the haze of old memory. But new and clean as if she’d only just stepped away from his cradle.
Aidan’s gift to her.
Fed by magic, the inferno raged, the light throwing wicked shadows over the bedchamber walls. Heat burning her cheeks. Watering her eyes.
The diary seemed to writhe beneath her fingers as if it fought its destruction, a thousand screams beating the insides of her skull. Scraping along her jangled nerves. She tried swallowing, but her mouth had gone dry.
“Cat?” The sleepy baritone voice startled her to action.
And before he could stop her, she cast Kilronan’s diary into the heart of the fire.
Aidan’s knees buckled, a chorus of millions battering his brain, leaving no space to think. Even the act of filling his lungs and pushing blood through the chambers of his heart seemed a monumental effort.
The screams faded, leaving one lone voice torching the edges of his mind. A voice he knew as well as his own and one he’d last heard blown on the sour edges of a coastal wind. His father’s ghost shattering him piece by damaged piece.
“Disappointment,” the voice raged. “Failure.”
The accusations slammed into him with the force of a lifetime’s knowledge behind them.
“Worthless.”
“Cat,” he muttered, his throat closing. His fingers curled against the lit fuse making its way to his center along veins dipped in acid. “The diary.”
He closed his eyes against the gut-churning sickness as the earth gave way, sending him plunging through the darkness. Cat’s screams spiraling after.
“He wants to see you.”
Still in her nightclothes, reeking of smoke, and gripping the smoldering diary, Cat rose from her seat to follow Jack.
He bowed her into Aidan’s chambers, his polished courtier airs carrying decidedly rumpled overtones.
“Go easy on her, coz,” his parting words before he closed the door, leaving her and Aidan alone.
He wasn’t in bed. Instead he sat in a cushioned window embrasure, moonlight throwing shadows beneath his dark eyes, glints of glimmering copper into his hair. His expression unreadable.
“You look just as you did when I first met you,” he said. “Like a cornered animal. All prickles and fangs.”
