by Lexi Aurora
“We need to get you inside,” he said, his voice urgent. He climbed down from his horse and lifted me into his arms, settling me in the saddle before swinging up himself. He wrapped his arms around me and took the reins; I melted back against his chest but he held me up while we rode. We began to head back to the mansion at almost a full gallop, and the wind stung my face as we whipped through the forest. By the time we got there, I was cold all over again, despite the heat of Julian’s body against mine.
Julian held me up in the saddle carefully while he swung down from the horse, then pulled me into his arms and carried me into the house. I wanted to protest that I didn’t need to be carried like a child but my jaw was trembling too badly for me to speak. He carried me upstairs and into his bedroom, laying me down in the bed and putting the blanket over my body, which was almost aching from the sudden warmth of the room. He disappeared for a moment and brought more blankets, layering them over my body. He crawled into the bed with me and wrapped his body around mine. I snuggled against him, still shivering.
“Why did you go outside, Fiona?” he asked, the look on his face serious and intense. “What happened?”
“I—I don’t know,” I said. “I was just walking—I don’t know how I woke up or what happened.”
He stared at me for a moment. “Do you remember anything?”
I thought hard, closing my eyes and trying to remember what had happened during the night. I remembered it in flashes—the party, Markwell and his daughter, making love with Julian and falling asleep. I remembered, too, something that happened afterward. I could picture it clear in my mind suddenly, and my heart started racing even faster than it usually did whenever Julian touched me.
“My grandmother,” I said, feeling like I was choking on the words. “She said—she said to go to Markwell’s.”
Julian’s eyes widened. “You saw her in the same way I saw Jason?”
I shook my head. “In a dream. She told me,” I said. “She told me to get away from you.”
“Why?” he asked, his voice going soft.
“I don’t know,” I said, pulling apart from him. My breathing was starting to grow shallow, my whole body reacting with fear. I didn’t remember what my grandmother had said about the reasons I should stay away from Julian, but I knew that I should listen to her. I got out of bed and he stared at me, a look of sadness in his eyes.
“It was just a dream, Fiona,” he said. “Come back to bed.”
“You know it wasn’t just a dream,” I said, not looking at him. I knew if I looked at him, I would do as he said. Instead, I turned away and left the room, walking down the stairs to retrieve my dress. Julian got out of bed and followed me, gently taking my arm before I could leave through the front door.
“You don’t want to do this,” he said softly. “Fiona—“
“I’m sorry,” I said, still avoiding his eye. I left without another word, walking toward the stables to get my horse. I saddled her quickly and climbed on her back, then took off toward my house, trying to hold back tears.
Chapter 19: Julian
I paced in the foyer with a terrible feeling about Fiona leaving and knew that something wasn’t right, but wasn’t sure whether to follow her or not. I didn’t want to scare her, or overwhelm her again; the fear in her eyes when she’d looked at me after she’d recalled the dream of her grandmother had pierced my heart and made it hard to breathe. Our night together had been perfect, sensual and loving, and it had been shattered by the events that seemed to be happening over and over. I took a deep breath, trying to control my heart. I felt shattered and frustrated, anxious and afraid of the things that were happening.
I went upstairs and laid down in my bed, my head spinning. I couldn’t stop thinking about her, about the way she’d looked at me—both when when we’d made love and when she’d left. Everything about Fiona was tempting to me, completely bewitching, and watching her walk away had made me realize that I loved her more than I had ever loved anything.
I tossed and turned for only a few minutes before I sat up and got out of bed, rushing to get dressed. The anxiety—the feeling that something was wrong—was gnawing at my stomach and my chest, making me ache with worry. I had to go to her, just to check that she’d made it home okay. I would only knock on her door to see her face, see her safe and sound, and then leave her if she wanted me to. It didn’t matter if she wanted me to stay or not. I had to know she was safe.
I jogged to the stables and saddled one of the horses, the fastest one among them. I climbed atop him and hurried him away from the stables and toward the road. I drove him faster, knowing he could take it, knowing that his powerful body was made to gallop. I made it to Fiona’s house after what felt like a long time.
My heart started pounding when I saw her front door open. She had been at least a half hour ahead of me and should have made it home far before my arrival. I could see light from a fire in her house, but it was flickering more than it should have been, as if it kept going out and was being relit. I hurried toward the house but the door slammed shut before I could enter. I tried the knob but it was locked, so I tried knocking. There was no answer and no sound. I didn’t see anybody close the door, or anyone on the other side, but the door had swung so fast that I was surprised it hadn’t come off its hinges.
I went to the window to peer inside, but all the curtains were drawn. Frustrated, I went around to the back of the house. I saw Fiona then through the window, saw her with a girl, and my whole body went rigid and tense when I saw the look of calm fear on Fiona’s face.
Chapter 20: Fiona
“It’s going to be okay,” I said, putting my hands up and stepping back from Matilda, who was holding a knife outstretched and pointed at me. “Matilda, put the knife down.”
The girl was crying, huge tears spilling over her lashes and onto her cheeks. Her hand was shaking.
“You don’t know what it’s like,” Matilda said. My heart was racing, my body tense. I backed up from her again but she stepped toward me. My back was almost to the wall; I didn’t have anywhere to go, any way to get away from her. “You’re a commoner. You get to do what you want.”
“What don’t I know?” I asked her, trying to keep my voice gentle and calm.
“Being forced to do things you don’t want to,” the girl spat. “Being forced to marry someone you don’t know.”
“You mean Jason,” I said. She narrowed her eyes at me.
“How do you know that?” she asked.
“I’ve spoken to his brother, Julian,” I told her. She started sobbing again, her whole body shaking.
“The other one I’m supposed to marry,” Matilda said. My mouth opened but I didn’t know what to say. I hadn’t heard anything about a betrothal from Julian and wondered if it was true, and if so, if he had known anything about Markwell’s intentions. Maybe that was why my grandmother had warned me away from him—she was warning me that he would break my heart, that he was meant for another. I tried not to think about it, tried not to doubt him. I didn’t want to believe it to be true. “I thought I had gotten rid of him. I didn’t—I didn’t know he had a brother.”
“What do you mean, you thought you’d gotten rid of him?” I asked her slowly. My whole body went cold all over, knowing what she was about to say.
“I killed that man,” she said, stepping even closer to me. “I killed Lord Castellano. The son. I had to.”
“Why did you have to?” I asked her, shaking. She was only a few feet away from me now and approaching closer, the knife pointed straight at my throat.
“My father was going to force me to marry him,” the girl said. “And now he wants me to marry the other one. I was going to kill him too.”
My mouth fell open in shock. It was then that I saw Julian, who had come in through the back door. He must have broken in somehow—I knew it had been locked before I’d left for the night. He was standing behind Matilda, his finger pressed to his lips as he met my eye. When she noticed me g
lancing over her shoulder, Matilda swiveled around. She let out a cry of surprise and then turned back to me and lunged.
In that brief second, I thought I was going to die. I closed my eyes, but the piercing pain never came. My eyelids flew open to see Matilda soaring across the room as if she had been picked up and thrown by some great force. The instant the girl’s body hit the wall, there was a massive crash as all of the windows in the house shattered at the same time, the glass flying outward. Julian stood frozen in the doorway, his eyes wide, face pale.
“Did you hear everything?” I asked him. He nodded, swallowing. Then he looked over at Matilda. I rushed to her and checked her pulse, felt that it was faint but still beating. I pulled her head into my lap and cradled her there, looking up at Julian.
“What do we do?” I asked him.
“I don’t know,” he said, shaking his head.
Chapter 21: Julian
I knelt beside Fiona and Matilda, putting my hand on Fiona’s arm. I was instantly jerked away from her, pulled back by something invisible that made me lose my balance and fall backward. Fiona stared at me.
“What just happened?” she asked.
“Something pulled me back,” I said. I tried to go to her again but wasn’t even able to touch her before I was thrown back more forcefully to the ground, landing on my back. The blow knocked the wind out of me, and I had to take a moment to catch my breath before I could sit up again.
“Are you okay?” she asked, her brow furrowed in concern. She looked almost panicked as she held the girl in her arms and stared at me. I nodded, rubbing my back.
“I don’t know what’s happening,” I said. For some reason, I couldn’t touch her again. She bit her lip and looked down at Matilda, began to stroke her hair back from her forehead. How she could be so gentle with somebody who had just threatened her with a knife I didn’t know, but the look of tenderness on her face was filled with sympathy. Then she tilted her face to the ceiling.
“Is there a spirit in this house right now?” she asked, her voice filling the room. “Let yourself be known.”
Everything in the room stirred and the fire flickered. It seemed as if everything shifted, as if the whole room was breathing. I stared at Fiona and she closed her eyes, her face still tilted upward.
“What do you want?” she asked softly. There was no response, no stirring. For a moment, she was quiet, barely breathing.
“Fiona?” I asked, when the moment had gone on too long. She didn’t respond, but kept her eyes closed instead.
“Fiona,” I said, moving toward her, touching her arm. Again, I was thrown backward. I cursed in frustration, loud enough to wake Matilda, who stirred in Fiona’s lap. The girl opened her eyes and, much to my relief, so did Fiona, who looked down at Matilda as the girl sat up. Matilda looked over at the knife, which was lying on the floor across the room from her, but I grabbed it quickly and held onto it. Matilda looked up at me and burst into tears again, burying her face in her hands and beginning to sob.
“Matilda,” Fiona said, reaching forward to stroke the girl’s cheek. “It’s okay, honey. Tell us what happened.”
Matilda sniffled, wiping her nose on her sleeve. It was such a childlike gesture that my heart went out to her. The thought of marrying her, the fact that her father thought I would ever agree to wedding someone who was little more than a child, made a rage build up in me that I hadn’t felt before.
“I knew he was coming to see you,” Matilda said, looking at Fiona. “At first I thought you were having an affair. And I was so relieved.”
Fiona nodded, taking Matilda’s hand and squeezing it in her own. “And you found out he wasn’t?”
Matilda shook her head. “I saw you with him at the party,” she said, gesturing to me. “I could tell that you two were together, and I—I knew that I’d have to marry Lord Castellano, that I would have to go to bed with him…”
She trailed off and began to cry again. Fiona squeezed the girl’s hand. I crouched down beside them again, careful not to get too close to Fiona.
“Matilda,” I said. “Do you know what happened to my father?”
Matilda’s bottom lip quivered. Her eyes went wide and she shook her head furiously, her lips pressing into a thin line. It wasn’t hard to tell that she was lying; she definitely knew something, possibly knew what had happened to him.
“You can tell us,” Fiona said. “We’ll help you.”
Matilda shook her head, her jaw clenching. She cowered from me, holding her body far away. I backed up so that I wouldn’t frighten her, realizing she was much more comfortable with Fiona.
“My father is a bad man,” Matilda said in a voice that was barely a whisper. “He—he’s done bad things.”
“What things, Matilda?” I asked her. Fiona glanced at me with a warning look, letting me know she would handle the questions. But Matilda was crying again anyway and wasn’t likely to answer any of them. She had curled herself nearly into a ball as if she was hiding away from us.
I sighed, rubbing my hand over my mouth.
“I’ll go make some tea,” I said, wondering if Matilda would talk more if I wasn’t in the room. I hoped more than anything she would—we all needed answers if we were going to end this nightmare.
Chapter 22: Fiona
I looked at Matilda, who was sitting on the sofa and staring blank-eyed at the fire, which was now flickering normally. The whole house had seemed to settle down, and though I still felt a presence there, it seemed a little calmer. I did still feel the presence though, as clearly as if a physical person was standing in the room. It felt uncomfortable but I wasn’t afraid—whatever it was, whoever it was, didn’t want to harm me. In fact, it seemed more like it wanted to hurt Julian and Matilda. I worried for Julian, who was looking pale and afraid, in pain from having been thrown back, away from me. Something in this house was keeping us apart for some reason, something that didn’t want us to be together.
Julian came back into the room with a tray full of tea, setting it down on the table and carrying a cup over to Matilda. She took it without looking at him, without looking away from the fire. She sipped it without waiting, though from the steam I could tell it was much too hot to drink. I held Julian’s eye as he carried over a cup of tea for me, his fingers brushing mine as he handed it over. That, at least, he seemed to be able to do. It worried me that we couldn’t touch. I no longer felt the fear of Julian that I had felt before I left his house, only pure concern and care for him. I wanted to tell him that, show him through touch, and knowing I couldn’t made me almost ache.
“Julian,” I said as he sat across from me in the chair. “I’m sorry.”
“Please don’t be sorry,” he said, looking at me earnestly, studying my face. “Please don’t be afraid of me. I would never hurt you, Fiona. Never.”
“I know,” I said softly. “I know. I’m not afraid of you, I just—the dream…”
“It’s okay,” he said. He stood up and walked to me slowly, deliberately taking each tentative step. He was able to get close to me before he knelt down to look me in the eye. I was barely aware of Matilda in the room then, barely aware of anything but him. “We’ve all had them. I know what they’re like.”
“What are we going to do?” I asked, glancing at Matilda. We were speaking in low enough voices that I didn’t think she could hear us across the room, and if she was listening she gave no indication that she was paying any attention.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I suppose we’ll have to turn her in.”
I sighed. I didn’t know what to say, what other choice did we have? Though I understood why she would want to be rid of Jason, why she couldn’t stand the thought of marrying him, what she had done had been brutal and serious. The investigators had been hounding the city to find out who’d done it, and I knew that eventually they would find her. It was better for her to turn herself in, explain what she had done and why she had done it.
“Should we tell her father?” I asked.
He nodded reluctantly.
“I think we have to,” he said. “He’ll have to be there.”
“Okay,” I said. I took a long sip of my tea, closing my eyes. When I opened them, Julian was staring at me with a small smile on his face.
“I know this isn’t appropriate timing,” he said in a quiet voice. “But you are the most beautiful thing I have ever seen, Miss Temple.”
I smiled back at him, wanting so badly to kiss him that I felt it in my chest. Instead, I got up and went to Matilda, sitting down next to her on the couch. Julian followed me and stood in the doorway, leaning against it and watching me as I took the girl’s hand.
“We’re going to bring you back to your father,” I told her. She looked at me then, eyes wide in panic, and her breathing started to grow rapid before me.