“You should have made your presence known,” she cut through scathingly. “You could have said something.”
He shrugged. “It didn’t seem relevant at the time.”
Not relevant? Of course. This was precisely why she’d suppress any desire, melting, any raw urges where this man was concerned. He’d seen her kiss Greyston and he didn’t give a fig. Other than to quiz her now, when he thought the propriety of their fake marriage might be at stake.
She didn’t want to care. Why couldn’t she just feel grateful he wasn’t kicking up a fuss about that kiss?
“Greyston assured me it wouldn’t happen again,” Kelan said.
Her spine bristled at the thought of him and Greyston discussing her, making deals behind her back. For one horrifying second, she wondered if she deserved it. She’d kissed Greyston, passionately, while married to Kelan, no matter how she explained it.
But every single time Kelan had kissed her, had been for one or other of his ulterior motives. This marriage wasn’t real! She did not deserve to be treated like a possession.
“Yes or no, Lily,” Kelan said. “Is there a possibility you’re pregnant?”
His voice was flat. His gaze slammed up against her like a wall of ice. Accusing? Judging? She couldn’t tell.
“No,” she said dully.
“Are you sure?”
“As inexperienced as I may be,” she said, “yes, I’m sure a kiss cannot produce a child.”
She knew that wasn’t what he’d been asking.
He’d wanted to know if she was lying.
And he believed her. She saw it in the subtle changes. The grim line of his mouth eased a fraction. A sliver of the edge shaved off his rigid bearing. His gaze, hard and cold, but no longer slamming up against her.
He stood, crossing the room to lean against the wall, his arms folded. “Then we need to consider that the demon glass might have made you sick.”
“You’ve spoken with Armand?” she said, quite ready for a new subject.
Kelan gave a slow nod. “He said you spent most of yesterday tracking them, searching the demon glass every hour. You know how adversely you’re affected.”
“I deliberately kept my searches short, dipping in and out before I felt ill.”
“Then it could be the frequency,” he said thoughtfully. “Let’s assume the demon glass is poison to your body, tolerable in small quantities. But what if each unnoticeable dose accumulates on top of the last, if you don’t allow enough time to elapse for the previous traces to dissipate?”
Lily suspected she’d made herself physically sick from pure worry. Kelan made sense, too. It was probably a bit of both.
“You may be right,” she said. “I suppose there’s no need for me to be quite that obsessive. It’s just so frustrating, and terrifying, to know they’re out there, but not knowing where, or what they might be up to when I’m not looking.” She gave him a rueful smile. “Poor Armand, he really tried, but I’m useless when it comes to telling one mountain or ravine apart from another.”
“Lily, whatever you give us, however small,” Kelan said softly, almost gently, “is a lot more than I’ve ever had before.”
His words, the way he said it, bathed her spiky nerves in oil essence. This was the other side of Kelan, the other side of the arrogant, imposing man who acted as if he’d never needed anything from anyone, ever, in his life. The rare glimpses that had the power to make her heart stumble.
What had Armand once said? His lordship has always stood stronger alone. And she’d wondered if that was from choice, or because it had always been expected of him. She doubted it would make a difference now. He was the man he’d been made. He’d never bend from his path, not for Greyston, not for her, but he’d invited their help from the start—welcomed it. She’d never seen Kelan as excessively prideful. That arrogance was steeped in necessity, not ego.
Lily took another biscuit from the plate and nibbled on it to fortify her stomach.
“That blasted mountain range can’t go on forever,” she said. This was why he’d come, of course. Not to gaze upon his sleeping wife. Not to get caught up in emotional arguments over irrelevant matters. “I’m going to take a quick peek.”
“Are you well enough?” His brow creased as his gaze intensified on her, searching... “The demons will still be around this afternoon, you know, perhaps after lunch?”
That was the McAllister mentality talking, the lack of urgency that never failed to irk Greyston. But Lily was beginning to understand, and she’d only been at this a couple of months. Kelan had been at it his entire life.
“I’ve learnt my lesson,” she said. “I’ll measure my pace, and my impatience, but I won’t make it through to lunch, even if the demons, and you, will.” She swallowed the last bite of biscuit, then shot him a reassuring smile. “Last night, we left the demons sleeping.”
“Demons don’t sleep. Their human shell looks like a body,” he reminded her, “but functions without many of our liabilities and limitations. They would have set up camp to rest the horses.”
Her smile tightened in dismay. They’ve had hours to commit atrocities while I slept. She swallowed down a lump of anxiety. Let it go. You’ll drive yourself mad, make yourself ill, and then you won’t be any use at all.
Kelan read her like a map. “I doubt they’ve gone far, Lily. Given the terrain you last saw them in, they’d be stupid to risk their horses by setting off again before light.”
“Let’s find out.” She held his gaze for one lingering moment, then she closed her eyes and slipped inside her other self.
The demons had indeed passed out of the mountain range, into a valley of hardy shrubs and stout, stubby trees. The mountain range was still there, at the back of their furious gallop, an undulating series of barren slopes and magnificent peaks that disappeared amongst the low cloud cover at intervals.
“They’ve passed into a shallow valley,” she told Kelan as soon as she’d pulled out. “They’re in a hurry, riding fast. The path they’re on looks like it could be a dried riverbed…it meanders for as far as I could see. And there’s a sharp peak, not very high, perhaps a hillock, some way up ahead.”
Kelan put a hand up. “Start again and slow down.”
Lily closed her eyes, not seeking the demon glass, but to capture the scene she’d left behind. She described the demons, the landscape, the skyline patterns made by the receding mountain range.
Once she was done, Kelan made her do it all over again. He stopped her a couple of times with questions. You didn’t see a lake? A glare in the distance, maybe, that could be water? Any indication of forestry, an area that looks a denser green than the surroundings?
He took her back to yesterday, to the ravines and sheer walls of craggy rock, and he picked at her descriptions with a fine comb. Not that Lily thought it was doing much good. He could ask a hundred questions in a hundred roundabout ways and, to her, it still felt as if she were describing the same rock, the same puckered crack, the same stony slope, over and over.
Then she realised… These were leading questions. Kelan wasn’t formulating a general description from her detail. He already had a picture in mind, and he was trying to ascertain if it matched what she’d seen.
Her jaw slackened as she stared at him. “You know where the demons are.”
“It’s impossible to be certain,” he said.
“But you do have some ideas,” she persisted.
“The Cairngorms…maybe.” He shook his head. “I’m familiar with some of the trails, Cairn Toul and Ben Macdui peaks specifically, but I can only speculate, Lily.”
Lily’s heart skipped a beat.
The tear between their world and the demon dimension extended across the Cairngorm plateau. A weakening in the veil that had, until recently, only been breached by the strongest demons, the Kings of Hell. Initially, Kelan believed the tear was weakening even further, but now he suspected the demon kings were getting stronger, strong enough to piggyback their fo
llowers through the breach with them.
“One of those demons must be Agares,” she said.
“Highly likely,” Kelan agreed. “And the other—”
“—a lesser demon!”
“Or the Winterberry demon.”
Lily looked at him in confusion. “The Winterberry demon is Agares.”
“Maybe and maybe not.” He grimaced, his brow furrowing as his mind worked. “You recall the demon, Saloese, the one from the farmhouse in Glasgow. Saloese had only come through the tear three weeks prior to us discovering and banishing it.”
Lily nodded. She remembered, but she still didn’t see the relevance.
“Now recall the photograph I found in Clitheroe,” he continued. “The Winterberry demon had been masquerading as the Clathornes’ governess two years back.”
Lily connected the dots with a gasp. “The Winterberry demon couldn’t have piggy-backed Saloese through the tear! What does this mean?”
“It means a second demon king. I’ve played around with every scenario, but the fact remains, I don’t know. Saloese was in contact with the Winterberry demon, but as friend or foe? At that point, we definitely had two demon kings on hand, maybe even playing the same game. And now?”
Kelan shoved a hand through his hair. “Either it’s as we thought and the Winterberry demon is Agares. It destroyed its own body to move on, in which case we have two demon kings, Agares and another, roaming the surface. Or Agares is the second demon king and it banished the Winterberry demon in order to take control of the game, in which case we only have Agares to deal with.”
“And you didn’t think to mention this before?” Lily snapped.
“You’re not listening,” Kelan said softly. “There was nothing new for me to tell. We know we’re dealing with Agares, and that’s all I actually know. The rest is supposition and clutter.”
“You’re impossible!” But as she glared at him, the seed of an idea grew, taking precedence over Kelan’s frustrating logic. “What if you’re wrong? What if there never were two demon kings?”
She bounced off the bed, excitement thrumming her veins. “I haven’t been able to see Agares for weeks. Could it have returned through the tear, banished itself, in order to return and bring another follower back with it?”
“Once banished, a demon needs at least a decade to regain the strength and stamina to return.”
Lily wasn’t prepared to dismiss her theory quite that quickly.
“But that’s when the demon is banished against their will; defeated. What if self-banishing doesn’t drain their strength?” She walked up to him, her smile filled with this new hope. “That would explain how Agares has been hiding from me. And how the new demons keep popping up.”
“If that were the case, it’s nothing to be happy about,” Kelan informed her dryly. “The last thing I need is demon kings coming and going at their leisure, bringing back hordes of followers.”
“The last thing you need,” she corrected, “is a flimsy, unreliable demon glass.”
Demons couldn’t be killed. They could only be banished back to their dimension. If even one demon remained after Kelan sealed the tear, the world would be stuck with that demon forever.
“You must have thought it!” She looked into the blue depths of his gaze, searching for the truth. “You’ll never win this war, you’ll never seal the tear…never like this. Not until we know, that when I see no more demons, there are no demons left.”
“Is that what you think?” He slid one hand into his trouser pocket. The other came to her, knuckles grazing beneath her chin. “That I don’t trust you’ll do it?” A warm, gruff tone fed into this voice. His gaze caressed her. “Help me end this?”
He was still leaning against the wall, so casual, but there was nothing casual about what he was doing to her.
Her breath hitched. Her skin tingled. And Lord help her, but her eyes went to his mouth and a melting pot of sensations cascaded over her. She’d tipped forward, her lips softening, every part of her reaching, before she came to her senses.
Lily stepped back abruptly, from his touch, from the intensity that was Kelan.
His knuckles slipped from her chin, his hand dropping to his side. “You’re still learning to master your ability, Lily, adjusting to your demon blood. I have no doubt that, in time, your demon glass will be one hundred percent reliable.”
If he’d noticed her brief slide into his magnetic pull, he gave no indication.
“I wish I had an ounce of your self-confidence,” she muttered. “You say something and I can almost feel the world grinding on its axis to make it so.”
Kelan’s jaw tightened as he looked at her. The shadows that lived in his face darkened, sharpening the definition of every ridge and hollow. And when he spoke, she was convinced his words had little bearing on what had crossed his mind.
“We can compel dual truths from a demon when it’s trapped in the rune to bind and keep. Its name, and the date it breached the tear. When we catch up to these demons, you’ll get some of your answers.” He cocked his head, his mouth drawn into a grim line. “I’m expected at Westminster again this morning, and I’ll be there most of the day. If there are any urgent developments, send Armand for me at once.” His gaze hooked hers. “Do you understand?”
Lily understood.
Don’t do anything foolish, like banish another demon before I’m done with it.
She wouldn’t, and not because Kelan commanded. She wanted those dual truths for herself, and her own bumbling skills weren’t—not yet—up to the task. She had to know if Agares had been hiding from her demon glass, or if the demon had truly been gone from the surface these past weeks. She had to know if they’d missed an opportunity to seal the tear, be prepared so they didn’t miss the next one.
Kelan’s gaze released her as he turned to leave. “You seem predisposed to disregard me for the sheer hell of it, but try to find something other than the demon glass to occupy your mind. Making yourself sick will only benefit the demons.”
Lily rolled her eyes, but clamped her mouth on a snide retort. Besides, he’d rather hit the mark on both accounts.
TEN
The staff were already clearing the sideboard when Greyston limped into the morning room. A glance at his fob watch showed his early morning walk on the Harchings Estate had turned into a two-hour challenge. The ache in his thigh, triggered about a quarter mile into the woodland, had set his teeth on edge; he’d walk the damn pain out of his leg if it killed him. He was seeing a pattern. His leg behaved itself in the civilised terrain of marble hallways and steamrolled pleasure garden walkways, while the buggers in his bones revolted at the merest hint of untamed nature. He could have lived with his injury far easier if it had been the other way around.
He was alive, his leg was numb, and his teeth were still on edge. But he’d pushed through the pain and he could have walked another two hours if necessity required.
A young maid, dark curls bouncing beneath her white bonnet, spotted him with a gasp. Her eyes turned down.
“Begging your pardon, m’lord,” she said breathlessly as she returned a silver dish to the heated tray on the sideboard.
“I’m afraid I lost track of time,” he offered apologetically.
In a rush of activity, the breakfast sideboard was restored to its full glory, complete with a footman standing by.
Greyston propped his cane against a chair before heading in that direction. His nostrils flared. The aromatic whiff of fresh coffee took the bite out of his rusty morning. The footman saw him coming and beat him to the kettle pot at the end of the warming tray.
Greyston conceded with a grin and instead filled a plate with kippers, bacon, baked tomato and a warm roll. The footman waited until he was seated before bringing the large cup of coffee over.
“Thank you, my good man.” Greyston forewent the cream and sugar, and drew on a long sip. He leaned back in his chair with a sigh as the rich, bitter liquid hit his bloodstream like a warm Ae
ther current.
His gaze lifted to the hovering footman. He supposed it wasn’t etiquette to quiz the serving staff, but when had that ever stopped him? In short order, he learnt neither Lady Harchings nor Mrs. Bonnington had been down to partake of breakfast.
Greyston speared a piece of kipper and put it in his mouth, chewing thoughtfully.
He hadn’t seen Evelyn since she’d run out on him last night. Which meant she probably still believed something was going on between her husband and Georgina. Again, it wasn’t like Evelyn to hide in her room. As much as he believed that marital disputes were best left to the married parties, the extent of Evelyn’s retraction disturbed him. She didn’t hide, sob, sulk or suppress.
And he hadn’t seen Georgina either, not since she’d kissed him into a state of throbbing hardness and left. To her bedroom, he’d assumed, but now he wondered if she’d left the castle in the middle of the night. He wouldn’t put it past her.
Disappointment stole some of the warm current from his blood as he revised that. Knowing Georgina, she might well have left the country altogether.
He pushed his empty plate aside, reached for his coffee, and stretched his legs out under the table. But it was impossible to relax with a footman standing to attention, his gaze fixed on a spot just past Greyston’s shoulder.
Christ, he missed Es Vedra. He made a snap decision as he gulped down the rest of his coffee. As soon as they’d dealt with the latest demon outbreak, he was taking the Red Hawk home. He’d been away too long. He’d been grounded too long. No one would miss him for a day or two.
Grabbing his cane, he stood to go in search of Harchings.
Time to pry the man open.
His enquiries led him to the duke’s private study, a well-appointed room with teak-panelled walls and large, solid furnishing of mahogany and inlaid leather, all of it stained dark with centuries of toil and oil.
Harchings turned from his position by the window to receive Greyston, hands linked behind his back, his stance rigid, in no hurry to wave his guest into one of the chairs. “I trust you slept well?”
The Dark Matters Quartet Page 55