He broke off, his voice strangled. His hand flew to his throat.
Eliza pinned her gaze on him, the words coming more quickly to her lips. And she felt it. She felt the power of them course through her.
He staggered forward, eyes bulging, mouth working soundlessly. His face darkened, mottled with violet and blue. He dropped to his knees, choking, clawing at his collar as though invisible fingers had closed around his neck.
“Stop,” she gasped, horrified. “Please, stop!”
But the air was alive now, humming with energy that could not be undone. The Reverend convulsed once, a ghastly soundescaping him—and then he fell forward, striking the floor with a heavy, final thud.
Silence descended, sudden and absolute.
For several heartbeats, Eliza could only stare. The firelight caught the whites of his eyes—wide, unseeing, fixed on the ceiling. One hand was still clenched at his throat, the other outstretched toward her as if in accusation.
Her stomach lurched. She could scarcely breathe past the shock, the sick disbelief of what she had done. She had called upon the old power—and for the first time—it had answered.
She had wanted to protect herself. That had been the spell she murmured, and the end result showed the truth of it. As long as he lived, she would never be safe, and so his life had ended.
A gust of wind slammed against the shutters, followed by the sharp, relentless ping of ice against the panes. The door, not fully fastened, flew open and the cold win whipped through the cottage. The temperature plummeted, the frigid air biting deeper into her skin. Her breath came in shallow bursts, misting before her eyes.
Outside, the storm raged and she had no protection against it.
And though her enemy lay dead at her feet, she was still bound, still trapped in the freezing dark. The ropes cut deeper into her raw skin as she twisted and strained. Her fingers were too numb now even to feel them.
She could hear the wind howling, the timbers groaning beneath its force. Her eyes burned with tears that froze before they fell. “Gabriel,” she whispered, her voice breaking.
He would come. He must.
But as the snow began to beat harder against the windows, piling up in the open doorway, the last trace of warmth fled the room, and the night closed around her like a shroud.
Chapter
Twenty-Five
The storm had risen to a fury by the time Gabriel reached the edge of the woods. The wind lashed at him, tearing the breath from his lungs and driving the sleet like shards of glass against his face. He could scarcely see it was so thick. The horse beneath him snorted and tossed its head, reluctant to press on through the drifts that had begun to gather across the path.
But he would not turn back. Not now.
The red rose he had found upon the road still burned in his memory, as vivid as a wound. And when one of the grooms had said that Dabney had been seen near the Ashcombe cottage, a sick dread had settled in Gabriel’s chest. He had ridden as though the devil himself pursued him. It had taken valuable time but at least it had sent him what he prayed was the right direction. If he did not find Eliza within… he could not bear to think of it.
When at last the cottage came into view, crouched low beneath its thatched roof, half-buried in snow, he felt his heart seize. The door hung open, banging against the wall with each gust of wind.
“God help us,” he whispered, and swung down from the saddle.
Inside, the air felt colder than the storm itself. He shuffled to the mantle in the dark and struck flint to tinder from the box perched there. The narrow circle of light shown through the darkness, revealing overturned chairs—and the body of Reverend Mullins sprawled on the floor, his face a ghastly shade of blue.
But Gabriel scarcely registered the sight. His gaze had already found Eliza.
She sat bound to a chair in the center of the room, her head lolling against her shoulder, her hair damp and tangled, her gown soaked through as though she had been dragged from an icy river. Her lips were nearly as white as the snow outside.
“Eliza!”
He was across the room in an instant, dropping to his knees beside her. Her skin was cold beneath his fingers—too cold. He tore at the knots binding her wrists until the rope gave way and fell to the floor.
Her eyelids fluttered, but she did not wake.
“Sweet heaven…” He lifted her into his arms, the dead weight of her body hitting him with terrifying force. “No, no, no. This will not be. I will not allow it!”
There was no time to think. The Reverend’s corpse could rot where it lay for all Gabriel cared. The only thing that mattered now was the fragile woman he carried.
