Taranis patted her on the thigh. “I don’t know if Pussy Power is going to work this time around my love.”
“Depends on the pussy.”
Cosimo interrupted their argument. “No, she’s right. You need to be a lighthouse for her consciousness to return to you. If this creature has pushed her out of her body, maybe your connection to her will be enough to draw her back, and then she will push the Brollachan out on her own.”
Bas had his doubts that it would work, but the alternative was to let Valentine try and trap it in his spirit box. The biggestproblem with that was that there was no guarantee that they wouldn’t trap Bridget in the box with it for all eternity.
Bas headed back down to the basement, Cosimo a quiet presence beside him. The Brollachan had been trying to pull itself free, and Bas almost threw up again at the sight of the bruising on Bridget’s wrists.
“You are going to kill her faster like this,” the Brollachan mocked.
“Silence,” Cosimo commanded. A spell sizzled through the air, robbing the creature of its voice. “I have only silenced the creature. If Bridget comes back through, she will be able to speak with you fine.”
Bas pulled up another chair. “Thanks, Dad.”
Cosimo hugged him. “I never had a chance to save my mate when she was dying, Bas. It’s one of the greatest pains in my life. Don’t let her go. Hold tight with both hands and fight like hell. Understand?”
“I will. I can’t handle the thought of losing her. It’s not an option. She doesn’t even know what she is to me. I should have told her,” Bas said, tears choking him.
Cosimo let him go. “Tell her now, Basset. Tell her everything.”
“She’s going to be so mad,” Bas sniffed.
Cosimo grinned. “It might help her come back faster just so she can yell at you.”
“Or try and kick me in the balls.” Bas sat down on the chair. “I’m going to need some privacy.”
“We will be close if you need us,” Cosimo said before leaving him alone in the cells. Just him and the monster wearing his beloved’s face.
Bas took a deep breath and let the dragon come forward to give him some extra strength. “I want to start by telling you howmuch I love you, Bridget. I think I was in love with you from the moment you threw that book at me in the astral plane…”
Bas talked. And talked. And talked.
35
Bridget stood in a garden. She knew she was somewhere in the astral plane by the quality of the air. It was like her body knew it didn’t need it because here, she didn’t need to breathe at all. She tried to pull herself to where her library was and hit an invisible barrier.
“A trap. That motherfucker,” she growled. The astral was her safe space, and the Brollachan had turned it into a prison.
Bridget tried to pull herself together and not panic. Bas was going to be worried, but she didn’t want him to jump into the astral to find her and get stuck too.
“You have never needed a man to save you, and you’re not going to start now,” Bridget told herself. She just needed to find a way out. This was the astral plane. It didn’t conform to rules that people or creatures imposed on it, no matter how talented they were. She had manipulated it to create a library for herself. She could make herself a way out.
Bridget looked around at the high hedges around her. The Brollachan had put her in a maze. “Going with the classics, are you? Very well. I know the classics.”
Bridget ripped off a branch of the hedge, stripped it of its leaves, and held it out like a sword. “On guard!”
The stick turned into a rapier, and Bridget smiled. The Brollachan might have put her in a mind prison, but she doubted it had ever tried to trap someone like her. Shewasa magician. This was her place, not the Brollachan’s.
Bridget used the edge of the rapier to cut the bottom of her shirt and tore a strip free. She bundled it into a ball and focused her mind, imposing her will on the fabric while thinking of the story she needed to pull from. The fabric shivered in her palm, and she opened it. She was holding a spool of fired clay wrapped with a shining red thread.
Bridget tied the end of the thread to a stone post, marking the beginning of the maze, and began to wind her way through it. “Don’t worry, Bas. I’m coming. I’m not going to let this bastard get in the way of me learning magic and kissing you whenever I like.”
The maze wound deeper and deeper. With every wrong turn, Bridget backtracked, rewound the thread, and began again. She wasn’t going to give up.
“You probably should,” said a voice she would never forget. Her mother was sitting on a stone bench, filing her nails. “You know the likes of that posh family are never going to accept a bastard like you. Your own father didn’t want to know about you.”
Bridget’s hand gripped tighter to the sword. “You didn’t want me either.”
