My next blow shook the tree with such force my blade sliced halfway through the trunk. Apples dropped from the branch above. One hit my temple, splashing pain enough my face.
Not good enough.I deserved so much more.
The red dots swam in my eyes. I swung my sword around and slashed the blade along my arm, wrist to elbow. A line of blood appeared across my skin, splitting my grey tattoos open like Moses parting the red sea. Only the red in this case was my blood.
I watched, detached, as a river of blood flowed from the wound, drenching my arm.
My body shuddered as I experienced a clarion sense ofwrongness, even as a cloudy euphoria settled over my mind. There wasn’t any pain. How could there be no pain when there was so much blood?
So much blood.
The red spots in front of my eyes swelled, bleeding into each other. I collapsed in the grass, wrapping my fingers around my arm, trying to hold the wound closed. My fingers slid over my skick skin, unable to find purchase.
What do you think, you bellend?A voice screamed inside my head.That you’d be able to hold that wound closed?
Too much blood.
My ears rang, a screaming siren that blocked out the voice. The red in my eyes retreated, giving way to a cool greyness that grew in intensity as a white light rushed toward me.
“Oh, shite,” I murmured, as the world spun away from me, and I became one with the white light.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
SIXTEEN: ROWAN
Ididn’t want to let go of Maeve, but I had to search Corbin’s library. Blake and I exchanged a glance, and I slipped away from her as he moved in. Maeve didn’t object as Blake wrapped his arms around her and murmured something secret to her in his deep, melodic voice. Her eyes swivelled to him, caught in his otherworldly magnetism.
With Flynn occupied questioning Greg on every aspect of the rebuilt, and Arthur run away to be angry, I slipped away and crept up the staircase, avoiding the piles or debris and the sparking cable dangling from the ceiling. My stomach churned. I swirled my gaze up to the chandelier to count the wrought-iron leaves, but the chandelier had been torn down. And if I looked down I was going to be sick.
Stop it. I tried to force the anxiety back.You’ve got to do this.
But anxiety never listened to reason, especially not when I stood in the middle of the ruin of my life. Soot clung to every surface. The carpets squelched under my feet. Several of the paintings had been torn from the walls. I paused at the library door. My gaze flicked to the shelf on the right – the one I always counted before I entered the room. Someone had flung all the books on the floor.
If you can’t count, you can’t enter,my body screamed.
My stomach tightened. A sharp pain stabbed between my shoulder blades. I gripped the edge of the doorframe, trying to force my feet forward.
A tremor shook my whole body as the familiar scents slammed into me. Parchment and old leather furniture. The whiff of whiskey from the bottles stored in the globe bar. Dust and old things. And beneath it all, Corbin’s unique scent.
“Give me strength,” I whispered. Corbin believed I could do anything. I needed that belief magic now.
I wrote it all down for you.
If Corbin really was somehow still… alive, still able to be brought back, then the answers were in this room. I lifted a shaking foot and placed it on the rug in front of me. My body howled in protest. My mind rebelled, certain that entering the room without finishing my ritual would result in some horrible consequence.
What could be more horrible than losing Corbin?
I dragged my other foot across the rug, my eyes flicking over the shelves. Apart from the books strewn across the floor and the priest hole door swinging free on its hinges, the library had remained remarkably intact.
The desk. Get to the desk.
Another step. Another stab in my heart. My vision wobbled. Every nerve in my body screamed at me to go back.
I balled up my courage and surged forward, grabbing the edge of the desk. I was there! I did it! A swell of triumph momentarily beat back the anxiety, and I held that triumph against my heart, hoping it would last as long as I needed.
I slid into Corbin’s chair, drawing strength from his lingering scent and the familiar shape his body had scooped out of the cushion. As usual, he left his laptop off to one side, and pileda wall of books around him, the same way I yanked my hair in front of my face when I didn’t want to face the world.
I pulled the first book on the stack toward me. It was the grimoire Clara brought us, the one that once belonged to the Soho Coven. She didn’t seem to be as big a fan of post-it notes and scribbled margins as Corbin, which meant that the five coloured bits of paper sticking out of the leaves had been placed there by my lover in the last couple of days.
