It was all bullshit.
And I didn’t fucking care.
All I cared about was making sure Nila healed.
I couldn’t let her die.
She couldn’t leave me alone.
Not now.
Stalking up the hill, across the grounds, and into the Hall, I ignored the Diamond brothers who’d been watching the spectacle with an array of binoculars and telescopes, and stormed to the back of the house.
In the parlour loomed a huge swinging door, disguised as a bookcase.
Years ago, the door had hidden a bunker. A secret entrance into the catacombs below the house. They were there to save my ancestors from war and mutiny.
Now, that bunker had been converted and served a different kind of function, along with an addition found ninety years after the first brick had been laid.
Nila’s body was icy and soaking. Her clothing dripped down my front, leaving a trail of droplets wherever we went. Her long wet hairtrailed over my arm like kelp. Not for the first time, I fantasised I’d plucked a kelpie from the pond and taken her hostage. My very own water nymph to keep for good luck.
She would make me right.
She had to.
Pulling on a certain book, the mechanism unlocked, swinging the door open.
Nila didn’t stir.
She’d stopped shivering, but her lips were a deep indigo that terrified me more than her unconscious whimpers. She teetered on death’s door—even now—even though I’d resuscitated her with mouth to mouth and given my soul as well as my air, she still haemorrhaged life.
It was as if shewantedto die.
Wanted to leave me.
Her brittle body made me focus on things I wasn’t strong enough to face.
I’d grown up.
I’d begun to see.
I’d begun to believe she was it for me. The only one who could save me from myself.
Slinking through the door, I was careful not to bump her head. Her body lay strewn like a fallen angel in my arms—as if I’d caught her mid-plummet to earth. Her lips were parted; her arms dangled by her sides.
I had to get her warm and fast. I knew exactly how to do it.
Locking the door behind me, I descended the spiral staircase. I had no way of clapping to turn on the sound activated lights, so stomped my foot on the stone step, grateful when balls of light lit up one after the other, leading the way in the dark.
Electricity had replaced gas, which in turn had replaced naked flames that used to flicker in the medieval lanterns on the wall.
Moving forward, each bulb guided me further beneath the house, until I travelled beneath my own quarters and the bachelor wing above.
The bunker had been extended far past its original footprint. The crude concrete walls had been meticulously updated with large travertine tiles and top-of-the-line facilities.
Countless contraptions existed that I could use to warm Nila.
We had a steam room, sauna, and spa.
