“I’m sorry, my little one,” Percy cooed, his blue eyes shadowed with remorse. “Oh, my dearest one! I’m sorry, but he can’t know where we’ve hidden it, and if he catches you, he will do terrible things to you.I shudder to imagine.” Here he clutched her close to his chest. “I must save you from the worst of fates.” His whispered words landed as a sharp dagger between her ribs. “My sweetest Moira, will you keep this secret for me?”
“I will,” Leena heard herself promise in Moira’s voice. Her pulse thrummed in her ears—both from his embrace and the passion in his voice.
Percy swept the hair from her eyes. He looked at her deeply and, Moira thought, with some confusion, in sadness.
“I’m sorry, my darling, but I have to becertain.”
Suddenly, Percy’s hands gripped the delicate curve of her neck, his touch unforgiving and hard, as he squeezed her throat until no more air passed into her lungs.
—
The shattering clatter of two copper coins striking each other.
Someone humming tunelessly.
Leena drifted in and out of consciousness.
The taste of grit in her mouth. A blistering headache behind her eyes.
“What’s happened to her?”
“She fell. I reckon she saw something—”
“Has this happened before?” It was St. Silas’s voice, sharp.
“A few times…” That was Rami.
Leena tried to tell her brother to refrain from revealing more to St. Silas than he’d already guessed.
All she managed was a raspy plea for water.
Within moments, a glass was tipped gently to her mouth, a few droplets dribbling from her chin. She opened her eyes to see St. Silas standing over her with a glass in his hand.
“More,” she pleaded.
He turned to Rami. “Hail a servant to fetch more.”
Rami was already making his way into the hall, opening and shutting the door with a slam.
Leena bolted upright, her hands massaging her neck, both the ghost’s memory and her own creating a phantom pain. She was lying on the floor; someone had thrown a blanket over her. She jerked around, but the fair-haired phantom was nowhere to be found.
The ghost had left Leena a memory, but it had been so real, sohorrible,that she felt sick with it. She could not shake the terrible weight of the girl’s trust in her lover as he betrayed her. As Lord Avonmurderedher. All to keep a secret.
But what secret? What had they hidden, and who could not learn ofit?
“What happened?” St. Silas asked her quietly.
She couldn’t speak. It was the second time Leena had been strangled—once in real time, the other in a distant memory—and both times she had been powerless to stop it. Her hands went to her throat as if to check for bruises. St. Silas didn’t miss the gesture; she could see from his eyes that he was already trying to reach some conclusions.
The ghost’s invasion left a lingering rot in Leena’s body, and she wanted to rip her own skin off. It was all too much.
Demons. Murder. Secrets.
Saints.
“Did a ghost just possess you?” St. Silas pressed. “Is that possible?” His keen mind probed her like he would a confessor, almost reaching the final truth.
She jolted, then scrambled away from him.
