“They’re going to kill you.” Owen seemed awfully attached to the goat. And so did his son. This is not going to help them accept Rebel any time soon.
“They’re going to want to.” Rebel’s shoulders slump.
“And then I’m going to have to pick a new best man. And that’s if they will even let us have our wedding here at all. Am I going to have to tell Ivy that we’re not getting married? Again?”
“It’s going to be okay,” Rebel tells me.
Like I’m going to believe that lie when I can see with my own eyes that the goat is dead. But maybe we can find a way to hide it. “Perhaps if we put it in its paddock, we can pretend it died of natural causes.”
“That’s not possible.” Rebel squeezes my shoulders. “Its throat was slit.”
Seriously, this cannot be happening. How am I supposed to fix that? “We could try Super Glue—”
“Rogue.” Rebel shakes me. “That’s not… We’re not doing that.”
“You might not be.” I push him out of my way and move toward Dizzy and West. I’ll do whatever it takes to marry my woman.
“Rebel didn’t do a good job of softening the blow,” Dizzy says softly as I join them. I don’t bother paying attention to her and West as I walk over to the goat.
There’s blood all over the ground. The earth moves under my feet in a rush. I’m no longer in the paddock, but back in Narnia. The carpet is covered in Ivy’s blood. Her broken body surrounded by it. My hands… I lift them, palm up, and they’re covered too.
“It’s okay.” Dizzy wraps an arm around mine. “It always fades.”
“Huh?” I blink and we’re back in the paddock, but I’m afraid to look at my palms. What if they are still stained crimson?
“The blood.” She lifts her arm to show me her palm, smeared with the goat’s blood. She wriggles her fingers before dropping them back to her side. “With time the memory won’t be so strong.”
“I used to think I would never get the image of Ivy’s blood all over my hands out of my head. Although, I haven’t thought about it in weeks.” I groan. “I hope I can go back to not seeing it.”
“You will.” She tugs on a tendril of her pink hair. “That’s how memory works. Whether you want to remember something or not. Even when you commit every detail to memory, the brain slowly erodes the details.”
“Good.” Hopefully sooner than later. I push the trauma back into the dark. I don’t have time to get lost in it. The things that are going wrong are starting to add up. Which is concerning. “First Nicole, now this. I’ll never get Ivy down the aisle.”
“What about Nicole?” Rebel asks.
“She’s been sending threatening messages,” I admit. “It doesn’t matter. I checked with the prison. She’s still behind bars. This wasn’t her.”
“Unless it was,” Rebel says.
West speaks up. “Whether my aunt is involved or not—”
“Or Alec,” Rebel interrupts.
“You think this was Alec?” Is that why I was immediately drawn back to Narnia? Because this is totally something he would do.
“Alec has been missing for months. He has no idea you’re getting married here,” West says. “And he wouldn’t get within a hundred feet of your security team if he tried. It’s not him. But even if he had something to do with it, whoever physicallydid this is here,” West reminds us. “That’s what we need to concentrate on.”
“That and dealing with the body so it doesn’t ruin the wedding.” Dizzy gestures, red handed, at the dead goat.
My gaze sticks to the stain on her hand.
She notices because she says, “It wasn’t me. Animals are not in my repertoire. That’s sick.”
“Now is not the time for jokes, Dizzy,” Rebel snaps at her.
“Don’t talk to her like that again, brother.” Frost coats every syllable that comes from West.
“Okay, let’s not start arguing between ourselves.” I turn my back on the goat. If I look at it any longer, I’m going to vomit. “We need to work out what’s going on. And how to make sure this doesn’t impact the wedding.”
