“Shh,” he says softly, and even with space between us, I shiver at the sound from his perfect lips. “It’s us.”
Tasia moans now.
My heart thuds hard in my chest and I see red inside my head.
Faust lifts a brow. “You gonna let her touch him?”
“You want me to chase him?”
He lifts one massive shoulder in a shrug. “You know I’ll be right behind you.”
But before I can move, Tasia’s yapping stops. Unsettled silence fills the room.
Slowly, I turn in the swivel chair.
Tasia screams at the exact moment a shadowed figure yanks her out of frame, toward the direction of the road.
Sylvan wouldn’t have come from that way. It can’t be him.
Which means he’s going to be headed right toward the attacker.
I don’t think. I’m on my feet and running, and I hear Faust close at my back.
The air is so cold,it shoots straight through to my bones. My black winter coat is on, leather gloves, toque, fur-lined boots. But it doesn’t stop the chill rattling underneath my skin. I need a scarf, more layers, but with the snow-filled driveway twisting ahead of us, the gate slightly ajar, a muffled cry from the distance, there’s no time to think.
Faust tried to get me to stay inside when we saw Tasia yanked from frame. With the towering dead trees, the wooded lot surrounding Castle Darling, the subzero temperatures, and a murderer stalking Drayton, I don’t blame him.
But he should know better.
He is ahead of me, a tall, strong figure in black, jogging toward the road as I struggle to keep up, my breath unfurling in clouds of cold in the darkness. My boots crunch over ice and loose snow both, and I’m grateful I have proper winter gear. Paid for by Nolan. My brother.
Our murderer?
I shake my head a fraction even as Tasia’s body being yanked out of sight plays on a loop in my mind, making the chill that much worse.
I run faster, eyes trained on Faust’s back, and I see footsteps in the snow from Sylvan, but I don’t seehim.There’s no sound, either, just my own breathing, my own heart beating too fast.
The trees break up ahead, allowing the drive to spill out, more snow and ice under moonlight, the gates thrown wide. Were they locked? But no, there… it’s cut. The heavy black padlock, dropped in a foot of snow, nearly buried just by being left.
Faust turns back to glance at me. “Stay.There.”He snarls the words, then he passes the gate, stares at the ground as if looking for footsteps, and turns left.
Silence fills the void.
In the darkness, I can’t see him anymore. The trees swallow him up.
It feels as if someone is watching me. Tasia was screaming, Sylvan isn’t afraid, and so where is the noise? The breathing? The bodies?
What if something bad happened to Sylvan?
I glance over my shoulder at the looming castle cutting toward the night sky. Cyn is in there. But there’s an iron fence around the property. In the snow, the cold, it would be near impossible to climb. Whoever is here, whoever took Tasia, they’d have to come down this path.
Fuck this.
I’m not waiting in the dark to die.
I take a step forward, intending to follow Faust, but I train my ears, listening.
Only the sound of snow falling.
