“Are those explosives?”
Goddamn it, Ben.
“Did your family cause that landslide to keep me here?”
“Do you really want to hear the answer to that?”
A small frightened noise escaped her. He felt the vibration of it against his bicep and tightened his grip instinctively, keeping her pressed into the crook of his arm to keep her small and safe. “Your family—” her voice trembled “—did all of this?”
“Yes.” He paused uncomfortably. “And over there is where we store the wine.”
“I don’t like it down here. W-why would Noelle be here?”
Fuck. This was a terrible idea, taking her here.
“Cal.” She sounded terrified. “Cal, please. Please tell me that Ben didn’t—”
She didn’t finish her sentence but her grip on him tightened to the brink of pain. The pain grounded him, reminding him what was at stake. The festival.Him. As long as her heart had strength to beat and the capacity to wound, she had a fighting chance of survival.
“This way.” His voice was stiff to his own ears. “Almost there.”
They stopped in front of the old cast-iron furnace. It was a large, monstrous thing: a behemoth of metal pipes that disappeared into crumbling old flues. Nadine stared at it disbelievingly, not understanding what she was looking at.
Cal turned on his flashlight to reveal the rusty grate and the weathered face of the dial. Slowly, he bent to open the grate, shining the beam on the carpet of grainy dust coating the bottom of the curved metal interior.
“W-why are you showing me this?”
He stuck out the tip of his shoe to prod delicately at a shard of old, charred bone. “What’s left of her is in here, mixed in with Jesamyn Cullraven’s bones.”
“No,” said Nadine.
“When she sent you those letters, she was already dead.”
“No!”
She sounded as if she had already known. As if this had been her very worst fear, and she was perched on the very edge of her horror where the truth beckoned her to dive in.
“It happened after that day in the square.” Cal sighed, remembering what he had spent so many sleepless nights trying to forget. “She had found the journal and had gone to thehellebore. That’s why you found her necklace there; she had dug up Jesamyn’s body and found the bones of her and her lover. By the time you came here, there was nothing to find. Nothing but the necklace. Ben must have forgotten it.”
“No! It’s not true!” She beat at his arm, struggling to disentangle herself from his embrace. “You’re lying!”
“Ben and Rael took her home. She clawed them both up and tried to shove a piece of the green book down Ben’s throat. It got all over his hands, crumbling into the wounds. They got infected. After that, Rael injected her with the same anesthetic Gideon gave you, but Noelle didn’t get to wake up.” He paused, and had to force himself to continue. “Our father told Ben to kill her, and he, the good son, obliged. He brought her here, to this place—the other bridal suite.”
“No!” It came out as a muffled scream. He felt it like a blade through the ribs.
“You never had a chance at saving your sister, darling. And the moment you came here, all eyes were on you. So now you see what’s at stake.” He smoothed his hand down her trembling back, not sure where to linger or how to soothe. “If it’s any consolation, it was probably painless.”
“She didn’t want to die alone,” Nadine sobbed. “She was so—afraid . . . and now she’s gone. Oh god, she’s gone. I’m—I’m all alone, too.”
“You’re not alone.” His words came out sounding too loud in the darkness. Nearly vulgar. “You have me.”
Her head lifted but it was too dark to fully glimpse her face. “You,” she repeated, her voice thick. “You want to hurt me. You want to fuck me in the woods.”
“I want you alive,” he said harshly. “Since you came here, I have been doing my best to keep you that way. From the tour ofthe grounds, to the bite on your neck, I have been looking out for you. So tell me, little sparrow—if I truly am the heartless hunter you think I am, why am I the one who’s caught?”
“I don’t want tobea sparrow!” Nadine cried.
Cal wrapped his arms around her as her shoulders hitched with more soft sobs. He hesitated before placing his hand on her back, but his touch made her cry harder. “I don’t want to die.” Her voice was muffled against his shirt, breath hot enough to feel through his clothes.
