Why is it soft?she thought wildly.
But she couldn’t follow it up.
She was too busy being whirled around again.
Over and over, and so violently, this time, that she couldn’t breathe for a second. She couldn’t right herself. She tried to put a hand out and found her arm barred somehow, like something had hold of her. And she only registered what it was, once the whirling stopped.
She came to rest on what felt like grass, with something over her and surrounding her. At which point, she knew. Even with her head spinning and her breath coming in gasps, she recognized all those little things. The winter scent, that strange mixture of coldness and fever, the way he held her.
The way he cradled her, in his arms.
Harker. Harker had saved her.
How had she not known that Harker had saved her? He always did. He always had. He still wanted to, even through his fear. And hewasafraid, she could see that now. It was in his harsh breathing; the way he held himself over her body. That face of his, now so close that she could see all the ways in which that cold stoicism had given way.
His eyes were haunted holes in his face. There were furrows around his mouth, between his brows, across his forehead. And though it seemed like he wanted to spit some words out, he couldn’t seem to do it. They hovered between his parted lips, full of a kind of ghostly tension.
It honestly tore her in two to see.
She wasn’t surprised to find herself reaching up to him.
Andoh, the way his expression shifted. It seemed to dissolvedown from panic, to such a sweet softness she didn’t know how to stand it. She wasn’t sure how she couldn’t have seen it. Even with everything he had clearly done to disguise it, to hide behind a mask of cruelty, it was all there. He wasn’t a stalker, a shadow, some evil double.
It was justhim.
Ofcourseit was.
“How did I not guess?” she whispered. “How did I not see that it was you, that you are the one, that you are the man she loved. That she loved you. Somehow it was you all along.”
But he didn’t answer.
He went very still, instead.
And then his eyes snapped open, and all those lovely things were gone.
“So you know, then,” he said.
“I think on some level I always have.”
“If you did, you wouldn’t have said that to me.”
“But it’s the truth. You loved her. You loved Lilibet. YouareBram.”
“As you think so, perhaps it’s time I showed you what my love did,” he said, so dark and grave she knew it was going to be bad. She could tell she had misjudged something somehow, even before he yanked her to her feet.
However, it got much clearer when he started dragging her toward the water they had landed near. A murky pond it looked like, of the kind she knew would be full of horrors. The very sight of it made her struggle. But of course he was too strong for that. He was too strong for anything.
He held her wrists, like his own hands were a set of manacles.And he hauled her to it, before she could think of a single thing to do. Her mind was a howling blank, when he forced her to her knees. “Hold your breath,” he said, and she had a second to do it, barely anything at all.
Then he just plunged her face into the water.
And after that there was only darkness.
Chapter Twenty-Two
She didn’t know what she was looking at, when she opened her eyes. It seemed like the night sky, like stars, but they were filmy. Blurry. As if someone had streaked something over them.A swipe of red paint, she thought, because there was a definite crimson hue to it.
Then she registered the pain and realized.
