Page 52 of Raven in Midwinter

“I am a hedge-rider, you worthless, mewling little⁠—”

“Yeah, but Lorne tossed you off our porch,” I said flatly.

He went mute and stared at me.

“You were pissed, so after you thought you killed me, you decided to keep Lorne, lock him up, let Ilara play little cat-and-mouse games with him, and then waited to see how long it would take him to break down and go mad.”

Both of them were now focused on me.

“But what you missed, Giles, because you forgot, because you shouldn’t even still be here, because Corvus is not at all charging your battery anymore, is that Lorne can make his own sanctuary in this mansion.”

“That’s not even remotely⁠—”

“It is,” I insisted, “because underneath all this mortar and marble and all the gilded paintings you’ve put on the walls, it’s still his cottage, just with some extra bells and whistles.”

“You’re mad,” Ilara said.

“No. The cottage, this cottage,” I said, indicating everything, “likes me fine. Always has. It will protect me, shelter me, all of that, I have no concerns. But the person this home is devoted to is Lorne.”

“Is that so,” Giles retorted before throwing something, fire, perhaps, a blast of it like a flamethrower or a bolt of lightning.

What happened was, he made a motion as though hurling something, like a mime or an actor in front of a green screen. There was a lot of movement, and I had no doubt he’d expected to burn Lorne to death, make him explode, something. He would smite him, eviscerate him…this was what was supposed to occur. But nothing happened. Nothing at all, and all the gesticulating made him appear ridiculous.

“Giles,” Ilara demanded. “We’ve heard enough of this. Kill MacBain now.”

He tried again, lifting both hands, trying to shoot something at Lorne, who was still standing there, waiting, arms crossed, legs braced apart, ready to fight if needed.

“You can’t hurt him inside the mansion,” I told Giles. “It loves him too much.”

“How can a building love? That’s absurd.”

“It became sentient from thousands of years of soaking up the magic of guardians that lived within its walls,” Lorne answered matter-of-factly. “And when Xan and I met, the cottage knew I was the best thing for him. For the guardian of Corvus.”

“This is all nonsense,” Giles barked at him.

“Oh, thank you,” Lorne rumbled suddenly, and we all felt the warm breeze blow through the room and out toward the now open atrium. The walls were gone; it was a giant gallery now, lots of corridors with supporting columns, but the individual rooms, bathrooms, sitting rooms—all gone.

“What is happening…” Giles trailed off.

“What did you thank the cottage for?” I asked Lorne. “Oh,” I said with a shrug. “You look much more comfortable.”

Lorne now stood there in cargo pants, his heavy snow boots, a fisherman sweater that Amanda had knitted for him, and his parka. “I think my girl sees us going outside fairly soon.”

There was a hard, heavy slam then, like a slab of concrete or stone hitting another as plaster dust, and then larger pieces, began to rain from the ceiling in the atrium down three stories to the floor below.

“What’s going on?” I asked him.

“The cottage is collapsing down to its true size,” Lorne stated, moving fast, grabbing my hand and calling for Argos, who came flying from the corridor as the bedroom was gone, only a wall remaining. “My bet is that the fourth floor is gone and this one is next.”

With Argos leading the way, Lorne ran with me toward the stairs as the room where we had just been fell away, dropping to the second floor.

“I hate these kinds of movies,” I announced with conviction.

“Oh, c’mon, disaster movies are the best,” he shouted back so I could hear him over screams and yelling and the jarring, terrifying sound of a crumbling mansion.

Interestingly, lots of people were frantically running with us down the stairs, yet no one was being crushed under anything. The cottage was waiting, making its intentions known, while at the same time, the quaking and cracking was done in segments so people could get out.

Lorne scrambled to the side of the stairs with me, next to an overhang that would not last long, to make sure he was at my back.