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“Okay stop—” I shove the pictures back into his hands. “So, tell me—who was she to this house?”
Kieran steps back. I can see the cogs of his mind reeling slowly, ready for another lie.
“She died a few months ago.”
“In the house fire?” I ask.
“I’ve done this for the greater good. I hope one day you’ll understand.” Kieran allows the images to slip from his fingers, scattering across the floor.
“Why am I here, Kieran?” I step toward him, meeting his steely gaze. “What does a man like you, want with a woman from the sea with no memories?”
He clears his throat. For a fleeting moment his gaze flickers, softening a fraction, then hardening.
“I just want you to be safe.” He turns away from me and hands me a key.
“What is this?”
“I’ll show you, just promise me you’ll stick around for tonight.” Kieran takes my hands into his and squeezes.
Rain begins slashing across the windows carrying with it the anger thrumming in my veins.
“Okay.” My response is muddled in uncertainty. The key reminds me of the spindly bronze one skating across the lake’s surface.
“I promise to reveal the truth.” With this, he releases my hands and strides from the room leaving me in the shadows of the storm.
FORTY-SEVEN
“Don’t turn your back as you say your farewell
The sins you hold, the dead are well aware.”
— EXCERPT FROM THE SHERIFF’S LOG
The air bites at my skin and with every breath my nose and throat burn. I stand before the entrance to the forest. It’s cold like the deep months of winter, except October is the season of colors and falling leaves. This weather is ghastly and not due for months. I sense Christian before I hear him, a ripple of calm in a storm. It’s unnerving the way his presence curls into mine with ease.
“You know, if I could I would have told you everything.” His voice drifts toward me from behind, low and warm, and then his hands hover before settling on my upper arms. His heat seeps into me, thawing the chill. Flashes of the filthy things we’d done to each other dance around my mind.
“So, you were actually hanging around here, weren’t you?” Turning around, I am greeted with his warm regard.
A cold wind dances between us and I shiver. I had left the East Wing in too of an annoyed stupor to consider a coat.
Daisy’s words about being chained should frighten me.
There was a literal chain in the lake attached to something heavy. The bodies in the chambers were chained to tubes and trapped forever, siphoned of their final moments of existence.
My mind is now an empty theater where nothing but the sound of static plays. I feel so stupid for not knowing the truth was there from the beginning. He was right there, and I walked into his arms. Why had I always been so drawn to him?
Think.
The wedding picture Kieran showed me matches perfectly to the one Christian and I found in the tower. It matches the accounts in the book. But I’m still missing more.
I promise to tell you the truth, Kieran’s voice echos. Neither men were telling me anything.
“There are a lot of things you should tell me.”
Here Christian was, the keeper of a mountain of secrets with no way speak of them.
“You have to understand…this world doesn’t work like that. He reaches for me. “And I could not risk anything happening to you. You have to trust me. I am all that you can trust. And—” Christian’s tone is strained, exhausted.
