CHAPTER 10
It was freezing.
Isadora huddled deeper into the blanket wrapped around her, savouring the warmth as she tucked her legs up to get her icy feet under it. Her knees knocked against something solid. Was she facing a wall?
She pulled a face and rolled over, because she had stared at walls enough to last a lifetime since the witches had taken her captive.
A hazy memory formed, a notion that she was no longer held in a cell, was no longer a prisoner.
A heavy arm draped over her waist.
Her eyes widened as she looked down at the large hand that pressed against her stomach and pulled her back, drawing her against the solid form she had mistaken for a wall.
They widened even further when she realised that the soft blanket that warmed her wasn’t a blanket at all.
It was a wing.
An image of the black-haired warrior popped into her head, together with a disjointed replay of what had happened
He had rescued her.
He murmured something in his sleep, sighed and dragged her closer still, so the hard planes of his body pressed into her back.
Heat flashed through her.
Panic followed it.
Isadora burst from his embrace, shooting to her feet to stand on the other side of the room to him where he remained on the dirty wooden floorboards.
Mother Earth, he was handsome.
Even more so than she recalled.
He smacked his firm lips together, a furrow forming above the straight line of his nose as his eyebrows knitted. That frown deepened as he moaned and fumbled, hand searching the dusty floorboards beside him.
For her?
She swallowed hard and fought to contain the heat that wanted to burn her cheeks over the fact she had been sleeping tucked against him, held close in his strong arms, shielded by his crimson wings.
It had been for the shared body heat.
That was the only reason she had been snuggled up against a male who was practically a stranger to her.
His searching hand reached the point where her head had been and roamed away from him. When he didn’t find her, his eyes popped open, sharp and focused as they fixed on his hand and then scoured the room.
They stopped on her boots and skimmed up her legs.
She told herself to move, to do something to evade his gaze that was bringing fire up from her toes, flames that would scald her cheeks and reveal the fact he affected her.
It wasn’t right to let him fluster her, to enjoy the feel of his eyes on her, and the hungry way they darkened, their tranquil turquoise depths turning stormy as they lingered on her body.
No. It was right.
She just wasn’t sure why.
More than once, he had said that she knew him. She didn’t remember him though, and she was sure she would recall such a noble, handsome male if she had met him before.
His deep voice rang in her mind.
She had done a spell to forget him.
Why would she want to do that?
Why had he seemed pained by the fact she couldn’t remember him?
“You know me?” she whispered, cleared her throat and found her voice, because she was damned if she was going to break. She had to stay strong. She just couldn’t remember why. “You said I knew you… so you know me.”
He pushed up into a sitting position, his handsome face shifting in a grimace as he tilted his head one way and then the other, and stretched his wings. His right one, the one that had been draped over her, only extended a short way before he stopped, a twist to his lips that spoke of pain.
A mirthless chuckle left those lips. “I think we both forgot some things.”
“I don’t understand.” She cautiously inched a step closer to him when he moved onto his knees and piled tinder and logs onto the grate in the fireplace.
He shrugged his broad shoulders, shifting his wings with them, but their bright crimson feathers didn’t hold her attention this time. It was arrested by something she had failed to notice before, but couldn’t miss now as she stared at him.
His breastplate was missing, revealing the chiselled perfection of his torso, from the wide flat slabs of his pectorals to the delicious ropes of his abdomen.
He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye.
Isadora averted her gaze, studying the fireplace. It had seen better days, looked as if it might crumble at any moment, much like the rest of the cabin.
“I don’t understand either.” He picked up a piece of wood and a stick, drawing her focus back to him.
Was he going to do what she thought he was going to do?
Her eyebrows lifted as he set the wood down and positioned some dried material in a hollow in it.
“Here, let me.” She moved and was beside him, close to him, before she realised what she was doing.
Her arm brushed his. Lightning arced along her bones, a hot shiver chasing in its wake.
His dark turquoise eyes burned into her profile and she kept her gaze on her work, forced it to stay away from him and her focus to remain on the logs on the grate. She whispered the words, a basic spell that all witches learned at a young age.
The angel’s gaze zipped to the logs as they caught ablaze.
He stared at them and she couldn’t stop herself from looking at him, from tracing the noble lines of his profile and absorbing the way the flames danced in his eyes like the fires of Hell.
A chill skated down her spine and ice crawled over her skin, sending a shiver through her and igniting an urge to run. Why?
What was it about this angel that had her wanting to run away at the same time as she wanted to run to him?
“I’ll make more food.” He stood and she tracked him as he moved around the dilapidated cabin.
He looked troubled as he stopped near the dirty window and gazed out at the woods. They were thick, ancient. She could feel the power in them as it flowed around her and into her, restoring her strength.
She dropped her gaze to her wrists.
Strength that had been stripped from her by shackles this warrior had removed for her, granting her freedom she had been sure she would never taste again. He had saved her, had carried her to this secluded place and fed her, and had warmed her when the fire had gone out.
He had taken care of her.
“Why?” She locked gazes with him when he turned to look at her, a puzzled edge to his expression. “Why save me?”
He frowned down at his boots.
“Because I was asked to… because you knew me and I thought you could answer some questions…” He lifted his gaze to meet hers again. “Because I wanted to.”
“Who asked you?” It seemed the safest one to start with.
“Apollyon.” He shook his head, causing rogue strands of his black hair to fall down and caress his brow. He swept the tousled lengths back and loosed a sigh. “He tricked me into leaving… ah… chasing him and I ended up seeing if I could find you.”
“Because you don’t know me.” She was sure he had wanted to say something else, something other than ‘chasing him’, but he had stopped himself.
Another why popped into her head.
“I don’t know… maybe I do and I forgot.” He cast his gaze towards the window again, blatantly avoiding her as he muttered, “At least I didn’t choose to forget.”
Had she?
The bite in his tone made it clear he believed she had chosen to forget him, had cast a spell on herself to erase him from her memories. Why would she want to do such a thing?
She looked at the healing marks on her arms, bruises that told her she had used a powerful spell and it had backfired. “It’s possible I wasn’t trying to forget you.”
He turned fully to face her and planted his backside against the decaying cupboards of the kitchen area, a formidable sight with his crimson wings framing him and the scarlet-edged black armour that protected his hips, shins and forearms. The honed muscles of his chest only made him look more like a dangerous warrior, a deadly male who could handle whatever life threw at him.
Anything except her apparently choosing to forget him.
His eyes remained cold, constructing a wall between them that she had a strange urge to breach, one that left her feeling shut out when she had been welcome before. She wanted to be welcome again.
Not because he was the only one with her and she didn’t want to be alone.
The reason eluded her, slipped through her fingers whenever she thought she had it, leaving her muddled again. Was it the spell that stole it from her? If she could figure out what spell she had cast, there was a chance she could reverse it.
“What do you remember about me… about the spell?” She rose onto her feet and crossed the room to him, aching to breach that barrier he had constructed and unable to deny the need to be close to him again.
She had seen witches who had forgotten things in the past, had witnessed how confused it had made them, especially when their instincts drew them to something and it went against everything their altered mind felt was right.
She had known this male.
Rook.
Isadora focused on his name, chanted it in her head as she gazed at him, as she stared so deep into his eyes that she was lost, unaware of the world as she drifted towards him. Her hands moved of their own volition, rising to frame his face in her palms, and it felt right.
Had she wanted to do this to him before?
Had the unfulfilled need lingered and now it was coming to the surface, her soul recalling her desire and acting on it?
He gazed down at her, tilting his head towards her as she held his cheeks.
“Do I know you?” she whispered, desperate to know the answer, to have her soul scream it at her and awaken from whatever terrible curse she had placed on it.
“Do I know you?” he murmured, echoing her, and darkness rose in his eyes.
A terrible grief rolled through her, tearing at her soul and closing her throat, causing the backs of her eyes and her nose to burn.
She couldn’t breathe.
Her chest blazed but it was cold at the same time, felt as if someone had hollowed it out, had torn her heart from it and crushed it.
The tears that threatened lined his black lashes instead, pooled in his eyes like diamonds and slipped onto his cheeks, dashing down them to soak into her skin.
On a pained snarl that revealed sharp fangs, he tore away from her, stormed across the room and shoved the door to the outside open.
Isadora stared at where he had been, struggling to shut down the pain that crashed over her in powerful waves, a destructive force that utterly wrecked her.
Just as it had wrecked him.
She looked at the door he had exited through.
What was he to her?
What was she to him?
Would Apollyon be able to tell her?
Rook had mentioned taking her to Paris, which meant the rumours had been true and Apollyon was there. Apollyon had lured him to this world to find her. Rook was important to her, connected to her somehow. He had been able to locate her, and had been driven to save her, and to protect her.
She drifted to the door and watched him as he paced, taking swift agitated steps across the small clearing in front of the chalet that caused his wings to shift. The tips of his longest feathers brushed the ground with each powerful stride. He pivoted and stormed back the way he had come, every muscle on his formidable body tensed and bulging. Confusion and hurt etched his handsome face in dark lines, flattened his lips and had the black slashes of his eyebrows drawn low above shimmering turquoise eyes that held the barest hint of anger.
She didn’t have the heart to disturb him, not when she moved her focus to him and could feel the pain and conflict inside him, feelings that ran as deep in him as they did in her.
She didn’t understand either.
The reaction to touching him, to looking into his eyes and seeking an answer there, had been fierce and had stripped her strength from her in an instant, hurling her into a mass of dark emotions that felt familiar yet new to her. It had her head tied in knots, thoughts tangled together in a way that made it impossible to find the start of each one to tug and free them from the mess.
If she had to name the emotion that had seized her the hardest, she would call it grief.
Was that the emotion that had taken hold of Rook too?
Was there a reason it had filled them both?
She needed answers, and now she felt certain that only Apollyon could give them to her. She needed to meet with him, as soon as possible. She needed to know what Rook had been to her.
More importantly, she needed to know what she had been to him.
When the sky began to change colour through the dense canopy of the pines, her focus shifted there. She absorbed the burnished golds and pinks, savouring the way they relaxed her and seemed to lift the weight from her shoulders.
She focused on them as her mind turned back the clock, tracing through everything that had happened, all she could remember and the pieces that were missing. There were gaps. She could recall her youth, how reckless she had been. It was a family trait, and it was the reason she had made something, although she couldn’t remember what that something was now.
A charm?
She had wanted to protect someone in her bloodline.
Rook tensed and her focus fell to him as he scanned their surroundings.
“It’s the wind,” she murmured absently and he didn’t look at her.
He remained alert, scouring the forest for an enemy he wouldn’t find, not unless he found deer and other small animals threatening.
She remembered something bad happening, but it was only a feeling. She couldn’t recall why she had been so afraid and in so much pain. Was that forgotten time a source of the grief she had felt on gazing into Rook’s eyes? Had he shared that pain with her?
“Rook.” She waited for him to stop and look at her, but he didn’t. “What do you remember?”
“I found you in the chateau and you knew me. You said my name, Isadora. You knew me.” He whirled to face her, his face a dark mask as he narrowed his turquoise eyes on her. The flecks of gold and green in them brightened, turning his irises more emerald, speaking of the agitation she could sense in him. “I left… and when I returned for you… you had forgotten me. I… it pissed me off… when I saw you were hurt. It… snapped… something in me.”
Because he felt the same instincts as she did despite her lost memories? She felt a powerful need to be close to him, to tend to his healing wounds and destroy the ones who had caused them. Not the tree that had broken their fall, but the witch who had cast a spell on him.
Thorns.
She knew the dark magic that had been responsible for the marks on his legs, the thick bands of reddened skin that snaked up them and the vicious puncture wounds that littered them.
“You said you took care of them.” She checked the healing wounds. “You killed them?”
He nodded. “Three servants and two witches.”
That wasn’t right.
“Three witches and three servants,” she corrected him, sure he had simply miscounted.
Frenchie, London Town and Country Estate had been at the chateau. Bitch and Spanish Inquisition had still been away somewhere.
Would they come for her?
She planned to be long gone by the time they returned and would cover her trail as best she could. Now that her magic was free again, she could easily do that.
He shook his head and took a step towards her. “There was a male outside. He wore a long coat and had cast the barrier. I killed him first. Then I came to you… and saw what had happened. I flew into the courtyard and killed a servant, and then another. I found the third servant inside, with the second witch, a male with a British accent.”
“A posh one?” Mother Earth, she hoped it had been.
Another dreadful shake of his head. “Far from it. He told me your spell had backfired when you had been trying to forget and had tried to stop it.”
“Why would I do that?” Was it possible she hadn’t wanted to forget whatever the spell had been taking from her?
“I don’t know,” he bit out.
She looked at Rook, was instantly swept up in his eyes again as they shifted and swirled green.
A feeling struck her, had grief welling up again, as powerful as before.
She hadn’t wanted to forget him.
“I wasn’t trying to forget you, Rook. I’m sure of it. I was trying to forget something else and my memories of you were caught up in it.”
“Like collateral damage?” He huffed. “That’s reassuring. You need to learn how to do magic.”
She deserved that. She remembered enough about last night to recall telling him he needed flying lessons. His mishap had sent them tumbling through a tree, and hers had stolen memories of him from her, ones he was annoyed about her losing as much as she was.
He wanted answers, and she could give him none.
“So what was I trying to forget?” She frowned at the broken deck of the cabin.
“The other spell?” His deep voice curled around her, offering comfort she stole as uncertainty filled her.
“Another spell?” She lifted her eyes to meet his again.
He held her gaze. “I think it made you immortal and the witches who took you wanted to know it.”
So she had tried to make herself forget it.
She could understand why. Such a spell would have to be powerful, and dangerous. Immortality didn’t come cheap. There was always a price to pay for bending the rules of the universe in such a way. While a witch could gain it, something else would have to lose it in order to maintain the balance.
“After you killed London Town, you came to me?” She weathered his questioning look. “They were cautious to keep their names from me. There was Frenchie, London Town and Country Estate left at the chateau. Who did you kill?”
His expression turned pensive, his lips compressing as his dark eyebrows dipped low, narrowing his now-bright-green eyes. “London Town inside the chateau… and the one outside… Frenchie.”
“Shit,” she muttered. “We have to leave.”
Because she had charted all their powers and Country Estate was the strongest of the three who had been left to guard her, and the most determined to get whatever spell she had just forgotten out of her for his sister.
Rook tensed again.
Isadora went to say it was just the wind.
Ice spread down her spine as power washed over her, magic that crept through the trees like tendrils, seeking prey.
Her eyes leaped to meet Rook’s.
“He found us.”