CHAPTER 14
Isadora found Rook on a small terracotta-tiled terrace, early evening light casting golden highlights in the tangled strands of his short dark hair. It caressed his shoulders too, accenting muscles that were tense beneath his black t-shirt as he braced his hands against the wrought iron railing opposite the door.
She moved to stand beside him, keeping only a small distance between them, and mirrored his stance, taking hold of the railing and gazing up at the sky above the elegant townhouses opposite her.
“I… I’m sorry for everything that happened to you.” There, it was out there now, no longer burning inside her, destroying her from the inside.
The guilt she felt didn’t lessen. It only grew more intense as his head swivelled towards her and his eyes landed on her.
“It wasn’t your fault.” His deep voice curled around her, offering comfort she refused to take, because he didn’t know what he was talking about, wouldn’t say such a thing if he remembered what had happened.
“It was.” She kept her eyes on the sky as it changed colour, the threads of cloud that laced it making the sunset beautiful, but her focus was on the man beside her, one who deserved a thousand apologies from her.
He deserved to know the truth too.
She breathed slowly to steady her racing heart as nerves began to get the better of her and pushed herself to continue, to let it all spill out of her, not only so he would know about the life he couldn’t remember, but so she could lift some of the burden from her own shoulders.
She had been waiting more than a thousand years to tell him she had been a fool, had ruined something wonderful because she had been headstrong and reckless, and hadn’t listened to him.
She had been waiting centuries for his forgiveness.
“You were against me going, so I slipped out in the night when you were sleeping. I went to meet with someone who said they could get me the ingredients I needed to make the talisman stronger, as close to perfect as it could be.” She tightened her grip on the metal railing and lowered her head as guilt churned her stomach again. “You were right to be worried though… the ‘people’ had turned out to be demonic angels.”
“When you were out of it after the forgetting spell backfired, you talked about demons taking you.” He twisted to face her and leaned a hip against the railing, trusting it far more than she could.
She supposed if he fell, he had wings to stop himself from hitting the ground.
She glanced at his back.
“Are they better now?” She jerked her chin towards his chest when he frowned, confusion dancing in his eyes. “Your wings.”
He shifted his shoulders. “All fine now. Fit for flying again.”
She was glad to hear that.
She inched closer to him, a little shuffle of her right foot she hoped he didn’t notice. The need to be near him was strong, born of the fact she was afraid he would be angry with her when he learned the truth and she didn’t want him to leave. She needed him close to her.
“The demonic angels took me to Hell.” She tried to shut out the vision of that grim and terrible realm that invaded her mind, the memories of searing fiery rivers, choking thick air and screams that rang in the air.
Mother Earth, those shrieks and cries had never stopped. They had been constant, tearing at her, keeping her on the edge. Sometimes, they had been her screams.
The worst times, they had been Rook’s.
She closed her eyes, needing to push that memory aside before it tore down her strength and stole her voice.
Rook’s hand came to rest gently on her shoulder.
Isadora leaned her head towards it, raising her shoulder at the same time, a need to press against him and steal comfort from the feel of him filling her. He didn’t take it away as her cheek pressed against his knuckles, kept it there for her and she was thankful for it. She needed his strength right now.
“The Devil came to see me more than once… demanded I told him where the talisman was and who I had made it for. Whenever I refused, he…” Her throat closed.
“Tortured you,” Rook said for her and she nodded, shifting her cheek against his hand. He turned it and cupped her face. She lifted her eyes to his as he brushed his thumb across her cheek, his expression soft and filled with understanding. “I know the things he does.”
She didn’t want to ask whether he knew because he had been present, because he had been one of the angels who had done the Devil’s bidding in his vile prison, tormenting those he held captive. She didn’t need to ask. It was there in his eyes, laced with a flicker of a guilt she found surprising given what he was now, but also unsurprising at the same time because he was still Rook.
Whatever the Devil had done to him, however that wretch had shaped him, he was still Rook deep inside him, where it mattered most.
The heart that beat in his chest, the soul that was bound to hers, was the same as it had always been.
“You found me,” she whispered, the thought of what she had to tell him next trying to steal the voice she had just found. “They… hurt you to get to me… did horrible things to you in front of me… but you refused to give in, and so I refused too. I drew from your strength… your unwavering belief in my need to protect the one I had made the talisman for, because it had been a great strain on me to create it… it had almost killed me.”
She shook her head when he looked as if he wanted to speak and edged closer to him, until she could feel his heat and smell his rich masculine scent more clearly, and the fear that was building in her ebbed away again.
“The Devil was furious. He raged so violently all of Hell was shaken by it and so was I. I was terrified… but you… you were unmoved, calm despite the storm surrounding you.” Tears lined her lashes as she remembered how he had knelt before her, blood streaming from the deep lacerations that covered his bare body, his wings distorted and broken, stained crimson and black, and how he had looked at her, his gaze unwavering, steady and filled with love, with courage that had bolstered her own, until what had happened next. “He moved me to another room. I tried to stay with you, but I wasn’t strong enough to fight the men who held me. They hurt me… and I couldn’t hold back the screams. Whenever I screamed, they hurt you to make you do the same.”
His lips flattened and darkness crossed his features, bringing out that ring of crimson in his irises. His anger flowed into her through the point where he touched her, where his thumb kept up the light caress that soothed her, offering her comfort she badly needed as she thought about what they had done, and tried to piece together the truth for both of them.
“He brought in witches. I remember feeling power not born of Hell, but I was so out of it. The pain… it was… it was too much and I found it hard to focus. I was so tired.” She frowned as she struggled to recall what she had felt then and make sense of it. “Our connection… it shattered and I thought you… I thought… you were… dead.”
His expression sobered, but the flicker of fury in his eyes remained. “Now what do you think happened?”
What did she think?
She searched his eyes, seeing his need to know in them, how deeply he wanted to understand how he had come to fall.
She raised her hands and wrapped them both around the wrist of the one he held her face with and focused on it. “Now I think he used the witch to make us both believe the other was dead.”
Grief had consumed her, pain that had blinded her to everything other than escaping, running from the hurt and somehow surviving until she was strong enough to either avenge Rook, or meet him again in his next life.
“He wanted me to suffer for refusing him, and I’m sure he thought it would break me.” Her eyebrows knitted as she battled to remember what had happened.
It had been a blur.
Like when Rook had fallen through the ice and she had almost lost him.
“I was… there’s darkness in me… in all of my bloodline. It took control of me and he couldn’t contain me. I… think I might have destroyed half a cellblock before escaping.”
Rook’s right eyebrow lifted and a teasing smile curled his firm lips, one that removed some of the sombreness from the air and gave her relief. “There is a part of the western wing missing. I always wondered what happened to it. Figured the Devil had lost his temper… not a little witch.”
Heat tried to creep onto her cheeks at that, but she tamped it down. “My family have a history of destruction.”
It ran deep in their blood.
“So you escaped, and I fell.” He tipped his head up and looked at the sky, his gaze distant as it traversed the gold-edged clouds.
Pain beat inside him and it flowed into her as she brushed her fingers over the markings on his forearm, wanting to draw his focus away from what had happened to him and back to her.
“I can help you remember, Rook.”
His turquoise eyes slowly drifted back down to her.
She focused on his markings and then beyond them, funnelled her magic into his veins and muscles, seeking the other spell, the one she had sensed in the bedroom before he had pulled away from her and left her in search of some air.
“I think a witch might be responsible for what happened to you.” She kept her focus on his body as the full weight of his attention came to rest on her, his eyes gaining a curious edge as they locked on her face. “I can feel dark magic in you… buried deep… so deep I’m not sure I can draw it to the surface to decipher what spell was cast on you… but I want to help you.”
He lifted his free hand and cupped her other cheek with it, framing her face, and looked deep into her eyes. “While I would like to remember our time together… I don’t care that I can’t remember… hell, I might even say I prefer it this way… because I don’t have to remember the pain like you do. I don’t have to remember you dying… the thought that you had died.”
She released his wrist and held his hands, keeping them on her face as her heart bled for him at the same time as it filled with warmth, stirred by the way he was looking at her with so much affection in his eyes and by the honesty in his words.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, needing to say it again.
He smiled tightly. “It isn’t your fault. What happened… it was a long time ago, Isadora… and even if I could remember it, I would never hold it against you. If you need my forgiveness… then you have it. I don’t think I could ever blame you for anything or hold a grudge against you for longer than a minute.”
His smile warmed, lighting his eyes, an echo of the way he had looked at her a thousand times in the past when he had been far less serious and far more trouble.
He swept his thumbs across her cheeks, sending warmth skittering over her skin and lightening her insides as feelings stirred inside her, need she was no longer strong enough to deny.
“I’m happy with those memories gone,” he husked, his eyebrows furrowing as he held her gaze. “I’m happy to make new ones with you.”
He glanced at his wrists.
“A spell might hold my memories at bay, but the one you cast to bind us together still exists and it rises to the surface from time to time.” His eyes fell back to the intricate swirls of the spell inscribed on him and softened. “When it happens… I’m drawn to staring at them, spend as long as it lasts studying them… mesmerised by them and struck by a sense they’re important… more than just fancy ink.”
His gaze shifted back to lock with hers.
“I don’t need memories to make me feel something for you.”
He dipped his head.
Claimed her lips in a kiss so soft it brought tears to her eyes.
Whispered against them.
“Isadora… I still love you.”