Page 107 of Iron Blade

My husband looked at me one last time, before he reached for the door knob and shut it, caging me in. I would have gotten up and locked it, but what would be the point? He’d just break it down and get to me.

I was a prisoner now.

I keeled over, my fingers twisting into my hair as I wailed like a madwoman, screaming at myself, at my husband, at the fucking world! At the life that I had sworn to never have. I wailed because I had a strange, and painful suspicion that there was something in me… something tragic growing from me, and the beast I had pledged myself to.

Chapter thirty-eight

The Witch

Eoghan

Christ, what had I done? A headache throbbed through my forehead, like my head was under a vice. My stomach was in knots and my heart felt like it would squeeze the life out of me.

Two different kinds of darkness warred inside my heart. One wanted to pin my wife down, and fuck her into bloody, loving submission. To remind her of the electricity that pulled us together. The magic that existed between the two of us.

Another wanted to tie her down and surround her with bullet proof glass and steel, to protect her from the outside world.

She was as delicate and beautiful as the very art she exhibited. I needed her to be as protected as the fucking Mona Lisa.

That sinking feeling that we were headed for tragedy floated like a dark cloud over my head. I was Romeo watching from my catatonic state as Juliet drank the poison. Or was I worse? Was I Orpheus unable to stop turning around to look at Eurydice, and seeing her snatched back into the Underworld?

Or was I just a selfish bastard, bringing an innocent woman into a life she didn’t belong to?

“Aoibheann?” I said, knocking on the door of the only woman I could… the only person I had left.

Our relationship had never been warm. We were two people in my father’s orbit, dodging the fire of his wrath as best we could. My sad existence brought me to her door because I had no one else.

Her heavy door opened, and her familiar sickly pale skin and red hair poked from the darkness within.

“Eoghan?” Her whisper-soft voice sent chills down my spine.

“Could you attend to Kira?” The words worked through the lump in my throat. “We have to go to the Flanagan’s today, to pay our respects.”

The door widened, and my stepmum, in her usual black garb, stepped forward.

I was struck with how different she was from my Kira. Where my wife’s face and body was full of life, darkened by the sun, with dark, wavy hair that flew in the wind like Venus de Milo, Aoibheann was the image of exhausted, Victorian waifishness. Her skin was so pale, it was almost blue, her eyes sad, and hair drab, despite its red color. She covered herself from her neck to her ankles, adding to the ancient, sickly appearance. She belonged as the sad widow in a Dickens novel.

“What have you done, Eoghan?” Her voice was soft, but laced with accusation. She may as well have slapped me in the face.

“She has… finally understood the extent of our family’s dealings,” I explained, as best I could.

Aoibheann was the sister to the Boston Irish. So she was well-versed.

“That poor girl.”

My jaw clenched. It sounded like an accusation.

“Please, just attend to her,” I gritted through clenched teeth.

Aoibheann’s strange gaze went over me, her head tilting and her dowdy hair shifting with the movement. Christ, the woman looked like a ghost, staring at the living. I wouldn’t come to her, if I knew any other woman who could help Kira through this.

My heart clenched, wishing for the childhood friends I had. The girl I had treated like a sister, but disappeared. But that was another regret for another day. I had a wife to attend to.

“You know what my father will do, if she doesn’t attend.”

Invoking a reminder of my father’s wrath made her stand up straighter. She nodded her head and without a word, glided down the hall to my room, where Bourne still stood outside, keeping Kira in.

Bourne gave me a questioning look. I nodded, and he stepped to the side, allowing Aoibheann in.

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