Page 49 of The Secrets of Roan Island

I won’t let her leave.

I study her face as she sleeps, barely holding myself back from waking her so that I can make her come again, feed from her again. With gentle fingertips, I push a stray lock from her cheek. Her eyes flutter behind her eyelids. She looks so calm in sleep, beautifully relaxed. I marvel at how she can feel safe enough to sleep here with me, to completely let down her defenses. Even my own family members never fall asleep in the same room. As much as I care for my brothers, I never go to bed without locking my door.

The Roan family isn’t safe.

Which means Ruby isn’t safe here with us.

My heart rates rocket, pounding a message in my ears that makes me feel sick.Not safe. Not safe. Not safe.

Fuck! What am I going to do? I can’t let her leave—it would rip me apart—but if she stays, my father will make me turn her on Solstice, when the moons align and our venom changes. No matter the experiments I’ve run, I can’t figure out why the transition no longer works. I only know that it always results in death.

I can’t watch Ruby die like that. In pain. Helpless.

My eyes flit around the library, searching for something. Anything. An answer. My gaze lands on my laboratory. I carefully shift Ruby, setting her gently on the couch and covering her with a blanket. She mumbles something in her sleep. My name is the only word I catch, and hearing her speak it hardens my resolve. I kiss her forehead and vow to find a way to keep her alive through the transition—I will turn her, because the thought of living without her is entirely unbearable. But there’s no way I’m injecting her with Solstice venom until I’m certain it won’t kill her.

After one more kiss to her forehead, I go to my laboratory, feeling edgy and uncertain. There’s a little over a week before Solstice, which doesn’t give me much time, and I’ll need to keep her safe while I work out a solution.

The lab is in disarray from earlier, when I was struggling with the new moon hunger and Ruby was in the next room feeding it. Broken glass, upended beakers, and paraphernalia that needs to be returned to its proper place. I’m not sure where to start. I turn, looking for a broom when my eyes land on the metal door in the back. The one my father thinks is just storage for the hazardous chemicals I use in my experiments. It’s the only place in the mansion my father never goes, since he doesn’t want to be anywhere near dangerous things I could use against him. Even my brothers don’t have a key to that room.

I look toward the library where I know Ruby is asleep.

Then I turn back to the metal door.

The solution comes like a whisper, melting the tension from my shoulders. I know how I can protect her.

25

Noah

“She’s gone,” I lie, glancing at my brothers, who look at me with varying levels of disbelief. I’m not sure I’m going to be able to pull this off. I’m not very good at lying.

“What?” Hammish stands up behind his overly large desk. His office is a study in contrasts. Old and new. The old wooden desk that used to be my grandsire’s, but then a lamp that seems to be all the rage in the colonies, its new technology hissing with steam and clicking with gears to keep it lit. There are articles about our father framed on the wall, evidence of his need for adoration, and mirrors in gilt frames. The chairs and sofa are new, the red fabric sleek and adorned with interesting folds and tufts with golden buttons. On a shelf, there’s an old hourglass he likes to flip—often as he devises some new torture—and next to it a clock that chimes when a gear produces dancing animals that race on a track to mark the hours. All ostentatious, like the man himself.

He called us all to his study when Ruby hadn’t shown up to meet him for their appointed tea time this morning. Hopefully she’s still asleep. Warmth radiates through my core as I recall how thoroughly I exhausted her.

“Where is she, Noah?” My father’s voice is as cold as the wind whipping across the lake.

“She must have left with everyone else this morning.” I keep my voice even and my gaze steady. “I went to find her, and her room was empty. The events of last night were probably too much for her.”

Without warning, Hammish sweeps everything from the desk in his study with a loud roar. I glance at Jafeth and Shemaiah, who look at me with matching consternation, equally surprised by our father’s excessive emotion. I thought his intention with Ruby was to distract her from her research on missing women, maybe give her something new from our library to focus on in her next paper. But his anger now shows I was wrong.

Fists slam into his disheveled desk as he leans forward. “I told you to keep an eye on her!”

Everything, every word, movement, motive suddenly snaps into focus, like I’ve slipped on translation goggles that decipher his every move. From the beginning, he invited her to stay through Solstice. He never intended Ruby to leave. It was always his plan to keep her.

He wants her for himself. He wants a strong, intelligent woman to turn at Winter Solstice. If she dies from the venom, then her research stops, and if she lives she’ll be his. He wins either way.

The truth is written in his posture, his expression, and my stomach sours as bile climbs my throat.

I’m a fool.

Hammish stalks around his desk, heedless of the mess he’s made, papers crinkling and glass cracking under his shoes, until he stops directly in front of me. Keen eyes study mine. “I saw the way you looked at her last night. You wouldn’t let her leave. Not without tasting her first.”

He’s seen too much. I need to play this carefully. “I did taste her.”

“And?”

“Subpar.” I swallow, hating to speak of Ruby as anything less than the indelible goddess that she is. “She didn’t live up to her scent, so I left her to find a… less prudish meal.”

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