Page 56 of This Haunted Heart

“Oh,” Rynn said softly. And then her eyes rounded in horror. “Oh!”

She glanced between me and the towel on the stove handle.

The air warmed around us, and a breeze that couldn’t be a breeze—the windows were shut—sent the towel swaying against the iron door. Rynn gasped and leapt back from it.

“They like it when you say their names, but they don’t like it when you try to stare at them too long,” I told her gently, studying her reactions, worried about pushing her too hard. It hadn’t been an easy thing for me to comprehend either. When I’d attempted the straightforward approach with her in the past, she’d rejected it. “I don’t always recognize them, but the ones tethered to me, the ones I do know, they seem to like it when I speak to them . . .”

I let the words trail away as her face drained of color.

“Why don’t we go for our morning walk,” I suggested. “You look like you could use the fresh air.”

She stepped away from me, pulling her hands in to wring her fingers together. “I . . . No, thank you . . . not this time.”

Rynn exited the room briskly.

* * *

She avoided me the rest of the day. That night, I awoke to screams.

The screams were usually mine. I shouted myself awake at least weekly, but this time it was coming from outside my room.

“Rynn,” I breathed, and I leapt from my bed.

I rushed to her, shoving through the doors, leaving them open at my back. Rynn tossed in her blankets, spine arched, screaming. The glow from the lantern on her end table cast an ominous shadow of her body contorting onto the ceiling. Palpable pain reverberated through her muffled cries and sent my stomach into a tumble.

I had to remind myself not to wake her suddenly. It was frightening to be woken like that. We’d been pulling each other from this state since we were young. I knew better.

I crawled into bed with her and hugged her thrashing body against my chest. Pushing fingers through her hair, I made soothing noises in her ear.

“Everything’s all right, Rynn,” I whispered. “Hush now. Whatever you’re seeing, it’s gone. It’s done. It’s not here.”

“The baron,” she gasped, “he locked me up in the attic, and then I heard those horrible footsteps and a heart beating in my ears!”

“He’s gone. He’s not here,” I told her, pressing a kiss to the side of her head. Her skin tasted of salt and spicy sweat.

“You didn’t know where I was.” Her chest heaved. I held her under her arm, my palm pressed over her heart. The organ sped against my hand, fluttering as fast as hummingbird wings. “He’d forgotten about me again, and you didn’t know I was in the attic. You didn’t know to bring me food and water. And there were angry voices in the dark. His voice! He called me terrible names, Loch.”

“He’s gone,” I soothed. “He’s dead, and he’s never coming back.”

Some of the tension relaxed out of her. “He’s really dead?”

“Very much so.”

“You’re certain?”

“I was there when he died. I’m certain.” I pressed closer to her, molding my body to hers, nestling her against my chest. “He’s been gone nearly two decades now. He’s not ever going to hurt you again, Rynn.”

Her ragged breathing blew against her pillow. She swallowed. “You were there?”

“I was.”

Gulping in air, she wrapped her arms around mine. “Did you kill him?” She murmured the question so quietly I almost didn’t hear her.

And when I did understand, when what she was asking sunk into me deep, her words hung there heavy and dark. Her fingers gripped my wrist. She worked her thumb gently down my racing pulse. I sensed no judgement in the inquiry, no shock or horror in her soothing touches. Just that one pressing question.

I rested my chin in her hair. “I murdered him in the mire just outside the house in Light Lily. Killed him with the same two hands I’m holding you with now. It was his fault I’d lost you, and I knew it.”

I’d thought he’d killed her. I’d thought he’d taken her from me for good. Forevermore.

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