Page 110 of Seduced

He passed a hand over his face and it came up wet with tears.

“It said that he or they have buried her,” Wilder was saying as he climbed next to him. “Does that mean…?”

“It’s not literal,” Alexei snapped.

It can’t be. Dear God, don’t let it be.

“Never took you for a praying man,” Wilder murmured.

Alexei hadn’t realized that he had spoken out loud. So be it.

“There is no point in trying to find out who wrote the note, who took her,” he said, fighting to keep his grasp on clear, calm thought. “It’s a nameless goon, a mercenary, an assassin. Those people hardly know anything, least of all who sent them. And we shall find it easier to kill them than extract any information from them.”

“Much easier, I should think,” Wilder grunted. “I shall find no hardship, I promise you, in killing that son of a—”

“Don’t waste your energy on that,” Alexei said, then he gasped as a sudden darkness threatened to overwhelm him. He took a deep breath, biting his lips together, and fought against nausea. The carriage rolled out into the street. “We will be better off going to Miss Wyatt’s house first, I think, and finding out whatever traces she left behind. They will tell us more than any assassin will ever be persuaded to.”

“I,” Wilder said, “am losing my mind.”

Which was not very helpful at all, but Alexei was hardly in possession of his mind either, so what did he know?

He tapped on the roof and yelled at the driver to go faster, although the horses were already galloping at breakneck speed. Even so, the moments it took to reach the vicarage seemed like eons.

The silence inside the carriage was thick like a fog, stopping his breath.

“Haven’t seen Cerberus in days,” Alexei murmured, because he didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know how to say ‘if she is really dead I shall die too’. So he spoke about the bloody cat.

“Is Cerberus a cat?”

“Indeed,” Alexei nodded. “Blasted animal has run away, no doubt. Or gotten trod on.”

“You’ve finally lost your marbles, have you?” Wilder said.

“You and I both.”

Then he saw Poppy’s little garden from the window, and he was already opening the carriage door and jumping down before the horses had stopped moving. Wilder was hot on his heels.

They jumped over the gate, their boots crunching on the old, hard snow underfoot.

“There!” Wilder cried, pointing to a spot a few yards in the distance.

The ground was dark and freshly dug there, the snow swept aside, and there were wilted roses heaped on top of the smoothed soil. A pair of scissors was flung carelessly among the thorns, and there were various other garden tools thrown about, as if someone had been working diligently on the neglected roses and had abandoned their work in a hurry.

Alexei knelt on the ground, his knees digging into the dirt, and pressed a hand to his chest. It hurt.

I won’t survive this, he thought with sudden clarity.Someone took her from here, someone…She must have been so scared. So…

He grabbed his hair.

If I survive her absence, which I won’t, I sure as hell won’t survive thinking of her being taken like this. Being…

“Hey!” Wilder’s hand was on his shoulder, warm and strong. “Don’t fall. Don’t lose your courage now, Alexei, come on. This is not for the faint of heart. We will find something, we will.”

They were both on the ground now, on their knees, looking frantically around for a clue, for anything. It seemed to Alexei that he saw signs of a struggle, but he couldn’t be sure that he wasn’t imagining it.

I hope you fought, little seed. I hope you fought like I taught you. Like a fiend.

Some mark on the ground that looked like a violent step…A snapped branch with something that looked like blood dripping on its edge…A few crushed petals that stood apart from the rest of the rubbish, as if someone had clutched them in desperation, trying to get away…Yes, these might be signs of a struggle, or entirely made up by his own despair.

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