Page 70 of The Musician and the Monster

Ceridwen

Not kissing Drystan was a mistake. A terrible one. She wanted to kiss him again, yearned for it, but as he’d leaned in, the looming specter of his monster wrenched her away. She should have explained, should have leaped into his arms and kissed him herself, but like a coward, she’d walked away and used her music as a shield for her insecurity.

Guilt drove her into the greenhouse again the next day. She couldn’t change the past, but if she was lucky, she might be able to redo the moment. Drystan loved his plants. If she had a chance of finding him anywhere outside his tower, it was there.

Today she wouldn’t step away. Today she’d kiss him—if she had the opportunity.

But Drystan wasn’t in the greenhouse when she arrived. No one occupied its glassy walls outside its permanent residents, the plants.

If I wait, maybe he’ll come.

Ceridwen fingered the leafy fringe on a head of cabbage ripe for harvest. Perhaps tomorrow she could take it to her family. The green vegetable would surely brighten their day and provide a change from the thick stews and baked spuds Bronwyn had droned on about when she’d stopped by for tea. Though they had the coin now, such things were hard to find in the market this time of year.

A strangled sound snapped her reverie among the vegetables. She’d been alone in the greenhouse minutes ago, she was sure of it, but someone or something lurked beneath the canopy with her now. Someone she’d never heard enter despite her vigilance.

Muffled noises came again from her right, sending a shiver down her spine despite the heat of the blazing afternoon sun through the glass. A wide trellis covered in vines separated her from the sound and obscured the view beyond. The rose garden lay on the other side, the one Drystan had worked on so carefully the day before.

She recognized the sound as she drew around the edge of the rows of trellises.

Retching.

A dark form hunched among the roses. Masculine. Strong shoulders. Dark hair.

Not Drystan.

Recognition chilled her skin. Malik had seemed fine earlier in the day when she passed him briefly on the way out of the library, yet now he crouched bent over among the thorny bushes. Only one reason made sense. He held a monster as well, and now that monster rose to the surface, even in the light of day.

Fear urged her back, away from the monster about to spring to life. One step, two. Her back crashed into the trellis, rustling the leafy vines coating its surface. The racket carried through the otherwise quiet space like her flute on a cold winter’s night.

Malik’s head flew up, pinning her to the trellis with just a look. Something red, too much like blood to be anything else, coated his lips and dribbled down his chin. He stared her down in shock with wide eyes, unblinking, until another lurch rolled up his back and had him heaving a splash of watery crimson to the rich soil below.

Ceridwen bolted, running as fast as she could through the paths toward the door.

“Wait!” The strangled call sounded behind her.

But she didn’t stop, couldn’t stop.

A hand latched on to her arm, drawing her to a sudden, jarring halt between rows of vegetables. Ceridwen jerked against him.

“Please,” Malik begged, voice gruff.

A scream crawled up her throat, but his hand clamped over her mouth as he drew her against his hard, still human body.

“Stop, just listen to me,” he implored when she strained against him without avail. “I won’t hurt you.”

He hadn’t, not yet, not truly. But she trusted a snake in the grass more than this man.

“Ceridwen, please, I need you to listen.”

Something in his voice, the desperate plea, slowed her struggle. Malik always exuded calm arrogance—perfect control beneath a surface of cocky amusement. Even when Drystan had thrown him bodily across the room, he’d laughed it off as nothing. Yet now he begged, a touch of fear in his words as they rolled across her ears.

He loosed a deep breath that tickled her cheek as she finally stilled against his unmoving form. “If I let you go, don’t scream, and don’t run.” His chest rose and fell against her back, far too intimate a position to be in with anyone, much less him. “Please.”

She nodded, if for no other reason than to escape his scent, so like Drystan’s, and the warmth that reminded her of other arms she wished to be held in.

Malik released his hold. Ceridwen stepped away and whirled on him fast enough to catch the smear of blood still clinging to his lips before he wiped it away with the back of his hand.

“What did you see?” he asked. His green eyes searched her like a puzzle, as if he stared hard enough he could pull the truth from her mind with his will alone. Perhaps his magic allowed that.

---