Page 216 of Flirting with Darkness

THE HEART OF THE HOUSE

It could be a trap. Of course, it could be. But how could Inotfollow a call for help? It led me through the hallways until the white ballroom doors came into sight. My stomach tightened even more.

Bad things happened there. In all House’s memory-dreams, the worst moments began in the ballroom.

And I knew that was where Granny’s calls for help would lead me.

But, again, how could I not follow?

Iron blade held tight, I threw open the doors.

The ballroom wasn’t as I’d seen it in those dreams. Vines didn’t just decorate the floor, they grew out of it, thick and tangled, with thorns as long as my hand.

And in a clearing in the midst of those twisting vines, a great, hulking shape bent over a small one.

The steel-grey wolf—Faolán—stood over Granny, snarling. His ivory teeth snapped six inches from her face, but only because she clung to the fur on his cheeks, desperately trying to keep him away.

“Rose! Please! Help me.” Granny’s eyes were wide, staring up at him in a look of pure desperation as she wrestled to keep him from tearing her throat out.

My gut fell through the floor, maybe ending up in the terrible amphitheatre that stood somewhere beneath us.

Because Faolán was every bit the monstrous beast I’d tried to persuade myself he wasn’t. Eyes half-wild. Muzzle wrinkled to reveal all those sharp, sharp teeth. Vicious ferocity in every movement as he fought to kill her.

His second attack in mere hours. What had happened in the bedroom was no longer an isolated incident.

“Help… me.” Granny’s voice grew strained, and Faolán reached an inch closer to her vulnerable flesh. “Kill… him.”

My knees almost gave out as I approached through a path in the vines. Kill him? There had to be another option.

“Faolán?” I called. “Wake up. This isn’t you.” I wasn’t sure if it was true, but itfelttrue even if it contradicted what my eyes told me.

He didn’t so much as blink.

“Faolán,please.” There was a desperate waver in my voice as I reached the clearing in the middle of the ballroom. “You need to wake up.”

Nothing.

Upon the heart at the centre of the floor, Granny’s form was tiny, her limbs thin, her body skinny with a dress pooled around it. And Faolán was this great mass of muscle and fur clad over thick, solid bone. I couldn’t hope to wrestle him off her. He was too big, too strong.

I squeezed the leather-wrapped hilt of the knife.

“You need to do it, Rose.” Granny’s arms trembled as she took in little gasping breaths. Terror shone in her rheumy eyes. “He’s a monster. Kill him. Save me.”

My heart tolled in my ears, as final and heavy as the bone clock in the corridor.

She was right.

My eyes burned at the fact, but that didn’t make it any less true.

Feet heavy, I took a step closer.

Even facing the kelpie, he hadn’t shifted into a wolf or seemed quite so out of control. What had happened to turn him? Did it matter?

My shoulders sank as I took another step.

Except… if he was so beastly, he’d had a whole month full of chances to kill Granny. And even if he’d twisted his vow so it didn’t apply in this form, he still hadn’t hurt me the night I’d encountered him in the grounds. It had felt more like he was herding me back towards the house. Hadn’t he said that if I’d tried to disobey the geas and leave, the best case scenario was broken bones and the worst was death? Had he been trying to protect me, even then?

Everything I knew about him didn’t add up to the picture before me.

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