Authors: Crystal Collier
He cleared his throat and shook his eyes away. “My job would be significantly easier if not for
love
. I honestly loathe the notion, which is what makes our relationship all the more incongruous.” He lifted her fingers to his lips. “This must be fate’s way of putting me in my place.”
She beamed.
Had she any idea how that smile gripped him? He commanded his thundering heart to calm. “I have spent decades building up resistance to every temptation imaginable, but you crumble all that with a glance.”
“Is that not what it means to be in love?”
He laughed. “I suppose.” She leaned in to kiss him, but he stopped her. He had yet to reveal the worst part. “You must know, because I possess the tool that can destroy the Soulless, they are constantly seeking to extort my weaknesses—of which you, I am afraid, are first and foremost.”
Her grin dropped. “Then Bellezza spoke the truth about the weapon?”
“Edward informed me of your inquiries.” He brushed her jaw. “There have been many through the years who were desperate to claim it from me.”
She bit her lip. He grabbed the rock beside her to keep from easing the tension in her mouth with his own.
She placed a hand on his chest. “So you are saying they will come after
me
to reach you? Is that how it happens?”
He groaned and looked down at her fingers. No, he would not dwell on the future, and neither should she. He wrapped his hand over hers. “They cannot harm you, not here, not with me. But they would. Given the chance they would use you, your family—anything you hold dear. They may still. You have to be prepared for that.”
She nodded slowly.
“I hate to do it, but I must insist you forsake Sarah, your father, and all others—for their safety, for yours—” he met her piercing jade eyes. “For mine.” He squeezed her fingers. “My life is in your hands, Alexia.” And while that scared him worse than the gaping jaws of hell, he trusted her.
She nodded.
Wrapping his arms around her, he rested his head on her shoulder. “I cannot lose you.”
78
Through Another’s Eyes
Despite her protests, Edward dragged Kiren away the instant they returned to consult on matters of pressing importance—the foremost being Bellezza and the war. From anxious boredom, she found herself outside watching Miles sharpen kitchen knives.
He grinned. “You really had no idea we are all
Passionate
.”
“I have not been around our kind much.”
“All the more reason we should have seemed odd.” He chuckled.
She decided to stop with the small talk. “You are angry with him?” His smile faded. “You all are?”
The flint drew too hastily across his blade. “Leave it alone, Alexia.”
“I wish you would not be. Please, Miles?”
“He abandoned you.” His jaw tightened, focus redoubled on the knife he worked.
“He made an impossible decision, and I pushed him away.” When no retort came she decided to address a new subject. Ethel had said he understood animals. “I am told your ability is something spectacular.”
He huffed, rolled his eyes, and shook his head. “It is an annoyance for most of us. They can’t keep things from me.”
“Beg your pardon? The animals?”
“Uh . . .” He straightened up, flint and knife hanging limply in his hands. He started toward the kitchen, scowling.
“What? What is it?”
He shoved the door open and waved. “Maybe you should be inside.”
“Are you no longer allowed to speak with me, or are you stalling? I am going to find out in the end.”
He studied her a full minute before returning to the yard. “I see through other’s eyes.”
“W-what?” She laughed, but he didn’t rescind the statement. She stared. Surely she heard him wrong. “See through their eyes?” She crossed her arms as he stabbed a knife into the log he’d occupied earlier. “Whose eyes?”
He played absently with a flint. “Everyone’s?”
Her jaw hung.
He started gathering up his things.
“Wait, Miles.” He turned back slowly. “What exactly do you mean by . . . ?”
A heavy sigh escaped him. “I can show you.”
“Show me?” She realized his meaning. “Show me, please!”
He dropped his burden and offered a hand vertically, palm facing forward, fingers up. She mimicked his action and, as their skin touched, thoughts and feelings overwhelmed her.
. . . She circled helter-skelter about two giants, breaking their images into a hundred facets, searching for any hint of food. An enormous hand batted at her. She settled securely on the wall, watching the behemoths, droning out their booming voices . . .
. . . She scrubbed tarnish off a silver candlestick, objectively studying Nelly, curious if she’d neglected the chore on purpose or out of ignorance . . .
. . . The taint of fresh meat drew her nose. She pressed between great leafy branches and halted, pulling up her long black nose, trembling. Two uprights stood at the end of the clearing . . .
His hand fell away.
A red fox stood at the edge of the trees, frozen.
She gasped. “You see all that? That is incredible! How did you—?”
“I am not very good at sharing.” His head bowed. “Not like the master, anyhow. He can show you exactly what he wants. Me, you get what you get.”
She put meaning to his words. What a phenomenal talent! To see through another’s eyes, to understand how another being thought, how they felt?
Another thought hit her. “We were seeing through Ethel—cleaning the silver. Do you often see through people?”
His eyes shifted away.
“Miles?”
“Sometimes.”
She rounded to face him. The fox scurried away at her movement. “Sometimes?”
His gaze flickered apologetically to hers. “Most times.”
She fell back a step. “Have you . . . have you ever . . . ?”
He stalked back toward the house. She followed.
“It’s why he took me on, why he kept me around. The others, they’re special all right, but none of them are
this
dangerous.”
Pity flared at the statement. “Dangerous how?”
He turned back and looked her right in the eye. “I know what others think. I know what they feel and why. Sometimes I can even make them think things. I manipulate them as easily as clay.”
The rigidity of his tone brought her back to reality. “And . . .”
His eyes remained on her face, watching like he feared she’d reject him.
“Do you,” she asked at last, “manipulate . . . ?”
He shook his head. “The Master has been teaching me not to do what comes naturally.”
She nodded. “Have you—?” She gripped both hands in front of her, fingers twisting together. “Have you seen through me?”
He nodded shortly.
“Oh.” Her cheeks flushed. “Often?”
He shrugged.
“Recently?”
His brows crinkled with guilt.
“Now?”
His head shook rigorously. “I try not to.”
“How does it work? Is it creatures you have touched or seen?”
The lines around his eyes crinkled, accenting his frown. He held perfectly still. “Proximity.”
Her eyes widened. “How close do they have to—?”
His lips pursed. “A mile.”
She rubbed the goosebumps on her arms.
“It helps if I’ve connected physically before, and occasionally there are people I can’t penetrate. The Master keeps me out of his mind. He’s the only one who can consistently. Nelly’s pretty good. Ethel, Lester, Edward, they try. Usually they succeed, but I don’t
try
to get in, I really don’t intend to most times. I mean, it just happens, like breathing. Makes it hard to . . .”
“To what?”
“To sleep.”
What a novel idea. “And how would I keep you from my mind?”
“I will not,” he promised, “not unless you say . . .” He swallowed and started again. “Not unless you invite me.”
She suffered a loss of words. “And why would I do that?”
“I don’t know.” The wonder in his open eyes made her laugh.
“How would I invite you?”
His nostrils flared. She waited for him to say something, but he just watched her. It hit her then. Flaring her nose? She laughed again. She simply thought it a quirk of character when Nelly’s rage around him boiled into pulsing nostrils, but to know what it meant?
“That is the most ridiculous—!”
His gray eyes met hers, filled with awe. “You’re not afraid?”
“I admit, it is going to take some thinking, but oh! If only I had such an amazing gift!”
A small grin played at his lips. “More amazing than dreaming the future, or stopping time?”
She sucked in a breath. Yes, he would know about that. “But I cannot control mine! At least you—”
“Can sometimes, and not without years of working at it. You will master yours too, eventually.”
“It will come.” She nodded. “What about you? When did yours manifest?”
“I was four.”
“Must have made for an interesting childhood.”
“You have no idea.”
79
Crossed
Sarah paced the bedroom floor in Charles’s house, wringing her hands, her wedding band glistening in candlelight. She swept past the bureau where the brush John had given her as a wedding gift sat, the wooden handle painted in gold lattice.
She hated that he was away, but he insisted on gathering intelligence on Soulless movements before the upcoming lunar cycle. Four days from now marked the new moon, the seventh since Bellezza blackmailed her into sending Alexia to her probable doom. She’d had no rest. No peace. No calm.
And tonight was the deadline.
She had returned to Charles’s house, with hopes the deadly child would not follow. A part of her still believed there was some magic her older brother could offer by way of protection. A small part.
A chilly breeze tickled by her cheek. She froze. Ice spread down her spine, frost prickling across her bare arms.
“By and by, one might think you had failed for all this pacing.”
She cringed at the child-like voice. It carried the cadence of youth, but the girl’s words and forethought were well beyond adolescence.
Sarah swallowed her dread and turned. She gasped and fell back.
The child’s golden hair loosely curled over a white gown, a gown spattered in bright red splotches. The same red corroded Bellezza’s fingernails, discolored one wrist, and stained a single ringlet. A manic grin completed the semblance of carefully constructed terror. Sarah didn’t dare imagine where the blood had come from, but she understood the girl’s tactic: intimidation through fear.
Straightening up, Sarah breathed deep. “Alexia is dead,” she lied.
“I give you one task.” The girl tsked. “One tiny little job, and you lose the errand girl?”
Sarah held her ground. It was best this way—Alexia far away and safe from this lunatic. If it cost her life, so be it, but she would not give in without a fight.
“I gave you time, then more time, and what do you give me?” Bellezza threw her hands in the air. “Nothing!”
“I will give you something.” Sarah mentally seized the wardrobe behind the girl and yanked it forward.
Bellezza’s eyes shot wide. She poofed into a cloud of mist as the armoire collapsed, slamming into the floorboards where she’d stood. The cloud thinned.
Sarah seized the long handle of the copper warming pan beneath her bed, holding it like a rapier or club.
Wind grazed her shoulder. She whirled. A wicked giggle echoed in her ears.
The child’s face materialized not five inches from her own. “Boo!”
She swung and the girl exploded into mist again.
Her laughter floated hollowly through the room. “You will be so easy to kill. Like smashing an ant.”
What had John told her about Passionate weaknesses? Metal, primarily iron—dead substances. She lunged for the candlestick.
Fingers locked around her hair, tearing her backwards. She yelped and smacked into the wall, catching herself on the window frame. She clung to it, pressed against the drapes.
Bellezza wrenched at her hair, but Sarah gripped the wood with her mental hold. She needed a distraction.
Locks ripped from her scalp.
She yelled and grabbed at the drapery. It came tumbling down, blinding her.
A frustrated grunt echoed in her ears, pinpointing the girl’s location. She envisioned the bed at her back, lifted one of the posts free with her mind, and smacked it into the child’s head.
Whoomp.
Clatter.
Throwing the window hangings off, Sarah caught just the hint of golden curls as they misted off the planks.
Fingers locked around her throat. She gasped, but could draw no air. The grip was too strong—like a crushing vise that would pop her head off its body! The corner of her vision blurred into a dark haze.
Desperate, she reached up and clasped her hands over the fleshy manacles.
A gasp.
The fingers beneath hers trembled. They loosened. She kept her grip on them.
“Stop!” the child shrieked.
Sarah pulled the girl’s hands away. Bellezza writhed to one side, dropping to her knees. The child’s left arm had gone limp, the fingers clutched beneath her golden wedding band.
Gold.
“It burns!” Bellezza jerked her right hand free and clawed at her left arm as though trying to peel the skin away.
Sarah held firm. “You will stay away from my home, from my family.”
“Yes!” the child acquiesced.
“You will not set foot on this estate again.”
“Yes,” the girl blubbered.
“You will leave us in peace.”
Bellezza’s eyes blazed. “Anything you wish!”
The hate in her eyes promised retribution. If released, she would attack. Sarah lifted her free hand and summoned her hairbrush from across the room. It flew into her grasp. If brutality was the only language the child understood, so be it.
She slammed the brush handle into Bellezza’s shoulder, burying its gold painted grip deep inside.
The girl screamed.
“Let this be a reminder to you.” Sarah shoved her away.
The child toppled onto her side, curling in on herself and howling. Her little frame shook as she reached toward the buried implement, brushed her fingers across it, and cringed away. Sobs.
“Leave, Bellezza.”
She trembled up onto her knees, hugging her useless arm, and tore the brush out of her shoulder. Her scream rattled the walls.
Sarah grabbed at her chest. Severe pain crushed her heart. Every muscle constricted. She dropped to the floor.
The child broke into vapor.
Sarah drew in a breath, sweat dripping down her brow. This was not over.