"I warned you, Kristina," he said, leaning closer to me, his hand scorching my wrist, his silver eyes darkening to a stormy grey. "I told you what would happen if you defied me."
Fire was racing up and down my arm. The rose necklace burned at my thr...
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~ Kriss Darcy ~
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The sight of the figure in the window sent my mind spinning again.
He was watching. He heard everything we said.
The whole situation reminded me of the scene in Wuthering Heights when Catherine and Heathcliff go to Thrushcross Grange and Catherine is bitten by that dog - to which her reaction is quite admirable. She did not yell out - no! she would have scorned to do it, if she had been spitted on the horns of a mad cow. But I was thinking of afterward, when Heathcliff was kicked off of the Grange (A wicked boy, at all events, and quite unfit for a decent house!). He stayed and watched Catherine through the window, his heart sinking with every moment she stayed. Eventually, he left, but their relationship was never the same again.
My relationship with Ash had been doomed from the start, though I'd deluded myself into believing that there was a sense of stability where he was involved. But today... that false sense of security vanished when the truth and realization had dawned on me. It was like I had woken up from a dream, only to realize that I still lived in a reality.
The spell he put on me was vanishing. I was regaining consciousness.
I stared into the attic window, at the thin line of smoke rising up from the recently-extinguished candle. One moment, he'd been there. The next, he'd vanished.
"Jase," I whispered, grabbing at the arm of the boy staring at the candle in shock. He'd believed my story, I knew. He'd believed that a man was living in the basement of the manor, somebody who was strangely obsessed with me, who lived out of sight and out of the mind of everybody else here. But it was another thing to have those beliefs confirmed in front of your eyes.
The rain poured down around us. My clothes had long since been soaked through - I'd have to borrow something from Megan, since there was no way I was going into my own bedroom now.
But you'll have to, at some point, some dark part of my mind whispered. The masquerade is tomorrow, and your dress is in your room.
"Jase," I repeated, shivering - this time from cold, not fear, though there was still a tendril uncurling deep in my stomach. "We should go back inside."
