Savage Wings: Book Three of The Whitechapel Chronicles

Chapter 9

"Josiah..." I pleaded.

"Megan, you don't need to feel embarrassed, darling. You were married to the guy. Hell, you loved him. Those old feelings never really go away, do they? And Harper himself just said it didn't matter what you had to do to escape, you heard him – it doesn't matter. So tell him. Go on, tell him how you wore that dress for your husband, the same one you wore on your anniversary."

"He made me wear it. I didn't have a choice!"

"Now there's that word again. Choice. Isn't it funny how we're always quick to blame it on choices or lack of? You didn't choose to wear the dress. He made you. You didn't choose to tell him you would abandon your own kind as long as you and Lucius could be safe with him. He made you say it. Did he also make you want him when he bent you over that table? Did he force you to moan in ecstasy as he put his hand up your dress?"

My face burned for the second time, only this time it felt like a scar I would never rid myself of. He might as well have reached out and aimed a sucker punch straight to my gut. I couldn't speak. I couldn't breathe. He had winded me with his words and I was suffocating with the utter shame of it all.

It took me a moment to feel Harper brush past me, to realise that he was walking away. It wasn't until he reached the doors and pushed through them that I was able to will my feet to chase after him, ignoring the smug chuckle of Josiah as I fled the chapel.

"Harper?" I caught up with him, tugging on the back of his shirt to get him to stop. "Harper, please."

He turned quickly, pushing me against the wall, although not aggressively. Gently resting his forehead against mine, he ran his fingertips down my face, tracing them across my lips. With a deep exhausted sigh, he locked eyes with mine and there it was again. That flicker of hope sparking across the green. That flicker of hope I knew would crush us both.

"Tell me," he said imploringly. "Tell me it's not true and I will believe you."

I touched a trembling hand to his chest and swallowed hard. "It wasn't how he says."

He drew back, shaking his head and laughed coldly. "Right. Of course it's not."

Turning sharply on his heels, he walked the short distance to our room and I followed him inside, watching with dismay as he grabbed his jacket – the one I had spent hours scrubbing to rid it of the stench, dirt and blood of Oxleas – and put it on. I shrank back against the doorframe as he barrelled past me.

"Wait," I begged. "Where are you going?"

He stopped then and looked back, his cold gaze raking over me with sheer disdain. "I'm hungry," he sneered dismissively. "You weren't enough."

And with that he was gone, disappearing out into the dusk of the evening, leaving me to stare after him and wonder whether he would ever return.

******

I don't remember how I reached the top of the stairwell. I don't remember making that journey, walking that dark corridor or treading those precarious steps to the top of the tower. And yet there I was, standing outside the bedroom door, feeling numb and dazed as I listened to the sound of the gramophone playing within. I vaguely remembered the song from the jukebox in my dad's pub. P.P Arnold maybe. A shiver crept over my skin, like the feathery light touch of a hundred ghosts.

Stepping into the room, I could see Caelan's silhouette through the layers of crimson voile and hear her humming along to the song, her voice husky and low. I breathed in and out slowly, feeling the numbness inside me being replaced by something else, something that scratched about in the base of my gut like some feral animal, something that ignited my veins and made me want to scream out loud.