He kissed me.
In only a few hours I'd gone from no kisses to a saturation of them. This was our fourth kiss moment. And this kiss was the one I loved most.
It was achingly sweet and threaded with relief and full of wonder, too.
I sighed as I sank into his sensual touch, my eyelashes fluttering shut as my hands rose instinctively to cup his bristly cheeks. A few strands of inky-black hair that had come loose tickled my forehead as his hand at the back of my neck angled my head to deepen the kiss. While his lips gently moved over mine, his tongue teased languid caresses, and the briny tang of my tears made the kiss only sharper and sweeter. Tears which had been formed from the fear that he wouldn't understand, that he'd already judged and condemned me for my secret. But his kiss told me otherwise. It spoke to me in ways far better than if he'd opened his mouth and tried to speak.
He kissed me as if we had forever. A kiss to reassure himself that I was fine, alive, and well. A kiss that promised there were many more to come. Vibrant sparks lit behind my eyelids like a shower of fireworks as pleasure swept through my blood, and my mind couldn't help but flick rapidly through the pages of my life, tempting me to daydream of the delightful possibilities of what could be: a life with him by my side. After I saved my aunt, he'd ask her permission to court me. There'd be picnic lunches, drives down country roads with the wake of rusty leaves spilling behind us, and maybe he'd take me to a Def Leppard concert like I'd always wanted. There'd be a small, modest wedding with close friends and family, and we'd have to decide which House to serve. He'd give me the choice to make, and we'd remain here at the Deniauds' where we'd make one of the newlywed rooms our home. There'd be a brood of girls with golden hair and violet eyes for my aunt to coddle. Girls with sweet temperaments and a dash of arrogance that would need curbing.
When Mr. Whiskers pulled away, I swayed gently, slowly opening my eyes and grinning at this scruffy-bearded man. Gods, his wicked, brash mouth. My aunt was going to have a heart attack when I introduced her to him.
We were both standing on our knees facing one another. His big hands framed my face, his thumbs tenderly brushing away the tears dampening my cheeks. He pressed his forehead to mine, one hand moving back to the nape of my neck, his fingers tightening as his lips ghosted mine. His rough voice rasped, "I thought you were going to die. Twice. I thought I was going to pull your corpse out of a watery grave, and when I saw those scissors embedded in your stomach... How much blood..." He squeezed his eyes shut and his voice was raw and cracking. "I thought you were going to bleed out and die in my arms."
"I didn't die," I whispered, my heart stumbling in awe at his honest words, at the fear for me fraying his tone. "I heal really fast," I told him once more, drawing away to gently brush the hanks of hair from his forehead and gift him a reassuring smile.
Laurena had stabbed me in the stomach.
I had survived.
Because I always did.
When I was seven years old, all of my history had been erased. I'd lost everything that made me, me. There was one thing that remained from my past, the bloodhound, which at the time I didn't know existed. I only had the vaguest sense that I wasn't alone, that there was something else inside me.
For a young child who had lost everything and everyone, it wasn't easy for me to trust anyone. A stranger had explained that she was my Aunt Ellena, yet the moment her hand wrapped around mine I had known intrinsically she was. Even afterward, when that thing hidden inside her had hissed in my ear while I pretended to be asleep, Aunt Ellena remained my home, a place of safety, my harbor of shelter when storms rolled in.
Everyone at the Deniauds' had taken pity on me, and I'd been a novelty of sorts. Everyone was curious as to what I'd survived, what had happened to my mother out in the Hemmlok Forest. I was new to House Deniaud, and to my aunt as well. I was afraid and wary of everyone, except Marissa. And so a young daughter of a House befriended a young servant girl. Perhaps our friendship had been easy to form since we were of a similar age. But she'd coaxed me out to play and keep her company in those early days, as autumn had greeted winter. And on a day when the sky was a rich deep blue with no clouds in sight apart from our breaths wisping from our mouths in the chilly air, we'd stolen onto the orchard and climbed a barren apple tree.
We climbed higher and higher, egging one another on, reaching for the slender boughs near the top of the tree, when the branch beneath us cracked and snapped in half.
We'd both fallen. Marissa had landed on top of me as I struck the cold, compact earth hard. While Marissa had twisted her wrist, the bone in my left leg broke in two.
I'd been too shocked to scream at first.
But when the pain crashed into me like slamming into asphalt, I'd let loose a scream of agony that rent the air and echoed across the vast orchard. That was the moment when I felt the presence of something that wasn't me, something deep inside that coiled around my bones and surged through my veins.
A low growl.
Then a soft whine.
I was lying on the ground, Marissa sobbing beside me, helping me sit up as I screamed and wailed and shook. Both of us stared at my leg which was twisted badly, a broken bone poking awkwardly just beneath the skin, pulling it taut and white.
Whatever was inside me brushed along my body, beneath my skin, petting me.
As I choked back a scream in shock, both of us watched in wide-eyed wonder as the broken bones beneath my skin shifted and knitted together, and my leg reshaped back to normal. And there I sat beneath the apple tree with two normal legs. Completely healed. The pain melting away.
Unnatural healing.
I'd sat beside Marissa, with tears rolling down her round cheeks, cradling her wrist and whimpering. I'd taken her hand, promising I would help her get back home and bind her wrist and look after her. That was when the bloodhound showed itself fully. I'd curled my fingers through Marissa's healthy hand, soothing her with gentle murmurings, when I'd felt the thing inside me stirring and seeping out to lick Marissa's wounds, drawing her pain into my own body.
It had hurt, a dull ache that pounded through my blood and made my head throb, and golden filaments wove around us and gilded Marissa's tawny hair with bronze. It wasn't until later with experimentation that I'd worked out I could channel pain into something else, eventually coming to prefer stones.
Marissa's stinging agony had gradually ebbed away, along with the golden threads of power. Both of us were young, but both of us were smart enough to know that this thing was other and that I could never be discovered.
Besides my aunt, Marissa was the only other person who knew what I was.
A secret—she swore fervently beneath the spindled boughs of the apple tree. I'll tell no one. No one will ever know.
Now someone else knew one of my many secrets. Mr. Whiskers tucked a damp lock of hair behind my ear while he stared at me as if he wanted to know more. As if he wanted to learn my truth. But self-preservation kept me from revealing all of it.
I needed to know that he would keep my secret. I didn't tell him anything else—that I could detect others, that I could steal pain, that I was other. Keeping it to just unnatural healing was the safest thing to do. And also if I did reveal that side of myself, I'd be putting him in a precarious position. The vast majority of our kind thought others dangerous and betrayed them to gain an advantage for their House from Master Sirro. And if The Horned Gods discovered that he knew my secret, that he'd helped keep it hidden, they'd claim his life as well as my own.
"You won't tell?"
Could I trust him? I had no choice. Mr. Whiskers was right, having unnatural healing wasn't outlawed. It just was so rare that someone would want to know how I, a servant, possessed it. Something my aunt agreed on and insisted we keep this part of me hidden, so no one would delve deeper and unearth my most dire secret—that I was other. If I was one of the upper ranks, having unnatural healing would never be questioned. If I was married to one of them, his position would secure mine and no one could touch me. But Mr. Whiskers was like me, a servant, a hunter for Lower House Lyon. And I was fine with that. Not even as a child had I fantasized about marrying someone from the upper ranks. It was an impossibility. Ours was a world divided by class, and I knew my place in it.
He shook his head slowly, thick eyebrows drawn over solemn eyes. "No," his deep voice rumbled. "No one will know."
One of his hands drifted down my neck and across the curve of my shoulder, his fingers tightening on my upper arm. "What the hells happened out there?" He scanned my face as if he could read the truth of what had occurred out in the hallway.
Gods, what had happened.
I rubbed my temple, untangling the messiness of what had occurred in the hallway only minutes ago. "Laurena thought Valarie Crowther cut her hair. She made it so easy to believe the Crowther girl had done it, too. Laurena was so nasty to Valarie today." Some of the things I'd overheard her say were downright vicious. "You know what it's like for a servant. The upper ranks don't see us. We fade into the background for them, but we hear and see everything." Something flickered in Mr. Whiskers' gaze, some feeling I couldn't place. "Laurena thought Valarie had retaliated for her cruelty, and cut her hair off."
His hands fell away from my body and he sank back down, kneeling. "Shit, really?"
I mirrored his position, rubbing my hands against my thighs, the torn skirt damp beneath my palms. "Byron took the blame."
He frowned, jerking his head back. "Why the fuck would he do that?"
"Because he wanted to protect her. He likes her, really likes her... You know, that kind of like..."
"That kind of like?" he asked, squinting at me as his nose scrunched, obviously not understanding.
"Maybe it's more than like, a deeper kind of feeling..." I gently coaxed.
Understanding flared in his deep violet eyes. He pulled an aghast face. "Oh my fucking gods..."
I arched an eyebrow at him. Was it really that bad that Byron Wychthorn might actually be in love with Valarie Crowther?
"When I overheard Byron and Laurena speaking earlier this afternoon, she manipulated Byron into giving Valarie up. And just now," I gestured behind me at the bathroom door, as if I could point through it to the hallway beyond. "Laurena completely lost it when Byron chose Valarie over her. He practically told her that he was going to cast her out of their family home for the way she'd threatened Valarie. I guess, with her brother defending Valarie, and putting her in her place, Laurena went for the Crowther girl." I shuddered at the memory of that moment, the madness and hatred that had blazed in Laurena's eyes. "She really doesn't want the Crowthers tainting their family name, nor part of the Great House if Byron chooses to marry Valarie."
"You saved Valarie." It wasn't a question, and his voice was strangely hoarse too. He drew close, a hand around my neck pulling me to him as he placed a swift, gentle kiss on my forehead.
My heart sighed. But the truth of the matter was, "I couldn't...I couldn't let Valarie get hurt for anything I'd done."
"And she stabbed...you."
"At least now with Byron taking the blame, no one will be hunted for hacking off all her hair." Thank goodness.
He unfolded his tall body, rising, and held out a hand. I stared for a few moments, dumbfounded, before I slipped my hand into his, marveling at the scrape of his callouses against my own work-roughened hand. I sucked in a breath, melting a little that I was holding a guy's hand. A slow, glorious smile widened my mouth as he helped me to my feet, both of us staring at each other, smiling. His fingers curled around mine and he softly stroked his thumb over the back of my hand. We'd first met in the most ridiculous of ways, fire meeting fire, that had only gotten more absurd and heated over the day as we'd stolen moments with each other, ending with the hair-cutting escapade and him saving me from almost drowning. Both of us were thieves. And somewhere at the edge of my mind, I'd begun to realize without fully being aware that he was stealing my heart too.
I broke away from his gaze, staring down at my ruined dress. He'd torn my dress right through the center of the waist. How the hells was I going to explain this to my aunt? "You ripped a hole in my aunt's dress," I bemoaned, letting go of his hand to fiddle with the shredded pieces of material.
A huff of laughter had me glancing upward to find him standing there, arms crossed over his barrelled chest, smirking lazily. "It's haute couture, avant-garde, a nod to downtown tramp—work it, tabby cat."
My bark of laughter was loud in the small bathroom. My mouth pinched together as I tried to glare at him, but mostly I was trying not to grin. "My aunt made it for me with her own hands and that's not easy for her."
He tipped his chin up. "I'll buy you another. Two. Three. Fuck, as many as you like."
A pleased blush heated my cheeks, that he would want to do that for me. In the meantime, I needed to fix it. I crouched down and opened up the cupboard doors of the vanity and rifled around until I found the small sewing kit. Rising and unzipping it, I took out a few safety pins and did the best I could with what I had, pinning the flapping fabric together. It wasn't great, but it would do. Bending down once more, I found a hand towel inside the cupboard, straightened, and held my palm upwards, silently asking for my dagger back.
Mr. Whiskers frowned a little, his gaze shooting down to Zrenyth's hunting dagger, which he'd placed on the tiled floor. He bent down, retrieved the dagger, and held it out to me hilt-first. The Purveyor of Rarities had given me the dagger, no charge for once. Everything else I had to buy off him at such ridiculous prices I'd never repay what I owed him in my lifetime. The Purveyor of Rarities knew I hunted, and I think in his strange way he was looking out for me, making sure I had something that I could use to protect myself when I entered the Hemmlok Forest every morning.
I took the dagger from him, the fingers of mist and shadow curling around the blade, and wrapped it up in the hand towel, slipping it beneath the dirty silk scarf around my waist and tightening the knot to keep it in place. I turned away while I did so because the weight of Mr. Whiskers' silent curiosity pressed heavily against my skin.
My gaze slid to the bathroom window, with its smoky pane to hide the interior from the outside. I couldn't see through it, but Mr. Whiskers knew what I was looking at. Grief and impotent anger warred with one another. What Jurgana had done when she'd arisen from her slumber, what had happened to us all. "I don't know what to think," I told him quietly and honestly.
He stepped close behind me. His broad body heated mine through the dress that was slowly drying. "There's nothing anyone can do," he said. "This is part of our world. Who we serve."
"She wanted to satisfy her hunger—"
"She was half-dreaming, Tabitha. Drawn to us, the music and dancing, life, that's what she wanted."
"To take it," I said, my fingers gripping the cool lip of the vanity. I whispered, "So many people died. People we knew. I knew." I twisted around to face him, finding myself boxed in as he placed his hands down on the vanity beside my own, our fingers brushing up against one another. "How is your House? Are they alright? Did you lose anyone? The Lyon brothers, are they...?"
I searched his face, worried about how many people he knew and loved had lost their lives, while he stared at me silently. Something unreadable washed across his features, through the rich velvet eyes, as if he was wondering what to say, how to say it, the words unable to come to him. Instead, he cursed low and kissed me.