Chapter 92

I found Elva, Susie, and Mark at the edge of the gardens, where the fields of short grass began.

Elva was playing with Silver and Night. She crawled over Night, while Silver nosed at her stomach or licked her face. Elva’s laughs were loud and happy, and easily pushed away any lingering sadness I held inside of me.

At least, it did – until I noticed that Elva seemed to be talking with the wolves.

She’d done so before. It wasn’t some big revelation that she could. But she was getting better at it. Watching her, it was like she was having deeper conversations with the wolves than she was even able to out loud with me or other humans.

I moved toward where Susie and Mark were sitting together in the grass. They were leaning toward each other but not otherwise touching. I cleared my throat to signal my approach, and they both looked up at me in surprise.

Mark relaxed when he saw it was me. Susie dipped her head, a blush on her cheeks.

I didn’t call her on it. Instead I simply lowered myself into the grass beside her.

“Has Elva been playing with the wolves for a while?” I asked. It was a softball question, to lead Susie away from her embarrassment. I already knew Susie and Mark were crushing on each other, and it didn’t matter to me.

“A little while,” Susie said. “Elva is truly gifted. When I was her age, I could barely get wolves to trust me. These two…” Susie waved toward Silver and Night. “They’ve already accepted her as one of their own. It’s amazing.”

“It’s remarkable,” Mark added. “She is truly a talent. Someday she will be a very powerful werewolf.”

“Thank you,” I said, even though his words gave me no comfort or joy. Elva was wonderful, and I was proud of her growing skill. But it also worried me so much that I felt sick in my stomach.

I had been powerful too, when the underground organization came for my wolf. Elva was already bounds ahead of where I had been. How long would it be until the underground organization came for her next?

I had to protect her. No matter what I had to do, I would do it. Elva would never experience the same heartache that I had endured. I would tear the whole world apart first.

Together, Susie, Mark, and I sat in companionable silence watching my little girl and her wolf friends. We chatted about this and that, nothing heavy. But inside, I was plotting my next move.

Later that afternoon, before we were supposed to meet for a banquet dinner, I left Elva with the nanny and sneaked away down to the ballroom. I moved slowly and carefully, not wishing to run into anyone, even the servants.

I wanted no one to know what I was doing, so that no one could tell anyone else. The last thing I needed was for information to get back to Terry before I was ready for him to know it. He knew far too much more than me already.

Like, who was that woman in the black dress? Why had she seemed so familiar? How did she have my wolf?

I had to know. From there, maybe I could work outward and unravel the entire organization.

A starting point was important, and this was mine.

I followed a familiar path through side room to side room until I eventually ended up in the sitting room where Terry had drugged me. At the time, I had thought I could trick him into telling me a secret or two. How foolish I had been then.

No more.

Terry had chosen this room out of all of them for a reason. I needed to find out why.

I started at the couch, checking between the cushions in case something had fallen from Terry’s pockets, but when I reached the section where I had been sitting, my stomach twisted uncomfortably. Maybe I could search there last.

Leaving the couch, I slowly walked the perimeter of the room. The lady in black had not been in my imagination. She had been real. I was sure. But she had vanished as soon as she entered this room.

People didn’t just vanish.

Bookcase after bookcase lined the walls. I gently dragged my fingers over the spines. Some of the books seemed ancient, others newer. They sat side by side on the shelfs, a balance of new and old.

When I reached the wall behind the couch, I noticed, there on the ground, a tiny bit of black sticking out from under the bottom former of one of the bookcases. I knelt down and pried it away from the furniture.

It was a small black feather, just like the ones that had graced the shoulders of the mysterious woman’s dress.

So she was here.

I knew she was real, but to have the extra validation did wonders for my tired mind.

The fact that the feather was under the bookcase… Could that mean there was a secret passage here?

Tucking the feather into my pocket, I searched closer. No books were jutting out further than the rest. The sconces didn’t budge when I tugged them. If this was a secret door, the trigger to open it wasn’t as obvious as something that would be in the movies. Still, there had to be something.

I continued searching, running my hands along the wooden dividers of the shelves.

“Piper?”

I nearly jumped out of my skin.

Behind me, Nicholas walked into the room. He was handsome in a three-piece suit, and his piercing gaze stole my breath a moment.

In another life, this could have been the perfect spot for a secret tryst. As it was, he had caught me somewhere I had no place or permission to be.

“The servants told me they saw you come down this way,” he said. Inwardly, I cursed myself. I hadn’t been careful enough! “What are you doing here?”

I looked at him closely. He didn’t seem particularly annoyed that I was here. His face wasn’t that neutral. Instead, one of his brows curled slightly in the middle, like he was worried.

Worried?

Oh, I supposed that could make sense. The last time we had been in this room together, he had saved me from a horrible man-shaped monster.

I didn’t want to lie to him about what I was doing here. But as things were, I knew he wouldn’t approve.

“I was just thinking about that night,” I said. That wasn’t a lie. Nor was it incorrect to assume that thinking of that night led me to think about Terry’s assault on me.

I had been singularly focused on finding evidence of the woman in black’s existence, but now that I had that, my thoughts were free to wander. And they did, back to that couch, to how powerless I felt, to that man’s vile touch on my skin.

Nicholas came further into the room. He rounded the couch to draw nearer to me. He didn’t touch me, but his closeness was a comfort all on its own.

“I wish I would have found you sooner.” He looked down at the floor. “You never should have been in that position.”

“Surely you don’t blame yourself,” I said.

He didn’t say anything, making it clear that he did.

“Nicholas…”

He looked up at me and the intensity in his gaze kept me from saying more.

“While you are here, it is my responsibility to keep you safe. I failed that night. But I won’t fail again.”

My heart leapt in my chest. The way he said it, so earnest and strong, made me believe it. His confidence chased away some of the demons that remained clawing at my chest.

“Thank you,” I said.

He nodded.

I wished I could tell him about the feather, or ask him the location of the secret door.

I wished we weren’t on opposite sides of the investigation into the underground organization. How much I would have loved to have his help!

But, unfortunately, he wanted me to stop my search. So, for Elva’s sake, I had to keep Nicholas in the dark.

So I kept the feather that I found, and my questions, firmly locked away.