Page 80 of The Musician and the Monster

She clutched at his chest and looked up at him. She traced a path with her fingertips through the prickly hairs on his chin. “You don’t have to do it alone.”

He captured her hand and placed a kiss upon her knuckles. “We tried. I almost turned on you.” His brave woman.

“I know.” She stepped from his embrace and walked to a nearby table. With care, she opened a wide, thin book. He joined her and stared over her shoulder. It wasn’t a book at all, but a musical score—an old one by the looks of it, and not one he recalled seeing her with.

“Where did you find that?” he asked.

“The library.” She turned the page slowly, almost like she thought it might crumble apart.

“I didn’t know we had any sheet music here.”

She flipped the page again to what looked like the beginning of a new song and read the words inked under the lines. “To test the hearts of man, she gifted darkness too. A temptation one can only resist if they stay true.”

“The Goddess?” he mused aloud.

Before Ceridwen could read on, a knock sounded at the door.

“Who is it?” Drystan asked, more a demand than a question.

But Ceridwen didn’t wait for a response. She hurried to the door and threw it open, sweeping her hand in an invitation that released the magical binding he placed on the threshold weeks ago.

Drystan stiffened as Malik strode in. “Why are you in here?” he accused.And why, oh why, would Ceridwen let such a man in her room?

“Ceridwen invited me,” Malik replied with his ever-casual air.

Jealousy flared hot and angry through his center. Drystan’s attention snapped to Ceridwen, not bothering to shield the look of betrayal he knew must be evident upon his face.

Ceridwen winced but offered no response.

Malik crossed his arms and stared at him. “You’re not the partner I would have chosen for a ménage either.”

An inhuman growl slipped from Drystan’s throat and rolled through the air with menace.

“Stop.” Ceridwen stepped between them. “Both of you.”

Drystan’s rumbling growl ceased, even when his frown deepened.

“Neither of you trust one another, but you should,” she continued.

Perhaps he was wrong. Maybe his monster had hurt her somehow, or she’d slipped and hit her head upon the stairs in her flight down. “You don’t know him,” Drystan grumbled, trying to edge between them.

Ceridwen planted her hands on his chest, willing him to a halt. “You’re on the same side.”

“The same side?” Drystan echoed in confusion.

“And what side would that be?” Malik asked, sliding up behind Ceridwen, entirely too close for Drystan’s comfort.

Ceridwen looked over one shoulder at his cousin and then back at him. “The side of the light.”

She might as well have punched him in the chest and knocked the air from his lungs. Stabbing him would have been less painful. The woman he loved, he trusted, had spilled his secrets to the one man in this manor he tried to keep them from. Worse, she knew exactly what she did.

Drystan bared his teeth, his body shuddering. But when he looked at Malik, expecting him to be beaming with triumph, he found only an echoed look of shock and betrayal.

What in the name of the Goddess…

“Ceridwen—” Drystan began.

“We had an agreement,” Malik cut in, staring at her with fury.

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