Page 219 of Flirting with Darkness

Maybe he was still dazed and didn’t understand what I was saying, because he still smiled at me. But only for a beat longer before his gaze flicked over my shoulder, and he was on his feet between me and whatever he’d seen. “Who the fuck are you?”

When I whirled around, I found him crouched in a defensive stance, but past him, I knew the deep brown eyes looking back at me, the beautiful fae woman who was also a wolf. “Elaina.”

She smiled and nodded. The movement rippled across her body and I could see the mirrored wall through her—she was insubstantial, like a ghost. “I know that’s my name now. I remember. Not House.” Her eyes were bright with tears though she grinned at me. “I remember. So many things I’d lost.”

She was… “House?”

“I tried to warn you about who and what she was. But the geas affected me too. No speaking about changed forms.” She reached for Faolán, who bared his teeth. With a chuckle, she stopped short and held out her hand for him to sniff, which he did with a frown. “You can’t hurt me, Grey Wolf. I’m already dead. But I was like you, a fae, a shapechanger. And like you, I couldn’t speak of it because of her geas.”

His eyes widened, and he swallowed, turning to me. “I’m a shapechanger.” His shoulders sagged as the corner of his mouth lifted. “I can tell you now. I’m sorry. I tried, but the words…” He shook his head.

Elaina inclined her head. “The geas died with her.”

The blank spots from our experience in the painting came back to me. I stood, fingers closing around the fabric of my nightgown. Iwantedto take his hand, to remind myself that he was alive, to reassure myself, but he was in a defensive stance and I wasn’t sure how he’d react after all that had happened earlier. We needed to talk, and I had a feeling it would be a complicated conversation.

I frowned at her. “A shapechanger—like the fae who create werewolves?”

“Though most of us try not to.”

“We saw”—I swallowed, throat thick at the memory—“you in the ballroom with a man. What happened?”

Her gaze sank to the floor. “She fed off me, draining my power. She fed off all her guests—their magic, their pleasure, their desires and cruelty. It gave her youth and power.”

The way she whipped her guests into a frenzy with her rituals—yes, she knew how to stir their base impulses.

Faolán eased from his half crouch with a low “Hmm.”

“She told me shapechangers tasted the sweetest and that our magic sustained her the longest.” She gave Faolán a long look. “When she fed off me, it left me confused, powerless, wild and vicious. I couldn’t control myself or my form until the effect wore off.”

My eyes flicked to him. That was exactly how he’d been this morning coming back to our room. Did that mean—?

“And that final night,” she went on, “when she’d almost completely drained me, she tricked my beloved into killing the ‘vicious wolf.’”

“Like we saw in the painting.”

Elaina nodded, eyes closed. “I managed to sneak that one past her. I wasn’t whispering my memories in your ear, so it didn’t count as telling you. And some of the dreams were out of my control, like the kelpie. I’m sorry about that and even about the horrors I did choose to show you. I was trying to reveal her nature and what she planned to do to you—exactly what she’d done to us. I hoped you’d understand enough.” She gave a rueful smile. “Evidently not, but… maybe enough got through, because you’re here and she isn’t.”

Little pictures not of the house’s past, but of Granny’s. What she’d done. Who she really was. Elaina had been trying to warn us the whole time.

Faolán folded his arms, brows knotted in a deep frown. “Why, though?”

“Power, of course. It’s why she did anything.” Elaina gave a bitter smile. “To be killed by someone you love produces ripples across existence. Because of the geas, I hadn’t been able to tell him what I was. I’d promised myself I would once we were out, but…”

She stayed quiet for so long, staring off into the distance and the past, I thought perhaps she might not tell us more, but eventually she stroked her upper arms and continued. “She used the power of that tragedy to fire the house into life.” Nose wrinkled, she shot a glare at the shrivelled heart in the centre of the ballroom.

Its tiles were now outlined with rivulets of Granny’s blood. Fitting that she died at the heart of the house she’d brought to life.

Elaina sighed. “And my trapped soul kept it that way. She had you on the same path, Grey Wolf. She fed off your strength most nights.”

Faolán’s gaze fixed on the tiled heart. “I felt so weak.” It was barely more than a whisper. “Worse each day. I thought I was sick…dying.”

My throat tightened, and I had to clasp my hands together to keep from reaching for him. The shadows had gone from under his eyes, and his cheeks were no longer gaunt. But to imagine Faolán had carried those fears in himself cracked my heart. He was strong and hearty. Weakness seemed his complete opposite.

“That was why you lost control of your shape and your actions.”

I swallowed. He hadn’t attacked me through choice, but wild, uncontrolled instinct. That wasn’t Faolán in our room, not really.

“And you would’ve died if not for Rose seeing the truth,” Elaina went on, voice low. “Over the long years, my strength has weakened.”

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