Page 97 of Heart of a Witch
I heard footsteps and saw Alex walk inside, the cut on her neck now scabbing. She brushed her fingertips against it, her watery gaze on the tea kettle. “Peppermint?”
She shook her head.
“Orange? Raspberry?”
She nodded.
“Raspberry it is.”
She screeched out a chair and took a seat at the table.
Corbin walked in not long after. “Hi.”
I tensed. “Hello.” I handed Alex her tea. “I’m glad you’re staying,” I told her. Cas had decided not to flee town in his panic after everything, although persuading him to stay hadn’t just been me, but Corbin and Alex too—her plea through a letter. “I would miss you.”
She gave me a look and I laughed.
“Even without words, you know how to get me.”
She rolled her eyes, turning back toward Corbin, but I saw the way her face crumpled when I’d said it. I despised the sadness etched between the worry lines that shouldn’t be on a seventeen-year-old’s forehead. I had failed her, and she knew I felt that way because she kept coming to me in the evenings and playing with Ebony and Buttercup on my bed, trying to make me feel better in her own way.
I didn’t deserve any of them.
The door opened and shut. I went to greet Cas but saw Elijah. He dropped his bag by the foot of the stairs and pulled me into an unexpected embrace. “We need to talk,” he whispered in my ear, and my stomach dipped. “Alone.”
Once we were in my room, he buried his head in his hands, sitting at the edge of my bed. “My father’s gone mad.”
I almost grinned but suppressed it. “Oh, really?”
He couldn’t even look at me. “This is all my fault.”
Any bit of satisfaction I had disappeared. “No, it’s not.”
“I shouldn’t have hit him back. Maybe I did something to his brain.”
I balled my fist but quickly uncurled my fingers before he could see. “He almost killed your brother. You did the right thing, and besides, I’ve never heard of a fall turning someone mad.”
“It was so sudden.”
I sat at his side, placing my hand on his. “I think he’s been going that way for a while. I noticed things when I met him but didn’t dare want to say.”
“Like what?”
“The one time I met him, he seemed a bit strange was all. I couldn’t put my finger on it,” I lied.
He ate it up, thankfully. “I can’t leave him there alone. The staff are concerned, and I’m worried he will hurt one of them.”
It had all gone far better than I’d planned. “Should we take him to an asylum?” I asked tentatively.
“Not yet.” He gritted his teeth, forcing back the tears I could see were threatening to break from the corners. “I can’t condemn him there if he’s not actually mad. Maybe he’s taking something and it’s making him like that. I need to make sure.”
I repressed the urge to roll my eyes. “Then what do we do?”
He pulled me on top of him in a surprise move, so quick I couldn’t catch my breath. I curled around his lap, his eyes searching mine with an intensity that made me nervous. “I love it when you say we.”
Before I could speak, his lips were on mine, and for once, I wasn’t thinking about Damian or my inevitable insanity. Even the darkness in my mind seemed to retreat a little. I closed my eyes, deepening the kiss. His fingers danced along my skin and stopped at my neck. Every touch was deliberate, gentle, kind.
He brushed a thumb on my neck and pulled away. “I’ll figure things out tomorrow, but for now, I need to not think about him—or anything. I just need you.”
