Page 100 of Villains and Vengeance
I pick her up, trying to ignore how right it feels to have her in my arms. I need to come up with a plan. Letting her go is too risky. She might decide to let the authorities know we escaped the Mountain. I can’t have that until I’ve greased the right palms and started buying our way out of our legal troubles. Noticing with surprise that I can’t smell her, I lean in and take a deep breath of her. Nothing.
Iron’s conjure must still be working. Finally, some good luck where she’s concerned. This just became much easier.
I take her inside, trying not to notice the tantalizing glimpses I’m getting of her where the shirt’s come apart, how her full tits, crowned with those perfectly sized, dusky nipples that are just begging to be—
I look away with a harsh curse.
‘You’re good, Jules,’ I murmur. ‘I don’t know how you’re doing it, but I’m going to make absolutely sure you won’t get under their skins any more than you already have.’
She makes a small noise in my arms, and I swear under my breath. I need to put her down and get away from her. Never has my tight control been so tested by a female.
I carry her down to the recently refurbished, temperature-controlled wine cellars and through the last door to the oldest area of the house, the part that was a castle and still has the foundations and dungeon to prove what it once was.
‘There’s over a thousand years of history down here,’ I murmur to her, almost hoping she wakes so I can explain to her what I’m doing and why, but she doesn’t.
I take her into one of the open cells and lay her on the slab of stone. She immediately whimpers and curls up on the cold bed, beginning to shiver.
‘I’m sorry,’ she whispers.
I look down, expecting this to be some pathetic attempt to apologize, induce me to let her go, but her eyes are still closed.
‘I’m so sorry, Siggy.’
Her cheeks are wet.
I step away from her. Maybe I should just let her go.
No, I can’t. Not until the clan is safe both from the authorities and from her. Once everything is sorted, I’ll release her, but she has to stay here for now.
I look around and remember I saw a stack of horse blankets on the way in. I go back to the wine cellar and grab them.
When I return a minute later, she’s still in the same place I put her. I pick her up and lay one of the thick woollen covers over the stone. I ease her back down on it before wrapping her in another.
She doesn’t come around even when the key grates as I turn it, locking her down here.
I jump and almost let down my glamor instinctually when I see something move in the other cell. It’s large and staggers to the bars, gripping onto them hard.
At first, I think we’ve left some poor sod down here from when we last had to teach someone a lesson, but my eyes widen as I take in the wild copper hair and even wilder beard, the face that’s so much like Jayce’s, the green eyes that are boring into my soul, but with a darkness in them that I’d never put my back to.
‘Aye, didn’t expect your old friend Krase to still be here, did you, Julian?’
