that diminished his gift. Not once since he’d acquired it.
Sebastian watched Delaney search with a dull ache spiraling through his belly, thinking to call her back, warn her not to touch it. He wanted to believe she wasn’t connected to the League, to Finn’s dreams, to him. That she was simply a cheeky foreigner with more freedom than sense, more intelligence than wisdom.
Yet, the coincidences were adding up faster than he could tally them.
He wanted to believe. Until the last minute. Until his good luck charm wrapped her fingers around the stone and stepped out of his world.
She was gone for less than a minute, and by that time, he was down on the floor with her, on his knees, shaky and trembling. Her smoke-tinged eyes were open but unseeing, and he had to remove the Soul Catcher from her grip forcibly. Gaslight caught a faceted edge and tossed a glittering crimson fury against the wall.
“Come back.” He dropped the stone to cradle her face. Her skin was soft, her breath, sweet and hot, arriving with her sigh to drift across his cheek. He fought the fierce urge to tuck her into his body and protect her. When he didn’t want responsibility for this hellion on his shoulders, didn’t want to give one damn about anyone outside those already on his roster. He needed no additional weaknesses.
Her gaze met his, clearing in negligible degrees until she was back in the bedchamber with him.
He shifted her face into the light spilling from the gaslamp on the bedside table. “Where did you go?”
“My attic,” she whispered, caught between that world and this one. He was certain she wouldn’t have answered otherwise. “Illuminated as it’s never been. I could see every page, every line of text. Brilliant sunlight, a thousand candles. But it came with an inexplicable sense of solace. My mind, clear. Silence.” Her smile was joyous and slightly drunken, sending want streaking through his body, more deadly than a bee’s venom. Making him yearn in a way he hadn’t in years, if ever.
Taking him to a desperate place he didn’t wish to inhabit.
He released her with a rough exhalation and rocked back, out of reach.
Looking down at his hands, he realized his fingertips hadn’t heated once during this exchange—and not from control on his part.
Simple distraction. Redirection. Of the Delaney Temple variety.
A woman from whom Sebastian vowed to wrench every secret, while holding on to his own.
Later that night, Delaney stuffed her hair beneath the plaid paddy cap and regarded herself in the mirror.
A pair of her brother’s trousers, badly hemmed and roughed up a bit, hugged her hips. A ratty shirt and coat she’d purchased from the rag-and-bone man with coins she was still getting used to, ones the trader had snatched from her hand before she was able to do a proper exchange in her head. The riding boots were her own, but nicked and muddy, hidden in the back of her wardrobe, away from the fastidious eyes of her maid. She could certainly pass as a delivery boy, a scamp creeping through the night. Her curves were few, her frame slender. Her breasts, alas not so small, tightly bound and out of sight. Many a twelve-year-old had more bulk than she did.
She wondered what accent would work best, puzzling over it as she sneaked down the narrow service staircase through the vacant kitchens and into the side garden. The cap looked Irish, and she’d been practicing that one. But her cockney was very, very good, and as her papa used to say, why mend what wasn’t broken?
She passed the duke’s ground-level bedroom and came to a skidding halt. The window was open, the velvet curtain drawing in and out like a breath. She’d gotten a good look inside the room—and seen no duke.
She’d revealed too much earlier after touching that blasted rock, mentioning her attic, then had to stand there and watch him try to jam the pieces of her life’s puzzle into place. But what it had done, that hunk of fluorite, had knocked her off her feet. Illumination wasn’t a suitable description. It had been like stepping into a cave first exposed to sunlight and finally seeing the drawings on the wall. Her attic, for the first time, had been brilliantly lit. Every book, every word, visible.
When Sebastian Tremont had ripped the Soul Catcher from her hand, she’d experienced a moment’s panic, envy, hunger. Dangerous feelings, dangerous need.
Too dangerous.
She wasn’t getting tripped up, involved any more