Spellbreaker (Spellbreaker Duology #1) - Charlie N. Holmberg Page 0,99

the floor and did the very thing she’d always promised herself she’d never do.

She fainted.

It was brief, a quick blackening of her vision. The sensation of falling. A snippet of memory, lost. But when her senses returned, she found herself bent back in a very uncomfortable position, held aloft by a single strong arm that smelled remarkably of oranges.

“Elsie. Elsie!” Bacchus’s voice was low and close. A second arm joined the first in supporting her, warm and sure. “Someone call the police!”

“Already done!” The butler she’d been arguing with mere minutes ago ran back into the room, surveying the damage with wide eyes.

Straightening and steadying herself with the crook of Bacchus’s elbow, Elsie took stock of the room, intentionally keeping her eyes away from the . . . corpse. Ahead, the floor gaped like an open mouth. Chairs, dishes, and cutlery were a mess. Part of the table was missing, and there was a brackish puddle on the rug beneath it. Charred gouges scarred the walls, ceiling, and carpet.

She could still feel the heat in her hands from the lightning strikes. She’d dis-spelled enchanted staffs before, but never what they emitted. The runes on the lightning had a similar feel—so fast, so hot—but she hadn’t even seen the threads, the knots. She’d just . . . done it.

She didn’t understand it at all. But she was still alive. And so was Bacchus.

Bacchus.

She threw her arms around him and buried her face into his collar. She felt his quick pulse beneath her nose. Tears wet her eyelashes. “I didn’t know if I’d get here in time.” His shirt muffled her words.

Just as embarrassment began to surface, those strong arms encircled her. “We made it, Elsie,” he whispered, words flavored with his Bajan accent. “We’re all right, thanks to you.”

In that moment, Elsie had never felt safer.

Bacchus pulled back, but kept one arm around Elsie as he guided her into the poorly lit hall. She reached for the wall, her legs feeling weak, and lowered herself to the floor. Bacchus crouched across from her.

“Are you well?” He took her face in his hands. “Should I call the doctor?”

She grasped his hands, squeezing his fingers. “Bacchus, it’s Ogden.” Her voice caught. Voicing the words made it so much more real, and it felt as though that morbid piece of porcelain had cut through her, not Nash. “He’s the one behind it. The opuses. It’s him.”

His green eyes narrowed. “What?”

She glanced down the hall, and Bacchus followed suit. She wasn’t sure who else in the household, if anyone, had witnessed her grand spellbreaking, or if they’d even recognize it as such. But Elsie would rather not add incarceration to her extensive list of worries.

She swallowed. Then, to her chagrin, tears sprang to her eyes.

“Bother,” she muttered, wiping them on her sleeve.

Bacchus tucked some of the mess of her hair behind her ears. “You’re safe, Elsie. Nash is dead.”

But she shook her head and released him, breaking away from his warmth, his concern. “You don’t even know.” She hated the squelch to her voice. She wiped her eyes again, then a third time. The bloody things wouldn’t stop leaking. “I did it, too, Bacchus.” And there it was, an ugly piece of her, displayed for him to see. She’d so hoped to stay in his good graces before he left. But to stop Ogden, she had to confess the truth. “The doorknob. All of it.”

“You’re not making any sense,” he murmured, and he wiped away a tear with the pad of his thumb.

She laughed. “Could you please not be tender while I tell you what a terrible person I am?”

He hesitated, then sat back on his heels.

Checking the hallway for eavesdroppers once more, she went on. “The ones I wouldn’t tell you about. The Cowls. The ones who . . . who hire me for spellbreaking. I didn’t know it, but Ogden is one of them. And they are behind the theft of the opuses.”

His brows drew together.

She wiped her God-forsaken eyes again. “Every time they needed me to do something, they sent me a letter—it was always through letters—and told me about all the good I was doing. How I was helping someone in need. How I was stopping a wrong going unpunished. How I was balancing out the world. Freeing innocent boys, helping farmers, keeping families in their homes . . .” She laughed again, but it ripped up her throat in a most unpleasant manner. “And I did as they asked, blindly.