Found (Book One of the Castle Coven Series): A Witch and Warlock Romance Novel (10 page)

She crossed the space between her and Kieran as quickly as she could, and without thinking about it, she touched his face. It was a strangely intimate moment in the middle of all of the carnage. All she could think to say was a murmured apology as she passed by.

It was the same as it had been before. She could feel the depth of his power and the strength of what they shared. This time, however, instead of doing something for pleasure or to test her abilities, it was deadly serious.

The power thrummed through her like a river of fire. She was lit up with it when she turned to face the Templar. His sword was still in his hand. Blinded, he was warding with it, keeping it close to his body so that he could fend off anyone who came at him. He was blinking his eyes rapidly to try to make them adjust, but she could have told him that it was already too late.

She knew that Kieran was a master of cold and ice, and she wondered distantly if that had something to do with her comfort now. She looked at the man in front of her, and in that timeless moment, she could see many details. She could see that he was older than she was, grizzled with a beard that went down his chest. She saw that his eyes were a pale, pale blue and that there was a scar on his face that pulled the side of his mouth down.

Hailey saw the details as indifferently as she would note the features of a rock face. It didn’t change what she needed to do to someone who had threatened Kieran and Beatrice.

She imagined the veins in his body, the veins that ran with blood. Blood was liquid and was as susceptible to cold as water, and so she concentrated on his blood chilling and slowing.

She imagined it freezing.

There was one moment of horror where the man knew exactly what it was she was doing. There was nothing in his face but anger and hate. He made a choked sound, and then the sword fell out of his hand. She watched it hit the ground, and his heavy body followed just a moment later.

The enormity of what she had done struck Hailey with the force of a blow, and with a soft cry, she stumbled back. It had only taken her a few moments to kill a man who had been living, and the reality of it suffocated her. She couldn’t get enough air into her body. Her heart was beating so fast it felt like it could burst out of her chest. Her knees felt weak, and her stomach rebelled. If she had eaten anything in the last few hours she would have lost it, but instead, she only retched piteously.

She was reeling through a world that she no longer recognized, and when powerful arms wrapped around her, she could have sobbed with relief.

“Hailey, Hailey, darling it’s all right.”

His words were like cool water on a burn, but she couldn’t let herself give in to them, not yet. She jerked away, and in doing so, she managed to reclaim some of the calm that had been taken over the last few minutes.

“Can you see?” she asked urgently.

He nodded slowly.

“It’s coming back to me. I can make out shapes now, and I can almost see your face. It’ll come. Hailey, what did you–”

He was interrupted by a soft and frightened cry from Beatrice. Hailey knelt by the girl’s side, crooning softly to her. Beatrice recognized Hailey in an instant and clung to the older woman, burying her face in Hailey’s neck.

Hailey felt a relief that was so great she nearly fell over. It was Beatrice, and she was safe, and as she held her, Beatrice babbled out what had happened.

She had been on the path, heading back hours ago, and she had heard a voice calling for help. She didn’t know what she could do, but she knew that she simply couldn’t leave someone helpless and alone on the mountainside. She had walked carefully into the woods, but then she had been struck down from behind.

“And you haven’t woken up since?”

Beatrice shook her head, and Hailey thanked the gods for that small mercy. Beatrice had never seen the men who had taken her, and though there would likely be repercussions for this night, they would hopefully not be as bad as what she suffered after her experiences as a child.

“Hailey, Hailey, what happened?”

Beatrice started to sit up and turn, but Hailey firmly kept her turned away from the two dead men in the cottage. Instead, she guided her to the table, set with three mugs and three bowls that she pushed aside, and seated her down.

“Okay, look at me, honey.”

Beatrice did as she was told, and Hailey was relieved to see that her pupils were the same size.

“I don’t think that you have a concussion, but we’ll have someone in the infirmary take a look at you when we get back.”

“Can you teleport us back?”

That was Kieran, standing up from his study of the man she had killed, and his face was so blank that it made her shiver.

She nodded without thinking about it, and she recoiled a little when he offered her his arm.

“Kieran, I can’t, not when I just took it from you without asking before.”

“Hailey, you’re not thinking clearly. If you had asked, I would have given it to you. Right now, we need to get Beatrice home.”

He was right, and she knew it. She rested her hand on his bare arm, and she sought that power that he gave her so willingly. With her hands tight on both of them, she sent the three of them jumping through space, back to the safety of the monastery.

As they faded out, the door to the cabin creaked open.

PEOPLE WERE STILL out searching when Hailey, Kieran, and Beatrice returned to the Angioli coven’s monastery, but there were enough coven members around to help them when they appeared in the courtyard. A man and a woman caught Beatrice in their arms and hurried her to medical aid. Donato strode up to confront them.

Hailey had always thought that the coven master was cool towards her. She was shocked to her core when he swept her up in his arms.

“Thank you,” he whispered in her ear. “Thank you for what you have done.”

His words dissolved the last of the control that had been holding her up, and she dissolved into tears. It was a deep well of grief that came up out of nowhere, but it reached to the core of her. She wept for the pain that Beatrice had suffered that night. She wept for the sorrow and panic she had felt since she realized her friend was missing. The shade of the man that she had killed lingered there too. When she could find words, they were garbled and panicked.

“I killed him, Donato, sir, I killed him, oh gods, I reached for the power, and I–”

She subsided into sobs, and to her shock, Donato didn’t let her go in disgust and fear. Instead, she felt him turn to Kieran.

“She killed a Templar?”

“To protect Beatrice, yes.”

“Good.”

That emphatic pronouncement was too much for her. It was all too much, and her knees sagged underneath her. Her vision dimmed, and the last thing she heard was Kieran’s frantic voice calling her name.

• • • • •

“This really isn’t the way I wanted to see your bedroom,” Kieran joked, but it was a poor one, and he was glad Hailey couldn’t hear it. He sat by her narrow bed in a straight-backed chair that was only growing more uncomfortable by the hour.

In her bed, Hailey was nearly as white as the sheets, her red hair the only color to be seen. He had brushed it earlier, and so it lay prettily enough, but she was so still that it reminded him uncomfortably of a deathbed memorial.

The woman who ran the infirmary had come by a few hours ago. She was a lovely witch, tall with a streak of silver in her dark hair. She had not spoken, but instead she had passed her hands lightly over Hailey’s body, a pale golden glow radiating in the space between her palms and Hailey’s skin.

She nodded when she was done, and turned to go.

“Well, what’s wrong?”

The woman shrugged, and Kieran realized that she must be mute. She pointed to Hailey’s head, and she spread her hands out. She shook her head.

“She’s stressed, but she’ll heal?”

The medic nodded.

“When?”

She shrugged, and with that, Kieran had to be content.

Luca came and brought him food. He ate it without tasting it. The boy’s company was welcome, but at some point, he had gone off to sleep.

It was a lonely vigil, and eventually Kieran dozed off in the night. He was seated on the chair, but he had leaned his body across her bed.

When he awakened. The first thing that he realized was that someone was holding his hand. The second was that someone was petting his hair. He raised his head, and looked up into a pair of beautiful green eyes.

“You’re awake,” he said softly, and her answering smile was narrow and strange.

“I am. I think I’m glad of it.”

Kieran sat up, straightening the kink out of his back.

“Why would you say that? Of course you should be glad that you’re up.”

“I killed a man, Kieran. He died because of me.”

“Hailey, you killed a man who was going to kill me and Beatrice. If you hadn’t acted, the gods alone know what would have happened. You saved us.”

She shook her head as if she didn’t want to hear it.

“I took his life, and I took that power from you. I didn’t even think about it. I didn’t even care.”

Kieran took a tighter grip on her hand. Somehow, he felt as if she was drifting away, as if he were losing her. It was a foolish thought. She was sitting right there, and he knew that she was fine, but it didn’t quell the panic that was rising up in him.

“Do you know how many people I’ve killed, Hailey? I don’t. Every person who I’ve killed has been trying to kill me, and that was exactly what happened last night.” She made a sound of protest, but he kept talking. “If you can’t excuse yourself, you can’t excuse me, and there is no excuse that is necessary at all. We all do what we have to do to survive. Nothing changes that, and that man who came in the door would have killed me and Beatrice. He would have killed you as well. These men were Templars. They want us all dead.”

Hailey’s brilliant green eyes welled up with tears again. When she pulled away, he forced himself to open his hand.

“I can’t think of it that way. It’s all mushed up in my head. I took power from you, and I killed him. I didn’t weigh my options. I didn’t try to strike him down from behind, and I didn’t try to make Merit attack him. I acted like an animal.”

Kieran felt something inside him wrench. She was beautiful and fragile sitting up in her narrow bed. She was tearing herself up over something that he did on a semi-regular basis, but he could see that she didn’t think of it that way.

“You took a life to protect Beatrice and me. You did nothing wrong.”

Hailey was silent for a long moment, and she turned her face to the wall.

“Will you leave me please?”

“Hailey?”

“Please. I have to think, and I can’t do so while you’re here. I’m sorry. Please.”

Her voice was so small and soft that he wished he could raise that Templar from the dead and kill him again. Instead, he kept his temper, and he nodded. He reached for her to stroke her hair, but he stopped himself at the last moment.

He left, and there was something final in it.

HAILEY THOUGHT THAT she could think while Kieran was gone, but four days proved her wrong. Her memories of that brutal night were jumbled. She could remember the feeling of power she held in her hands, she could remember the sound of the man’s body striking the ground. She could remember Kieran holding her, and she remembered holding Beatrice. When she concentrated on those events too closely, she felt sick. But try as she might, she couldn’t bring them into focus.

Beatrice came by, and the two of them climbed into Hailey’s bed together, simply holding each other. It was painful to see Beatrice so worn and drawn, but there was already a glimmer of her old humor around the edges of it. Hailey knew that her friend would bounce back, even if it took a while.

Donato came by as well, and for the first time, he sat and spoke with Hailey at length. The gratitude for her rescue of Beatrice was real, and the coven master apologized for the way she had been treated in her time at the Angioli coven. He swore that she would always have a home there, and that no matter what the Magus Corps wanted, if she didn’t want to go, then she wouldn’t. It had made her tear up again. Once she had dreamed of a welcome like this, and now that she had it, she didn’t know what to do.

Kieran didn’t come by at all.

She ate sparingly at first, but by the second day, her appetite was recovered. Her mind went back to that night, over and over, and no matter what she did, she couldn’t get it clear. On the morning of her fourth day in bed, she gave up.

She bathed, relishing the feel of the ice cold water more than she had anything in the last few days. Hailey dressed herself warmly, and she walked out into the forest. She had wondered if she would find the trees frightening after everything that had happened, but instead, she found a comfort in them and in the rise of the hills around her.

Hailey wandered for almost an hour. There was a thin skim of snow on the ground, but the sun was shining bright. When she came to a little trickle of water running through the trees, too small to properly be called a creek, she bent to scoop some of it on her face.

When she looked up, there was an enormous wolf watching her curiously from the other side, and she smiled.

“Hello, Cavanaugh. Is your master about?”

“I am.”

The man appeared as swiftly and silently as the wolf, and seeing them next to each other in good light for the first time, she could see how similar they really were. They were both tall and broad, and they both gazed at her with eyes that were completely without judgment.

I love him.

The thought rose up idly in her mind, and she knew that it was true as much as she knew the sky was blue.

“You look beautiful.”

The words were so unexpected that Hailey laughed. It was a bright surprised sound, startling birds out of the trees. Cavanaugh looked affronted by her noise, and with a snort, he turned tail and loped off into the forest.

“I don’t think your wolf agrees. Why would you say such a thing?”

“I’ve been thinking for the last few days. I’ve not spent that much time with the coven. Instead, I’ve been roughing it out here with Cavanaugh, and even with Merit for a little while. I thought about everything that I wanted to say to you, and that was the sum of it. You’re beautiful, every inch of you. Your personality, your spirit and your soul. All of it shines. All of it draws me to you. I don’t think that will ever change.”