“Come back to me, Nila.” Jethro breathed into my ear, barely registering above the bone-crippling agony I lived. “I won’t let you fucking leave me.” He licked a tear leaking from my eye. “Not yet. I won’t let you leave, not yet.”
I couldn’t look at him.
I couldn’t listen to him.
So, I focused on the spot on top of the hill—on a black speck spotlighted by the waning sun.
No, not a speck.
A woman.
Dark hair, feminine grace.
Jasmine.
Seeing her stole my tension. I relaxed. My screaming muscles stopped twitching, melting into the mud upon which I lay.
I didn’t need to fight anymore.
Jasmine was regal with honour and resplendent with pride—exactly as expected from any Hawk descendant.
I had the strange urge to wave—to have her grant me mercy.
How was it possible someone could wield so much power even while she was as broken as me?
I’d drowned and come back to life.
I’d been fixed.
However, Jasmine never would.
My eyes drifted from her beautiful face to her legs.
I sighed in sympathy for such a plight.
Wheels replaced legs. Footholds instead of shoes.
Jasmine Hawk was paralysed.
Wheelchair bound and reclusive.
It all suddenly made a lot more sense. About Jethro. His father. His sister.
And then it all became too much.
I drifted off into fluffy clouds.
I said goodbye for the second time.
I CARRIED HER unconscious form back to hell.
I turned my back on my father, grandmother, and siblings.
I let them whisper about my downfall and plot my death.
I did all of those things because the moment I’d felt Nila give up, nothing else fucking mattered.
Money, Hawksridge, diamonds—none of it.
It was all bullshit.
And I didn’t fucking care.
All I cared about was making sure Nila healed.
I couldn’t let her die.
She couldn’t leave me alone.
Not now.
Stalking up the hill, across the grounds, and into the Hall, I ignored the Diamond brothers who’d been watching the spectacle with an array of binoculars and telescopes, and stormed to the back of the house.
In the parlour loomed a huge swinging door, disguised as a bookcase.
Years ago, the door had hidden a bunker. A secret entrance into the catacombs below the house. They were there to save my ancestors from war and mutiny.
Now, that bunker had been converted and served a different kind of function, along with an addition found ninety years after the first brick had been laid.
Nila’s body was icy and soaking. Her clothing dripped down my front, leaving a trail of droplets wherever we went. Her long wet hair trailed over my arm like kelp. Not for the first time, I fantasised I’d plucked a kelpie from the pond and taken her hostage. My very own water nymph to keep for good luck.
She would make me right.
She had to.
Pulling on a certain book, the mechanism unlocked, swinging the door open.
Nila didn’t stir.
She’d stopped shivering, but her lips were a deep indigo that terrified me more than her unconscious whimpers. She teetered on death’s door—even now—even though I’d resuscitated her with mouth to mouth and given my soul as well as my air, she still haemorrhaged life.
It was as if she wanted to die.
Wanted to leave me.
Her brittle body made me focus on things I wasn’t strong enough to face.
I’d grown up.
I’d begun to see.
I’d begun to believe she was it for me. The only one who could save me from myself.
Slinking through the door, I was careful not to bump her head. Her body lay strewn like a fallen angel in my arms—as if I’d caught her mid-plummet to earth. Her lips were parted; her arms dangled by her sides.
I had to get her warm and fast. I knew exactly how to do it.
Locking the door behind me, I descended the spiral staircase. I had no way of clapping to turn on the sound activated lights, so stomped my foot on the stone step, grateful when balls of light lit up one after the other, leading the way in the dark.
Electricity had replaced gas, which in turn had replaced naked flames that used to flicker in the medieval lanterns on the wall.
Moving forward, each bulb guided me further beneath the house, until I travelled beneath my own quarters and the bachelor wing above.
The bunker had been extended far past its original footprint. The crude concrete walls had been meticulously updated with large travertine tiles and top-of-the-line facilities.
Countless contraptions existed that I could use to warm Nila.
We had a steam room, sauna, and spa.
We had everything money could buy.
But none would be good enough.
I needed something bigger, grander…hotter.
I needed something money couldn’t buy: the power of nature.
The scent of sulphur enveloped us as I continued down the corridor and into the humid world beneath Hawksridge. The cave had been discovered after the first part of the Hall had been erected. A workman died falling through the hole when setting new foundations—the cave had been stumbled upon by pure fluke.
Natural springs were a fairly common phenomenon in England—closely guarded by those who had them and a public luxury in places like Bath. Ours had remained a family secret for generations.
The sapphire water never dropped below forty degrees centigrade. Ever. It was consistent and somewhere I used to come a lot—somewhere that Jasmine visited almost daily with her maid to ease her atrophied muscles.