Winterly (Dark Creatures Book 1), стр. 122

Chapter Fifty-Seven

Farewell

Dawn saluted the room with blush hues through the open drapes. Emma awoke with a startled cry, but with no notion as to what had roused her so suddenly from slumber. The window was closed and the embers were seething dimly behind the grate. Nothing appeared amiss.

She sank back onto the mattress, her morass of cold sheets a lonely place. The emptiness lay thick about her and proclaimed Markus was gone far away, having followed her wretched command exactly.

She was still no closer to understanding what she was to do next or how she might help Milli. And how could she ever forgive Markus now? Hopeless and exhausted, she clenched the coverlet. The sound of paper rustling beneath her fingers stilled her. She sat up and retrieved the letter that had, until now, lain undetected by her side. It was addressed to her in Markus’s unmistakable hand.

Dearest Emma—I confess I am an old thief; a thief of blood and freedom. I took from you even your virtue.

I have left instructions with Skinner who will furnish you with the address of my solicitor in London. He will be expecting you. Provisions for you and your sister will have been made by the time you read this letter, to redress what is fallen and tainted beneath my touch. It is my wish that your independence be absolute. I offer you your freedom. Take it with all my best wishes, and live a long and happy life howsoever and wheresoever you choose. Nevermore will I trouble you or darken your doorstones.

But go first to your sister, and go swiftly; my servants are at your disposal and the day is accordingly grey. Milli needs you, there may still be hope for her. Go before the wolves claim what is theirs.

Good luck and farewell. Your thief,

M.

The cold ink began to shimmer dreadfully as her eyes clouded with disbelief. The stark and spidery script seemed almost foreign to her of a sudden. Wracking sobs tore from her throat, hot and stinging as she cradled the last words that Markus Winterly would ever address to her. How bitter freedom tasted this morning and how frigid this unforeseen farewell. When Emma had bade him leave her in the small hours, she had not expected to see the very last of him. He had ever been persistent and overbearing and unapologetic. Why now when she was so directionless and alone? How anticlimactic a swan song—the death of a romance.

But what did she know of men, never mind an immortal of supernal provenance? He had used her ill indeed, and now that he’d had his fill of her flesh and blood, it was nothing to him where she went or what she did. How could he be so cold? Ahh, but he was a vampyre and she ought not seek to imbue such a creature as that with mortal sentiment. Oh, what a fool she’d been. She pressed her tears away with an angry palm and reread the letter. Now a wealthy fool, perhaps, but a fool nonetheless. Dared she even touch the dragon’s gold?

No! She wanted nothing from him; how dare he quantify her wilted virtue with money. Devil take him and his lucre. Milli was welcome to whatever of his riches she desired, her sister’s maltreatment by the hands of these creatures certainly qualified her for whatever reparations were to be had.

Milli. Milli needed her. Good of the vampyre to break her heart and leave her with that small hope at least. She hurried from the bed, the sheer chill of its desolation stung and the softness of the bedding bellied the harshness of the morning’s truth. But there was still a little life left glowing blood red in the hearth. She flung the letter to the coals and let the flames dry her eyes as they shot up to devour his cold farewell.

The carriage wheels rattled a plaintive adieu along the vaulted avenue of yews, the dour glow of the lamps doing little to chase the gloom from the road. In the branches overhead, the rooks took up their harsh threnodies, calling to the dusk. Every endeavor to leave before noon had been thwarted by Mrs. Skinner and the solar aversion observed by her vampiric underlings; not even the relative safety of a thick grey ceiling had induced them to accommodate her until now.

Emma turned to catch a last glance of the castle and the housekeeper’s eerie silhouette before they were both engulfed by the ancient black boles and twisted boughs. The Domus Hadao of her books and secret fantasies; the very thing the wicked viscount had promised her back in London when she’d been naïve and gormless. How the place had excited her morbid fancies when first she’d arrived here. Would she have allowed her love of darkness to bud had she known the House of Hades was guarded by his faithful cerberean hellhounds. His wehr-wolves.

She hated that she’d had to leave Boudicca here, but the cat had disappeared and despite searching all afternoon for her, Emma had been forced to leave without Milli’s pet. It had vanished as suddenly as it had come into their lives. And with those pestilent wehr-wolves about, God only knew what had become of her.

Struck again by the force of her blue devils, Emma turned to gaze ahead—towards Hobkirk Priory. Towards her dear sister. She needed Milli perhaps more than Milli needed her, for what could she possibly do for Milli now? Her sister the she-wolf. How was such a thing to be borne? Well, they would figure it out together, wouldn’t they?

A seat on the stagecoach had been arranged for her in York. Seeing as she was unable to conjure the coachman a thick fog to take her directly to the priory, she was resigned to public transport. After Durham, she was to go by mail coach. She had