Emma Holloway - A Study in Ashes

“Marry me, Evelina,” he asked giving her his best and most scorching gaze. “Please.”

She couldn’t bear to make him wait, however much she would have liked time to savor the moment.

“I will,” she said firmly. “I will be your wife.”

She heard his breath escape in a relieved huff. Had he really thought she would refuse him? Ridiculous man .

As he leaned in for a kiss, Evelina cradled the special license against her chest, suddenly anxious in case it was creased. “Careful with that.”

“You know I’m careful as a surgeon and just as precise.” And he kissed her urgently, pulling her close until she heard crinkling paper.

“Wait!” she squeaked, trying to rescue the license from getting squashed between them.

He lifted his head. “What?”

She gave him a crooked smile. “When shall we marry?”

Nick chuckled, a sound that rumbled from his chest through her body in pleasant and interesting ways. “How soon can you find a dress?”

London, October 27, 1889

CAVENDISH SQUARE

2:35 a.m. Sunday

THE DOOR TO the bedroom opened and Tobias slipped in silently, his shadow a tall grotesque playing along the wall. The curtain was open, and moonlight flooded the bedroom, falling softly on the cradle where Jeremy slept. He considered shutting out the light to make sure it didn’t wake his son, but then he wouldn’t have been able to see as well. He wasn’t one of the Wraiths, who could navigate in perfect blackness.

He gazed down at the boy, losing himself in relief. There wasn’t a mark on the baby’s perfectly smooth skin. Wherever Keating had hidden Jeremy and his nurse, the child had suffered no physical harm. That was something to be thankful for—as was the fact that the Gold King would never trouble them again.

Tobias reached down with his left hand and tucked the blanket close under his son’s chin. Peace seemed to radiate from the tiny form. That boneless, absolute rest was something Tobias would never feel again. Sleep well and dream fair, little man .

He heard the footfall in the doorway too late.

“What …?” It was Alice’s voice. He froze, suddenly uncertain what to do. It was the middle of the night, long after she should have been asleep. This wasn’t going according to plan.

His wife stood in the nursery door, clad only in her nightdress. She looked tiny and childlike, too young to be mother to the boy sleeping in the cradle. Tobias drew back a step, knowing he had no business being there. As far as the world above the streets was concerned, she was a widow. It was kinder if they all went on thinking it.

“Tobias!” Alice whispered, but it sounded loud in the darkened room.

He stepped away from the cradle, afraid that if he answered he would wake Jeremy. “Hush.”

She tilted her face up to him, the moonlight reflecting bright in her tear-filled eyes. Dazzled, Tobias searched for what to say.

“Am I dreaming?” she asked.

No, but I’m having a nightmare .

“I saw you dead!” she said more firmly, and Jeremy stirred in his sleep.

He put a finger over her lips, feeling their petal-soft warmth. Her breath feathered over his skin. She retreated into the hallway, walking backward, never taking her eyes from him. He followed and closed the nursery door behind him. At once, he stepped into the shadows, instinct making him hide.

Her eyes were wide, and with a wrench of his heart, he saw fear there. But Alice raised her chin, hands closing into fists. “How is it even possible that you’re here?” She was no longer whispering, but her voice was low and angry. “Why didn’t you send a message that you were still alive?”

A message? His brain rocked slightly. It sounded so … normal. “We can’t argue outside Mrs. Polwarren’s door.”

“She quit.” Alice bit the words off, her chin trembling.

The detail raked at him. Already things were happening in his home that he had no idea about—yet another piece of himself sliding away.

“Tobias, please!”

“I died,” he said, the words blunt and brutal.

She flinched. “But you’re here.”

He remained silent a moment, sifting through events he didn’t fully comprehend. In her struggle to save him, Evelina had bound him to the Black Kingdom, and that power had called his name when it needed another king. But how could he explain that to Alice? “The Wraiths found me and put me back together as best they could. I had no choice about it.”

No choice, and a lot of horror. Things he tried to forget as he was reassembled, bit by bit in painful and intimate ways. But he gave the simple explanation, the one Alice required. She didn’t need to know how the poison had done its work, or the dragon’s teeth, and what couldn’t be reconstituted from blood and dirt and dragon. Even magic—the magic he hated—could only do so much. And the fact that he was more magic than human had bound him to the underground in ways beyond number.

The Wraiths were his now. He was the Black Kingdom’s master, but still it leashed him. He was too new yet to wander far, and it was already tugging at him, impatient for his return. But thank the dark powers that his wife didn’t see that. And that at first glance, he looked the same. She had already suffered too much. Perhaps he could convince her this was a dream after all.

“My father is dead,” Alice murmured. “Jeremy is all I have now.”

That was all she said, but he heard the anger and sorrow. Keating had deserved what he got at Evelina’s hands, but that would never stop his daughter from grieving his loss—strained though their love had been. My poor Alice .

A tendril of hair curled over her cheek, and Tobias reached out to brush it away. His right arm moved smoothly, but the faint whirr of gears gave it away, stopping just short of her face. He saw her look of surprise, and then … her recoil stabbed him to the core.

Alice started to tremble, her gaze sliding to the fingers hovering near her face. Her eyes widened as the truth soaked in. “Tobias?”

Not all of him was as it had been. And in that moment, he hated Evelina for condemning him to this. “I should have stayed dead.” He closed his eyes, his heart too full and aching to bear the sight of his wife. He wanted her with all the fervent need of a man for his woman, but there was so much more to it than that. He had found out too late what she meant to him.

He forced his eyes open, and maybe she saw the truth there, because she reached out—but he stepped beyond her grasp. If he was going to survive this, he had to harden his heart. Otherwise, Alice would break it with her gentle touch. “I’m not what I was. That doesn’t mean I don’t love you, and that doesn’t mean that I won’t watch over you and our son.”

She drew herself up. “Don’t be ridiculous. Don’t ask me to forget you.”

There was no chance he would forget her. His need for Alice had only been intensified by his ordeal. Every sense was new and more than humanly sharp. The smell and sight of his wife might have been familiar, but it was as if he had never truly noticed her fragility or the sweetness of her scent.

But wanting and having were not the same. He wasn’t what he had been—and it would be folly to forget that for even an instant. Without another word, he turned away from her, descending the stairs with the silence of a shadow.

“Tobias?” Alice cried.

Defiance flared in him. This was his house. He should have been able to stay. Part of him had been that dragon in the depths, and it didn’t take denial well. Whatever he was—maker, man, or monster—the Schoolmaster wasn’t the only new Royal in London and he meant to take back what was his. But then more of him knew that wouldn’t be simple, because everything was different now. He was different.