His Mate, His Enemy novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: The Card

I crossed the river line at dusk, alone, on two legs.

Nobody had told me I could, and nobody had told me I couldn't.

Molly had sat up half the night with her books and come to the same word again and again.

Forged.

A bond made by a rite, she said, and not by the Moon.

I wanted to know who had made mine, and I knew where the book was.

The two Blackwater guards at the road stared at me and said nothing.

One of them touched his cap, and I almost cried at that.

The lodge was lit end to end.

I walked up the porch steps I had climbed for four years and into the front hall.

The whole place went quiet around me.

Lorcan was in the study at the back.

He stood up so fast his chair hit the wall.

"Corinna."

"Don't."

"You crossed the line."

"I did."

"You said I could only come when you sent for me."

"Yes."

"I thought that went both ways," he said, and the corner of his mouth moved.

"Who's past the line now?"

I almost smiled.

That was the worst thing yet, that I almost smiled.

"I need the card," I said.

"What card?"

"The one in the rite book. The one you read our vows from."

All the color left his face.

I watched it go.

On the mantel in the hall, the old rite book still sat where I'd dropped it.

Somebody had put the folded card back inside it.

I had seen the card on the hall floor the night I cut the bond, and I hadn't looked.

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