Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Other books by Debbie Cassidy
About the Author
For Jules,
Thank you for bringing my vision alive with every cover you create for me. Thank you for loving this story as much as I do, and most of all, thank you for being my friend. xoxo
Copyright © 2018, Debbie Cassidy
All Rights Reserved
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, duplicated, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
Cover by JMNart
Chapter One
The snow crunched beneath my boots, crisp winter air invading the warmth of my lungs with an icy chill. My breath bloomed and writhed in puffs of smoke escaping from my cold lips. Winter in Justice Falls was both beautiful and deadly. Beautiful because, heck, how could you not look out your window, see the sparkling white, and not be awed; and deadly because it meant scrabbling for food, and possibly realizing your stores were inadequate to get you through the bone-chilling months.
Luckily for me, I’d managed to grab the last sack of flour from the general store. Darn it was heavy, but it would be so worth it to see Finn’s face later when I presented him with his favorite chocolate fudge cake. Flour, eggs, and milk were in short supply this winter, and it was the farmers that were the wealthy ones right now with their chickens and cows and pigs at their disposal, while we, in the valley, waited on tenterhooks for the much-needed deliveries from the edge of town.
“Wynter!”
Oh, crud. That self-important baritone sent an unpleasant shiver up my spine. Time to pick up the pace, but the sack of flour was getting heavier by the second, hindering my escape.
A hand grasped my elbow, pulling me to a stop. “Wynter Ashfall, as I live and breathe.”
Dramatic much? Resisting the urge to roll my eyes, I looked up at the dark-haired man. “Hello, Jeremy. What are you doing in town? Shouldn’t you be up at your mansion polishing the many busts you have of yourself?”
He grinned, in what he probably thought to be a disarming manner, and flicked his thick locks out of his eyes. Had to admit, he had nice hair. And teeth, he had nice teeth. He also had an ego the size of an ostrich egg.
“I have to get going.” I made to sidestep him.
“Whoa, wait up there.” He blocked my exit. “How about we grab a pot of tea and catch up. It’s been what? Six months?”
“As lovely as that sounds, and it really doesn’t, I have somewhere I need to be.”
“And where would that be? Home to cook, clean, and take care of your alcoholic father?”
“And there he is, Mr. Look-down-his-nose-at-the-world.”
He snorted. “I offered you a better life, and you threw it back in my face, but I’m a patient man. The offer still stands. I advise you take it.”
“Yeah, slim pickings in Justice. Gee, let me think about it … Um, no.”
“So, what? You’ll marry one of the losers in town? The moony Gareth, maybe, with his penchant for strumming.”
God, he was a bastard. “Nope. Believe it or not, a woman does not need a man to survive.”
“Maybe not in the outside world, but things work differently in Justice Falls. Make a choice now or be paired with whomever the council chooses for you in two years.” He reached out to caress my face, but I jerked to the side to avoid the graze of his fingers.
“No touchy touchy, Jeremy.”
The street was suddenly ominously empty and silent as he backed me up toward the wall with an intense look in his dark eyes.
“Wynter, Wynter, Wynter, when will you understand that you belong to me.”
There was a rumble in his tone, one that had my pulse fluttering to be free. The wall hit my back, and he slammed his hands onto the brick on either side of me, trapping me in the cage of his arms.
His gaze fell to my lips. “The most eligible bachelor in town deserves the most beautiful girl in town.”
The urge to drop the flour and shove him was almost too much, but it was the last bag in the store until the delivery at the end of the week; it was also serving as a barrier between his body and mine.
He leaned in, and my gut twisted because it looked like he was about to—
His eyes widened, and he was ripped away from me. He hit the ground and scrambled to get back up.
A tall, powerful figure stepped toward him. “Did you just have your hands on my sister? Because it looked like you had your hands on her. From across the street, from the angle, the way the light hit the snow and the alignment of the fucking stars, made it look like you had your hands on my fucking sister.”
Oh, shit. Oh, bloody hell. “Finn. It’s okay. I’m okay.”
But Finn wasn’t having any of it. Finn was zeroed in on his target, fists clenched and ready to unleash, and Finn … Finn had a temper.
Jeremy brushed off his coat and lifted his chin. “Finn, the knight in rusty armor. You can’t keep her to yourself forever. She deserves a better life than this.”
The flex of Finn’s shoulders, the tension in his jaw, were a ticking time bomb. He was about to explode.
I stepped between them, so Finn was at my back. “Just leave, Jeremy.”
He snorted, and then his eyes narrowed. “Look at you two. So close, so fucking close. Maybe too close …” he sneered.
Heat climbed up my neck at the insinuation, followed quickly by a lick of rage. “Just shut up and walk away, Jeremy.”
But Jeremy seemed to have left all sense of self-preservation at home. His mouth, with his perfect teeth, kept speaking. “Living in your little cottage with your drunken father, a father oblivious to your clandestine goings-on. Isn’t it a two-bed cottage? Tell me, do you still share a room with your adopted brother? Do you share a bed?”
Finn’s chest rumbled. He was about to attack. I spun and shoved the flour into his arms.
“Wynter …” His voice was little more than a growl.
But I was striding up to Jeremy. He smiled down at me smugly and then my fist met his face with a satisfying crunch.
“Dammit, Wynter.” Finn studied my bruised and swollen hand.
I leaned against the sink and allowed him to examine it. It throbbed like hell, and I was going to need our neighbor Pat’s herbal poultices for sure.
“What happened?” Dad tottered into the room in his robe and threadbare slippers, a glass of amber liquid in his hand.
His hair was thinning now, and all wispy at the sides. It did
n’t look like he’d bothered to shave for a week. Noon and he was already on the juice. Nothing new there.
“Nothing,” Finn said dismissively. “Go back to your bottle.”
“Now, hear, don’t you speak that way to me, young m—”
Finn turned to glare at Dad, and he snapped his mouth closed. “Go,” Finn said softly.
There was no love lost between those two. Over the last seven years, as Dad had crawled further into his bottle, Finn had stepped into the provider’s shoes. He held down two jobs while I worked from home—sewing and mending for the locals and making sure my father didn’t burn the house down in a drunken stupor. He could have left. He didn’t owe us anything, not really.
Dad had been forced to take Finn in ten years ago. An adoption lottery had been held by the council after Finn’s mother’s death, and Dad’s name had been drawn. No one had wanted another child, not even Dad, but for the nine-year-old me, Finn had been a blessing. He’d become a friend and a playmate. Two years my senior, he’d shielded me from the reality of my father’s descent into alcoholism with his stories and his make-believe games. He’d quickly become my world and taken on the role of big brother with ease.
Dad’s gaze flicked down to my hand. His eyes widened in concern, and for a moment he was my dad again. The dad that had read me bedtime stories and tucked me in at night. The dad that had cleaned my grazed knees and kissed the top of my head. The dad before the bottle had taken him.
“Wynter, sweetheart, what happened?” His tone was hushed, almost confused.
My chest tightened.
“I got this,” Finn said tightly, his dark head bent over my injured hand.
Dad hovered for a second and then retreated to the living room, the radio, and his favorite chair.
Finn opened the ice box and pulled out the small hunk of frozen beef for next week’s stew. He wrapped it in one of the clean handkerchiefs he carried everywhere—the ones I’d monogrammed for him—and then held it against the back of my hand.
His throat bobbed. “Why’d you do that?”
“Duh. So you wouldn’t have to.”
He gritted his teeth. “There are a lot of things I have to do, but knocking Jeremy on his arse wouldn’t be one of them—that one I wanted to do. In fact, I’ve wanted to do it for a long time.”
“Yeah, and then you’d be arrested and locked up.” I grinned up at him. “Jeremy won’t be reporting me, though. Like hell he’ll go to the guard and tell them he got beat up by a girl.”
Finn pressed his lips together. “True. I think you may have broken his nose.”
I turned my hand over to examine the swelling. “Yeah? Well, then this was totally worth it.”
His throat bobbed. “Did it bother you? What he said?”
My cheeks heated. “No. Jeremy’s a moron.” I cleared my throat. “Did it bother you?”
“I wanted to kill him.”
“Finn … It doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks. This is me and you. This is us.”
His jaw ticked. “Yes. We’re a family.”
I glanced at the time on his wristwatch and sighed. “You have to get back to work.”
He finally locked gazes with me, his azure irises clouded with concern. “Will you be okay?”
I rolled my eyes. “Do doves fly?”
He chucked me under the chin and then pulled me in for a hug that eased the strange tangle of emotions in my chest.
“Stay indoors, okay?” He kissed the top of my head. “Just in case the dickhead is still in town.”
I wasn’t afraid of Jeremy, just what he could push Finn to do. Finn’s temper was a fearsome beast, but I’d become accustomed to soothing it. Finn had been a difficult child the first few weeks he’d been with us, but my presence always seemed to soothe him. His rage and grief would melt away around me, and as we’d grown, I’d taken on the maternal role in the home. We worked well as a team, but we both knew it couldn’t last forever. He needed to take a wife, and I would be forced to take a husband. It was the law—a solution to keep our town alive, to keep the population consistent, but even then, our numbers seemed to be dwindling. The council was flummoxed.
If only they remembered the truth.
Finn grabbed his coat and headed for the door.
“What time will you be home?” I followed him but hung back in the doorway, crossing my arms to ward off the cold as he stepped out into the snow.
He pulled open the gate and looked back. “The usual time, Wyn.”
I watched him stride off down the path, back to the mill that provided our grain and bread, and then retreated into the warmth of my house. I went back into the kitchen, dropped the beef into the ice box—we needed that stew next week—and headed out the back door into our tiny garden. My hand throbbed dully, the ache crawling over my wrist and shooting up my arm. Only Pat would be able to help kill the pain. I had a cake to bake after all, but there would be no chocolatey goodness without an operational right hand.
Something huge and black landed in the snow; it flapped its wings and cawed at me.
“Hey, Jet.” I crouched slightly to look at the large raven. He was a regular visitor to our garden. “You hungry?”
He cocked his head and then hopped closer. I held my ground, unlike the first time I’d met him two years ago. That time, I’d fallen back on my ass in an attempt to get away. He was truly a big bird, with obsidian eyes that seemed to peer into my soul and a sharp beak built for tearing and shredding. But he hadn’t tried to peck me yet.
“Hold on a second.” There were some bread crusts leftover from the loaf I’d baked two days ago. I’d planned on making bread and butter pudding, but with the long winter, it was probably hard for the animals to find food. “There you go.”
I threw the crusts so they landed in front of him and watched him peck at them for a moment before I pushed open the gate that separated our garden from Pat’s and knocked on her back door.
She didn’t answer, but it was customary to just head on in. “Pat? You there?”
She hurried into the kitchen, eyes bright, hair electric. Her calf-length dress was crumpled and her socks mismatched. She’d probably fallen asleep reading again.
“Wynter, pet.” Her gaze dropped to my hand, wrapped in the handkerchief and cradled to my chest. “What have you gone and done now?”
I grinned sheepishly at her. “I punched Jeremy in the face.”
“Ha!” She clapped her hands together. “About time someone rearranged his smug features.” She waved me over to the small dining table. “Sit, sit. Let me get you something for that.”
She set to work with her pestle and mortar, grinding up the herbs to make the magic poultice.
“How’s your dad?”
“Drunk.”
“Uh-huh, and Finn?”
“He just left to head back to work.”
“He’s a good lad. He takes good care of you.”
“I know.” Heat gathered behind my eyes. “I’m going to miss him.”
She glanced over her shoulder. “Why? Where’s he headed?”
I rolled my eyes. “A year, Pat, that’s all he has before he has to choose a wife. And it’s unlikely she’ll want to live in our cramped two-bed house with my drunken father.”
“She will if the wife is you.”
My mouth was suddenly dry, heart pounding like a jackhammer. “Pat … He’s my brother.”
“No. No, he isn’t. Not by blood and not in your heart. Stop lying to yourself, and wake up before it’s too late.”
The pain in my hand was suddenly in my chest. “He sees me as a little sister.”
“Well, I don’t know whose eyes you’ve been looking into, but they certainly aren’t Finn’s.” She carried over the mortar and sat at the table beside me. “Give me your hand.”
She unwrapped the handkerchief, smeared on the gunky yellow concoction that smelled faintly of turmeric, and then wrapped my hand back up again. This spice, and many others, came from Pat’s
special indoor greenhouse. The place was sweltering, and locals came to her for the herbs and spices they couldn’t get elsewhere. It was how she made her living.
My hand throbbed and then the ache began to subside. “You’re magic, you know that?”
She pursed her lips. “Hmmm.”
I knew what she was thinking. It had been on my mind lately too. We didn’t have long before our annual event. The event only a handful of us even realized was happening.
“We have time.” My words sounded hollow.
“I don’t know,” she said. “My nightmares have gotten worse the last two nights. I have a bad feeling.”
Talking about what was to come, dwelling on my nightmares, worrying were all things that I’d avoid for as long as possible.
I pushed back my seat. “Thank you for the poultice, Pat.”
She looked up at me and sighed. “Be safe, Wynter.”
I left her sitting at her tiny kitchen table and headed back to my lonely house.
“This is good,” Finn said as he dug into the cake. “Real good.”
His sandy hair was brushed back. It was getting longer and in need of a cut. “You want me to trim your hair for you?”
He finished off the cake and then sat back in his seat. “I was actually going to ask you if you could.” He ran his fingers through it. “It’s getting long.”
“I suppose you have to look good for all the ladies.” I injected a teasing tone into my voice, but the twinkle left his eyes.
“Wynter, I needed to speak to you about that too.” He locked gazes with me, his bluer-than-blue eyes looking deep into me. “You know I haven’t got much time before I have to take a wife.”
Captive of Darkness (Heart of Darkness Book 1) Page 1
