Page 191 of Immortal Rose

“What’s happened?” I demanded. “Where is he?”

Eleanor signaled to the closest guard, drawing the whole cluster into a tight formation around us.

“You’d best come, my lady,” Willie said at last. “We barely got him into the coach—I’m not sure how much time he has left.”

The dark night air pressed in around me, ice to my skin. I hauled up my skirts, demanding, “Where?”

Tommy had only got out the words servants’ court before I was off like a shot, running through the open doorways into the hall. The walls of flowers wilted around me, their scent suddenly suffocating, tinged with decay, the very horror of life and death.

Near the servants’ wing, a new, terrible stench slowed me—rancid, a bitter green with the slightest essence of sweetness. Of licorice.

“No,” I gasped. The magic had faded to a sinister murmur, its fangs blunted as it had dispersed.

Hugh. His name pierced me like a dagger to the heart, because I knew now what this was.

Poison.

I started toward the door into the servants’ wing, only to be grabbed from behind.

“No, my lady, not that way—” Strong arms hauled me from the corridor.

Eleanor rushed forward, her face blurring in front of me. “There’s another path to the courtyard—here—”

We were inside one moment and outside the next. The rain-washed air drove out the spikes of the poisoned perfume, clearing my mind. Water dripped from the ivy covering the walls, apace with the distant melody of the string quartet. My eyes skipped from an abandoned black jacket crumpled on the ground to the waiting coach. Cartwell hovered near the open door, looking stricken. Just inside, Reddy crouched beside a shadowed figure curled on the seat.

At the sound of our approach, Reddy climbed out. He met my gaze silently as he handed me up, and it was only then, when I saw the fear in his face, that the last of my hope abandoned me.

I dropped to my knees beside the seat in a cloud of dress and petticoats. Hugh’s essence surrounded me, its comfort stolen by the thready scent of the poison that clung to him.

His hair was still soaked through with rain, and the wool blanket they’d wrapped around him did little to stave off the chill that had appeared to have set in.

I stripped off my gloves, careful to replace my ring on my finger to keep from losing it. I clasped his face between my hands, gasping at its icy touch. His lips were tinged with a terrifying blue.

“Hugh,” I choked out. “Hugh—can you hear me?”

There was no response. Not even a groan of pain.

“What happened?” Eleanor demanded.

“I don’t know,” Reddy answered. His voice was gentle. Too gentle for my liking.

“Home,” I called out to Cartwell. “Home, now.”

I turned back to Hugh as the coach door slammed shut. There were muffled voices, then the sway of the coach as the Longmounts and Cartwell reclaimed their positions. The bobbing movement jostled us both, and for the first time, Hugh cried out.

His arm slipped down off the seat, and something fell from his grasp, clattering into the floor’s dark well. I felt for it, gasping as my fingers brushed against scalding metal. It pulsed as if it possessed its own heartbeat.

The fairy charm.

I looked between it and Hugh’s face. If it absorbed magic, helping to nullify it—

“My God,” I whispered. It had to be slowing the effects of the poison, sapping at it. Keeping him alive—for now.

I reached over Hugh, clawing at the knot of his cravat until I could open the front of his shirt. He gasped again in pain as I cradled the back of his skull, lifting it only long enough to loop the leather cord around his neck. The silver pendant crackled like fire devouring wood as it came to rest against his skin.

I leaned over him, knocking frantically on the coach’s back window, unsure of whether it opened.

It did. Willie’s pale face appeared there as he crouched down, keeping a perilous grip on the coach.