Soulbound (Darkest London 6)

For a moment, she simply stared. Her voice, when she spoke, was crisp as burnt toast. “And you can see the light of souls.”

Before he’d been stripped of his powers, yes. Adam merely gave a curt nod. Eliza’s eyes narrowed, her sweet mouth turning down at the corners. But she said nothing, forcing him to finish his confession. “It is why I created the GIM, you see. In return for their immortality, they had to bring me stubborn souls who refused to die.”

“So you were searching all this time for —”

“You.” He met her eyes. “Your light is an exact match to mine.”

With those words, Eliza cocked her head as if he were a particularly odd object she’d happened across. And never had he wanted to rage and snarl as much as then. It wasn’t as though he wanted to need her. Or that he loved her. Hell, he barely liked her.

He opened his mouth, the temptation to say all that and more too great to resist, when she spoke over him. “And you think we are soul mates?” A sharp, half laugh cracked through the air. “Are you mad?”

“Madam,” he ground out, “you cannot begin to fathom how much I wish I were.”

“Oh, I believe I have some idea,” she said, rising with a rustle of petticoats. “Let me see if I have this correctly. You believe me to be your soul’s mate, and, as a result, your first course of action was to put me in chains and force me to be by your side henceforth.”

When put that way… Adam stared back, unspeaking. And Eliza made an unladylike snort. “Well, isn’t that simply brilliant thinking on your part.” She paced before him, her skirts snapping around her legs with each brisk stride. “Certainly, the best way to court a woman is to keep her prisoner.”

“I wasn’t trying to court you. I was trying to secure you.”

At his mulish retort, she halted and spun round to face him. High color stained her cheeks. “Secure me?”

Hot, uncomfortable regret made it hard to answer. “I was not thinking clearly.”

“Obviously.”

He shot her a look. “I only knew that, after hundreds of years, I’d found you. I wasn’t going to risk losing you.”

With a huff, Eliza leaned against the cell wall and crossed her arms over her chest. She looked him over with the cool detachment he’d become accustomed to. “One would think,” she said after a moment, “that I’d know it if you were my soul’s mate.” Her nose wrinkled. “A ridiculous notion, at any rate.”

He concurred. However… “And yet when you ran away, Mab took claim of me because you had rejected our bond.”

Her mouth fell open, her eyes going wide as tea saucers. “Bond. Is that what… you blame me?” Again she laughed. “Good Lord above. You needed my acceptance, and yet you treated me like a slave. You are mad.”

And what could he say? Those had not been his finest hours, driven by a sort of madness that had sound logic fleeing in the face of a base, nearly animalistic need to claim what was his.

From the moment she’d opened the cellar door, Eliza knew it was a mistake to visit Adam. Nothing in his behavior proved her wrong. Yet she found herself unable to leave him now. Not when he lay prone and bloody, needing aid, even though she knew he’d never admit to it. Now that he’d confessed, her head was reeling. Soul mates? Impossible. Ridiculous.

“I don’t believe in soul mates.” She hadn’t meant to speak, but, then again, it was best to tell him straight out.

“Neither do I,” he shouted, his swift ire shocking her into silence, as he glared a hole through her head.

“Then why —”

“Because I saw your light.” He bared his teeth when he growled out the words, reminding her of a wounded animal. “I took one bloody look at you and began to feel again. Do you understand what it means to feel nothing that is good or real?”

She did. She’d felt it for a mere twenty minutes when she’d first died. To live that way for centuries was an endurance she did not want to contemplate. But he wasn’t finished with her. His tendons stuck out like thick ropes as he strained towards her. “I was bloody desperate, you ken? I was promised my suffering would ease upon finding this elusive soul mate, and lo’ you arrive with your bloody golden glow, making me bloody feel again. So, aye, I’ll play the fool. I’ll believe whatever I damn well have to, if that’s what it takes to find some measure of peace.”

Well then. Eliza licked her dry lips. “All right. Neither of us believes in this farce —”

“Oh, I believe in it,” he cut in, rather snidely. “I simply don’t like it. Do you suppose I fancy being beholden to a woman who loathes me?”

“For good reason.”

He rested his head against the grimy wall and sighed. “Fair enough. Now, what do you want?”

Biding her time, Eliza soaked a length of linen with cool witch hazel. Under the slashes of his brows, Adam’s deep-set eyes narrowed, and a low growl of protest rumbled in his throat as she came near.

“I… don’t…” His ruined pectorals twitched. “Need help.”

Gently, she lowered the cloth onto his chest. His body tensed, ropy muscles bulging in response, and then he let go with a sharp breath. His tension eased on a sigh. “Better,” he rasped.

Eliza prepared another cloth and assessed how she could best help him. Two separate lengths of chains, each attached to heavy cuffs around Adam’s wrists, held him fast. Secured to a set of rings driven into the stone cell wall, the chains had been pulled tight and forced his arms up over his head so that he was stretched out and barely able to move.