Bewitch(53)

“Arnaud wishes to see you now.” A male voice drifted into the room and Elissa gathered the green covers around herself, feeling cold to the bone. She wanted Payne to look at her and tell her that everything was going to be all right and they could work through this, they could deal with it together. She had the terrible feeling that he would leave her without a word or a look instead.
Payne glanced at her, sorrow in his beautiful grey eyes, all trace of gold, blue and red gone from them now.
She held her hand out to him, afraid to hope that he would take it.
Her heart lifted when he turned away from the open door and crossed the room to her. He pressed one knee into the mattress, took her hand and leaned over her. He dropped a kiss on her forehead and lingered there, his lips pressing against her skin and his hand shaking in hers.
“Don’t go anywhere... please? Give me a second chance... please, Elissa?” he whispered hoarsely against her skin and she nodded, raised her hand and managed to stroke his cheek before he pulled away.
He smiled tightly, turned around and walked out of the door, closing it behind him.
Elissa sat in the middle of the bed, cold and afraid, feeling her connection to the earth slowly severing. What had she done? She swallowed and tears filled her eyes. She closed them, causing the hot drops to spill down her cheeks, and drew her knees to her chest, her ears ringing and head spinning as she thought about what had happened and felt herself weakening.
Her coven would know what she had done. They would feel themselves weakening too. It wouldn’t be long before they hunted her down. Would Payne protect her when they came? Would he still see her as his mate now? She prayed to the earth and the sky that he would, because she had just turned her back on her world and she wouldn’t survive what was to come without him at her side, protecting her as fiercely as he had that day they had met.
The air shifted.
Someone had teleported into the room.
“Payne?” she said, sure that he had returned to her, unable to remain away when he could probably feel her jumbled emotions through the connection between their blood, and that he would reassure her now that everything was going to be fine. She opened her eyes and lifted her head, and stared at the male before her. Dark blond hair, stony grey eyes, but this wasn’t the man her heart was pining for. Her voice turned cold and anger curled through her, causing her magic to stir and awaken. “Arnaud.”
If he was here, did that mean he had lured Payne away, ensuring she would be alone?
“When my aide told me of my grandson suddenly showing up with a woman he claimed was his mate, and he described you both to me, I had thought perhaps it would be you,” he said in a glacial tone and neatened the cuffs of his dark red shirt, his eyes on them, as though he couldn’t bring himself to look at her.
Elissa tucked the covers around her, shielding her nudity from his eyes, and glared at him. Magic rose to her fingertips, darker than any spell she had ever dared to call before. She had thrown her life away. She might as well use the black arts now that her coven was already coming to kill her. Any punishment they chose to inflict upon her for using forbidden magic couldn’t be worse than death.
“What do you want?” she said, trying her hardest to sound unafraid when she was shaking right down to her bones.
Arnaud straightened, his broad frame and height imposing when she was sitting. His grey gaze raked over her and the gold and cobalt in it brightened, swirling iridescently like Payne’s eyes had so many times when he had been looking at her. Unlike Payne, this man didn’t fill her with a desire to blush when he gazed upon her. He filled her with fear and disgust.
“You smell like sex... like my grandson. Don’t tell me the little witch didn’t heed the cautionary tale of her sister and allowed a demon to climax while inside her?”
Her skin crawled as he lowered his gaze to her hips and she moved her hands there, revealing the orbs of black that lazily drifted around them.
He smiled and raised his eyes to meet hers.
“What do you want?” she repeated.
“I would like to know what you are doing with my grandson.” He looked genuinely concerned and then darkness crossed his face, his eyes brightening at the same time. “And why you are here?”
“Payne promised to help me bring Luca home.” It wasn’t a lie, not wholly. Payne had promised to help her bring what she had wanted home, but he didn’t know that the item she had come to retrieve was in fact her nephew, and a relation of his.
Arnaud snorted. “The boy is mine.”
“I swore to raise him and protect him... he is mine.” She moved to kneel, bringing herself closer to eye-level with him, unwilling to let him intimidate her.