Page 11 of Try As I Smite
A little girl of not more than three knelt on the cold stone floor in front of the fireplace. She hadn’t been there a second ago. Adorned in a dress of fine material with intricate embroidery at the hem and sleeves, but with bare feet, her black hair curling down her back, she petted Penelope, her cat. An early Christmas present from her father.
“It starts now,” Delilah said.
Alasdair jerked his gaze to her. “What is going on?”
Forcing herself to look up, she grimaced. “You know Dickens’ classic story, A Christmas Carol?”
He crossed his arms, muscles stretching the fine material of his jacket, spreading his undone shirt farther apart. Seriously, the man had to have some physical flaw, though darned if she’d found one yet. “What does that have to do with this?” he asked.
Not the easiest thing to explain. “Hazah gave Dickens the idea for that story. She likes to use that trick to teach people…lessons.”
Alasdair didn’t so much as move a hair on his beautiful head, but disbelief became palpable. “You’re telling me we’re about to be visited by the ghosts of the past, present, and future?”
“Well…it is Christmas Eve,” she pointed out wryly. “But no. Not ghosts, exactly. More like lucid visions.”
“To what end?”
She blew out a long breath, the visible show of emotion uncharacteristic for her. “Choices and consequences,” she said. “When Hazah sees a future, she can see pieces of what lead up to it, like stepping-stones. She shows you that path.”
“Why?”
Delilah shrugged. In the past, it had always been a future where she’d broken the oath she’d made as a child. Clearly not what was happening here. “With the hope that you change the future she saw coming.”
Alasdair blew out a breath. “Why can’t she just tell me how to change the future she saw?”
“Because she doesn’t know. All she can see is the ending coming if you stay on your current path, not what happens if things change.”
“I don’t believe this.” He ran a hand over his jaw.
“I know. I’m sorry.” Her lips twisted. “Hopefully, this is about your demon problem. A clue as to how to deal with it or what actions result in a worse situation.”
He ran that same hand around the back of his neck. “I should have known coming to you was a mistake.”
Ouch. His words struck deep, lodging under her skin in a way that she shouldn’t allow. She owed this man nothing. Besides, she was trying to help, in her limited capacity.
“There’s no way out of it and no way to stop beyond going through what she wants us to see.”
Please, Mother, no revealed secrets.
She didn’t need this powerful man holding those over her.
Chapter Three
Alasdair was still contemplating a response when a high-pitched scream shattered the quiet that fell between them. Not the happy squeal of a girl at play. Instead, the heartrending cry of a child’s brokenness. They both looked down, only now the child version of herself was bent over the cat.
“I didn’t mean to,” Delilah whispered along with the child version of herself.
The pain in grown-up Delilah’s voice about took Alasdair’s knees out from under him. An inexplicable reaction when he was still fucking furious about being stuck here.
But he knew for certain, after their encounters this year, that she didn’t share her emotions with others. Took one to know one. That she couldn’t hide her pain from him, while she watched what was apparently the young version of herself, got to him. Like a thousand needles in his skin.
Child Delilah lifted her face to the heavens, cheeks red and blotchy and drenched in tears. “I didn’t mean to. I didn’t mean to.”
The little girl’s plea made that needle sensation only worse. Alasdair crouched beside the cat and even reached out to put a hand to its belly to make sure the animal was dead. With a jerk, he stopped himself short, realizing this had already happened. He couldn’t fix it for her.
“What did you do?” Alasdair lifted his head to ask the woman standing back from the scene, arms wrapped around her middle.
She didn’t pull her gaze from the cat, or maybe she couldn’t. “My powers got away from me. I was trying to train her to play dead, like a dog. A surprise for my father, who never liked cats. Only—” She swallowed hard, a shudder visibly passing through her.
