Wicked Chase

♚ Chapter Twenty-Two

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

I stared at the man who claimed to be Philip. He no longer looked like Philip. I hadn't known what to feel until Alastair brought me a questionable looking liquid and insisted that I drink it while I stood on the other side of the bars that separated me from the man who had tricked me.

"Why?" I had asked, holding the glass by the stem as I watched the aforementioned questionable liquid slush against the walls of the curved glass. It was red in colour and I would have mistakened it for wine if it hadn't looked so thick and disgusting.

"I don't think you truly love Josiah - the man who claimed to be Philip," Alastair replied quickly, touching the tip of the glass and pushing it towards my lips, nodding his head in encouragement.

"How would you know how I feel?" I shot back instantly, arching a challenging eyebrow.

He hadn't replied at first. He had just looked at me, rolled in his lips together before he gave a carefree shrug but I could still see the tension is his body vibrate around him, and said, "just a hunch."

"And this...drink will prove this hunch?"

"I wouldn't know until you actually drink it."

It hadn't cost anything and I wouldn't have lost anything either so without further ado with all the suspicions and questions, I raised the glass to my lips, feeling the coolness of the glass kiss my lips before the liquid entered my mouth. Surprisingly it hadn't tasted all that bad. It wasn't exactly a delightful drink but it didn't taste as horrid as I expected it to taste.

When I was done with the drink I looked Alastair dead in the eye and raised an eyebrow. "Okay, what does this prove? I don't feel any different."

"Did you love Philip?" Alastair asked, his expression ever so serious as always but I hinted on a tone of hope in his silvery voice.

His question stunned me and the answer 'yes' was at the tip of my tongue before I realised that that wasn't exactly what I felt. Yes, Philip was attractive and he was lovely company - well, the man who posed as Philip - but all I felt now was this sort of hollowness. I wasn't in love with the man, Josiah, who had played the role of an imposter and filled in Philip Rowstring's shoes. How could I fall in love within just a week? It didn't make sense. Everything was swirling around my mind in a fast manner making me feel more dazed and confused than I already was. Why did I love him? Why had I felt so compelled to show my utter love and devotion for him?

When I raised my eyes to Alastair I knew that he had already spotted the confusion on my face from how distraught this small revelation made me feel. Instead of making me suffer any longer with all these questions and infuriating confusion, Alastair said, his grey eyes apologetic and his silvery voice gentle, wrapping around me delicately as if to offer warmth and comfort, "you weren't in love with him. You were drugged. Josiah cast a spell on you. But what I don't understand is that this spell is a bit different. It needs to materialistic, it needs to be a potion..." Alastair's voice trailed off, conclusions already coming about in that active mind of his.

My breath caught in my throat. "Potion," I mummered to myself, the wheels in my own mind turning as the puzzle began to look clearer. I looked at Alastair, certain that a frantic expression had moulded itself into my facial features. "Does the potion look like red wine?"

"Took you long enough to figure it out, my lady."

It wasn't Alastair who had said this but the man who stood behind the iron bars - Josiah. He was the man that had been present at my mother's death, the man who had talked over the phone for the majority of the conversation when I was in Alastair's Jeep and heard my mother die, the only man - out of the five men that attacked me - that used magic. I swiveled my head towards him, fury etched across my features as I latched my arms around two bars and peered through them at Josiah angrily. "That's why you were so insistent on me drinking some wine," I said, my voice dangerously low. "You tricked me."