Page 3 of Heart Cradle (The Melrathen Saga #1)

Lisbon welcomed her like a sigh, a breath out, not in.

After the heaving, sweat-slicked chaos of Rome, the pastel-washed calm of the Portuguese capital felt like a balm.

The streets curled like old tales, sun-baked and slow.

The sea glittered in the distance, and the breeze carried the scent of salt and grilled sardines.

The city should have been peaceful. It should have calmed Maeve, but she didn’t think peace lived in her anymore.

Her large duffle bag was slung over one shoulder, digging into her collarbone.

Maeve stood outside her block of flats, watching a tram rattle past. More tourists floated around her like bubbles, laughing, sunburnt, untouched and happy.

She felt like a shadow between them, an echo only able to move around the sunlit moments of others.

Remembering the night before she felt the familiar rush of panic flood her. “ Just a dream, ” she kept telling herself.

But fear lingered like smoke, clinging to the corners, impossible to shake.

She tried to appreciate Lisbon, tried to be present, but her thoughts moved in tight, relentless loops.

London, forced leave, the faces of the men who’d hurt her, she thought of the cold meeting room where Rhodes had told her she couldn’t return.

She remembered how he’d told her a break would help, as if that would mend her.

She didn’t think it would, she was beyond broken.

After she had checked the flat, searched and searched and found it secure, she unpacked and left with no destination in mind.

She turned a corner without thinking and found herself in a shaded alley just off the main square.

A row of market stalls stretched along the wall, draped in patterned cloth and little trinkets.

Jewellery, cheap things, brass, thread and glass crystals.

Pretty but not her thing, not her thing at all.

Except one, that stopped her. Her eyes caught on a shimmer, a glow, a bracelet. It wasn’t gaudy, just a gold chain, intricate and woven. Black stones like ink frozen mid-drip with coloured glass trapped in the metal, all caught like secrets, like light ensnared in amber.

She didn’t touch it, not at first. Just looked, and felt as if were looking back.

Home.

The old woman behind the stall said something in Portuguese .

Maeve stood puzzled. “Sorry?”

“Take it,” the woman said. “It’s nice, just twenty for you.”

Maeve hesitated, her rational brain spoke.

This is ridiculous.

But her fingers moved before her thoughts could stop them. She touched it and heat bloomed under her skin, soft and sudden. She didn’t remember paying, didn’t remember leaving. The next thing she knew, she was halfway down the street, and it was already on her wrist.

The world felt tilted, like something had shifted, quietly, but irrevocably.

Christ! Get a grip, you’re just bloody tired.

A café sat on the corner of a narrow street, a tucked-away place shaded by potted olive trees and climbing bougainvillea. Wrought iron chairs, chipped tiled tables and a breeze just strong enough to stir the steam from a fresh coffee. It should have been paradise.

Maeve stirred sugar into her cup without looking at it.

The tiny silver spoon clicked gently against the ceramic, rhythmic and pointless.

She hadn’t taken a sip, instead, her eyes drifted, half-watching.

The locals chatting over their pastries, a couple speaking in soft, melodic Portuguese.

The waiter sweeping crumbs from a table with the precision of someone who’d done it a hundred times before.

Again, her gaze returned to her wrist, the bracelet gleamed in a narrow shaft of sun.

It looked different here, she couldn’t say how, maybe it was just the light, maybe her nerves. She was always on fucking alert.

The coloured glass inside the gold weave shone faintly now, not just reflecting light.

Catching it, drinking it in. She twisted her wrist, letting it tilt towards the sun again, the stones inside blinked.

Just once and she nearly dropped her spoon, she sat back and rolled her neck.

The rational part of her, the practiced, evidence-based detective, insisted it was a trick of sun and shade.

Although something deeper in her, something bone-deep and humming, whispered otherwise.

She took a sip of her coffee, burnt and too strong and a breeze curled around her ankles now and someone laughed nearby.

Normal, mundane things. She rubbed at the skin at the edge of the bracelet, then stopped.

It didn’t hurt, but it wasn’t comfortable either.

The bracelet didn’t feel like it was something to be worn and that made her feel off-kilter.

Like she was waiting for something to happen and didn’t know what.

Detectives don’t believe in omens .

Maybe I’m not one anymore.

She shook the thoughts away.

You’re spiralling again, Maeve.

Have your coffee, breathe.

Be fucking normal.

As much as she tried to talk herself down, she couldn’t stop checking the bracelet. Stealing glances like it might vanish, or do something spectacular, it was ridiculous, she was being ridiculous.

I’m mentally ill.

She was half amused and half horrified at the thought.

A moment later, the bell above the café door jingled, the waiter going to fetch more burnt coffee, and her head turned instinctively.

Across the narrow street, a man had stopped walking, he was tall, muscled and dark-haired.

Impossibly perfect. He wore a white shirt, almost too tight, rolled to the elbows, and perfectly fitted jeans, his hands loose at his sides, like he hadn’t noticed he’d stopped moving.

Only he had, and he was looking at her, no, not at her, at the bracelet.

Shit.