Page 60 of Demon's Bane

All those emotions roil uncomfortably inside me as we step outside, and I press closer to Rhett, unable to stop myself from leaning into his iron-steady support.

19

Rhett

Stepping out of the cave and into the late afternoon sunshine, I’m able to draw my first full breath in hours.

It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust to the light, and as I raise a hand to shield them, I look down at my mate. Any breath I might have had in my lungs twists into painful guilt as I see she’s covered in a fine layer of dust from the cave-in, face drawn with worry.

I take her hand, leading her down the path back toward the village, and that discomfort only rises with each demon we pass.

There are no friendly faces or calls of gratitude for our safety. Instead, hard expressions and suspicion-filled eyes, a wide berth around us as we approach the village.

Joan sucks in a sharp breath. “They don’t think… they don’t think I had something to do with it, do they? The cave-in?”

I want to comfort my mate. I want to assure her that no, they don’t, they would not be dense enough to think she had anything to do with the accident that almost cost us our lives.

But I also cannot lie to her.

“I’ll take care of it,” I mutter. “I’ll explain what happened.”

I use my grip on her hand to pull her into my side as we pass through the outer edge of the village, and curve a wing around her to shield her from view.

We reach the square, and in the center of the pavilion, my mother and Halla are both bent over the map of the caves with a half-dozen demons gathered round. There are raised voices, fervent gestures, obvious panic in whatever they’re discussing, until their voices die away at our approaching footsteps.

“Goddess be good,” Halla breathes as she turns and sees us standing there. She reaches me in a few quick strides, throwing her arms around my neck. “You’re not dead!”

There’s a strange dampness against my skin, and when I pull back a few inches from her death-grip of an embrace, I find it’s coming from her.

Crying. Halla is crying.

I’d hardly believe my tough, unflappable younger sister to be capable of it, but when she leans away and takes my face in a rough grip, the tears continue to fall freely.

She releases me to lunge for Joan. My heart leaps into my throat, but it’s just another embrace. One that seems to catch my little mate off-guard as Halla lifts her clean off her feet.

My mother is there a moment later, giving me a hug that’s less aggressive, but no less fierce.

“We thought we lost you,” she says as she holds me, rocking me back and forth.

For the first time, the true horror of what happened in the caves sinks in. In my single-minded need to get us to safety, I hadn’t let it in. Not truly. But here, now, wrapped up in my mother’s arms, a stab of horror pulses through my veins at how very close Joan and I came to disaster.

Bringing her here could have cost Joan her life. She trusted me to take care of her, to keep her safe, and I failed her in less than half a day.

My throat tightens, my stomach cramps like the breakfast I ate this morning in the human realm might come right back up, and I’m only distracted from sinking into that spiral of panic completely when the sight of Tyvar bounding up the pavilion steps pulls me back to the present.

Stepping out of my mother’s embrace and taking Joan’s hand once more, I draw her to me and meet my cousin’s mistrustful stare. He’s covered in the same fine layer of dust Joan and I are, like he just came from the caves himself.

“Tell them to call off the search party,” he calls over his shoulder, and the male he speaks to gives a curt nod before rushing off back toward the cave. “You’re not dead, then.”

Careless, the way he says it, like it would be no great loss to him if I was.

And perhaps it’s my own perilously turbulent emotions making the words land with more of a blow than they ought to, but for a moment I barely recognize the male standing before me.

Tyvar and I were close as brothers growing up. Our fathers were brothers, and we spent just as much time with each other’s families as we did with our own.

Unlike my father, though, Tyvar has no qualms about plainly voicing his disapproval of my choice to leave the village.

A betrayal, he’d called it on the day I’d left, a failing to step up and take the place that was meant for me.