Page 64 of Shadows and Flames (Twin Blades #2)

Whitley shakily nodded, staring and slowly advancing forward.

They wore a tunic with the sleeves rolled to elbow and an apron splattered with something brown and orange, the start of supper, most likely.

Their white curls were longer than last I’d seen, a few strands dangling in front of their brow, the rest a cloud around their head.

We’d shared scattered letters here and there, and three years, to Lylithans of adult age, were no match for our slow aging. Papa had been nearing five-hundred years when he was killed, and he’d just started sporting handsome lines at the corners of his eyes. From half a millennia of smiling.

Whitley hastily wiped their palms on their apron, now standing right in front of their lost mate. They raised their hands, trembling violently with thin blue swirls decorating the backs and knuckles. Francie’s mating marks.

“My—D-Darling,” they whispered, barely audible, and the first brush of their skin against Francie’s she… collapsed.

Her knees gave way, and she slumped onto the cobblestone street.

Before I could dive in to help, Whitley fell with her, pulling their mate into the safety of their chest. They cradled her as she wept, rocking them both and keeping their own weeping quiet.

They pressed kiss after kiss into her hair, ran their hands in circles on her back.

The vise around my heart had loosened by then, and I turned toward my cousin to give them a moment. Tana wiped the back of her sleeve at her eyes, grinning for the first time in a long while.

We didn’t say anything to each other, but when she offered her hand, I gladly took it. Joining as witnesses of this moment between mates. Taking in this quest fully realized. We found her. We brought her back home.

Francie and Whitley remained on the ground for a long time, oblivious to the crowd of children that convened out front of the townhome and Lydia quietly ushering them back inside to wait.

She mouthed ‘thank you’ to us multiple times as she pushed the children inside and watched her fellow caregivers with relief and joy.

“I—I don’t even know how to thank you both. I am…so, so grateful.” Francie was still tucked into Whitley’s neck, whimpering softly as they looked up at my cousin and me.

Tana answered for us. “We were happy to help,” she said, and I nodded. Truly. When I’d needed help, for them to take a risk on my behalf, they did so without even a thought.

Among the truths shared on our voyage back to Nethras, I’d admitted to Francie my hand in her predicament. How I’d been followed that night I brought payment to the children’s home after winning a fight on Dyna Island.

While the ship rocked, I’d steeled myself for her rejection. For her anger. But, because she was still a kind soul through it all, she just hugged me. Reassured me that it was not my fault.

Hopefully, once Francie shared this with Whitley, they would come to forgive me as well.

I blinked, looking around and still not seeing the boy I’d become close with during my years volunteering at the home. “Has Marco arrived?”

At the boy’s name, Francie peeked out from Whitley’s neck, gaze sweeping around. We’d been hoping, but… “No, I haven’t heard from him. His last letter was some weeks ago.”

It could be nothing. The Shadows certainly were not known for being easily contacted or found.

But I’d watched Elián draft multiple letters to the Well, informing the boy of his caregiver coming home.

El and Tomás assured me that acolytes were given limited dispensation to travel for important events such as this.

Certainly Marco would want to be here for Francie’s return.

Something cold started up my spine, stirring my power and making my fingertips itch. Tana’s brow furrowed, mind probably taking the same journey as my thoughts had.

I tried my best to keep my face calm, though. “He might already be on his way. Or needing more time before he’s able to get away from his duties.”

Whitley’s gray stare was longer than I’d hoped, showing they hadn’t been completely assured by my words.

Eventually, though, they nodded and turned back to their mate.

Tentatively, as if knowing how fragile and raw Francie still was, they pressed their lips to hers.

We’d not told them about what she endured, respecting Francie’s process in sharing her tale, but I hoped for her sake that she would do so, sooner rather than putting it off.

So the pain would not be only hers to bear.

Over the weeks we sailed, Francie’s body had healed itself. With a steady supply of donor blood, rest, and encouragement from all five of us in our own way, she’d left the vestiges of Frenzy behind.

Her mind, though, I knew would take longer to move on.

That seemed to be put to the side, though, as the reluctant meeting of lips on lips turned languid. Heated. The quiet moans between them weren’t obscene, necessarily, but judging the swell of lust in the air, obscenity wasn’t far.

The levelheadedness I’d come to associate with Whitley asserted itself.

Enough, at the very least, for them to pull away and clear their throat.

“Well, we will just be—let’s get you inside, my love.

” Francie didn’t resist Whitley pulling her to her feet, but the little shifts of her body as she remained pressed to her mate suggested that she was unable to clear the haze of their passionate reunion as Whitley.

A faint redness was now creeping up Whitley’s neck, as well as darkening their cheeks. “Thank you both. Will you be staying for supper? I was just…” They trailed off, looking down at the apron of a meal they’d certainly long forgotten about.

I chuckled, already beginning to angle my and Tana’s bodies back up the street. “Perhaps another time. You both deserve any time alone you can manage. We will talk soon?”

Francie nodded emphatically, muttering more words of thanks to join the others she’d given over the weeks since rescuing her from the Folk. Whitley’s response was calmer but no less sincere. “Yes. Thank you both again. I am forever in your debt.”

Tana and I waved off the assertion, not wanting or needing thanks, let alone a debt from the kind caregiver. “Consider us even,” I hollered over my shoulder, but they were already across the grounds and opening the door.

The tension while walking down Tulip Street was all but erased as my cousin and I walked back up toward the city proper. A months-long adventure to save Francie was just… over.

And we were back in Nethras. Where we’d both lived for years before everything went to shit.

“So…” I attempted, but the rest of my question wouldn’t come.

Aside from finding Francie, the conflict with murderous humans, Folk, and Tomás’s sickness had occupied most of our conversations.

But the impending change of course, on the path both of our lives had tread together for so long, was now in the air.

Was that why our steps became loaded again?

Unbalanced? Normally, as different as we were, I’d felt in synchronized step with my cousin.

We had shared turmoil and trained so much that a step from her brought forth a coordinating one from me.

A goading, good-natured taunt from her would elicit a snipe from me, then a melodic laugh from her throat in return.

The annihilation of my sense of self after fleeing Versillia, then slow, wobbly growth after realizing I was with child was met with extensive, unflinching care from my cousin.

I owed her everything.

As I opened my mouth again, though, I took in the tightness of her jaw. The hard edge to her jade eyes.

She’d never looked more like me.

“I was going to inquire with my old coven. See if anyone is available to help with Tomás’s healing. There were a handful of proficient healers, but I’ve not spoken to them since I left.”

Her tone was… flat. Without the fluttery lightness I’d associated with her since she was able to speak at all. Even after her mother’s passing and the murder of Uncle Hendrik, I’d not…

“Do you need any help? Want me to see who I can find as well?” Never mind the fact I knew no one she wouldn’t already be familiar with.

She shook her head as we looked up and down the street before crossing. I had to listen past the commotion around us to focus on her response. “No, I’ll check on him now then go alone. I’m sure you’ll want some time with Elián.”

While that was true, I—did I detect a bite in her tone, along with her assumption?

Dark heat unfurled in my chest, but I breathed through it.

To be defensive and strike against my cousin was not what I wanted.

Not what she deserved. “I would, but we have agreed to…be with each other. We have time, and his brother’s recovery is our priority right now.

Neither of us are healers such as you, but—” a Nethran with fair violet skin and heavy perfume nearly clipped us as they hurried past “—it’s not fair for this to all be on you. ”

Tana chuckled sardonically as we crossed the informal barrier into the arts district.

The buildings sported more colorful facades here, with intricately painted murals instead of blank walls, performers on nearly every corner, and more daring ensembles.

Our woolen trousers and tunics in dull colors, functional and clean but drab, suddenly made our presence amongst the crowd as noticeable as it’d been in the human-ruled cities across the continent.

“Did I do something to you?” Try as I did to keep peace, my question was definitely an accusation.

Tana certainly took it that way. “What would you have done to me?”

“I don’t know .” I tried to breathe calmly, to draw a clearing inhale instead of the attention of the gossip hounds I certainly knew populated this area of the city. “But I’m sensing that something is amiss, and I—I don’t like arguing with you.”

She whirled around to glare at me, crossing her arms and planting her boots. A group of Lylithans nearly ran into us, seeing as we were standing very much in the way of foot traffic, but they simply scoffed and kept walking, muttering about being late and missing something.

“I wasn’t arguing. I was just pointing out that—that you and your male will want time together, just as Francie and Whitley need time together. I don’t need placating statements about helping me.”

I couldn’t hide the incredulous irritation from my words anymore. This was like when we’d left Morova, where she’d criticized the way I’d been hiding behind her, using her as an excuse. Yes, there was some merit to it, but I also detected that it was only a facet of the truth.

“I—I’m not placating . With more help, the faster we may be able to find a remedy for whatever ails Tomás. And then?—”

“Then what?” she snapped. Her arms crossed tightly at her chest, and the activity around us had thinned enough for me to hear the whistle of her breaths through her nose. “You or whomever help me heal Tomás, and then…” she curled a hand in the air, flippantly judging any response I deigned to give.

My lip curled back from my fangs instinctually, and hers made an appearance in kind. “Then we decide what we want to do afterward!”

“What you want to do!” I jerked, mouth gaping. “ I heal Tomás, the brother of your lover, and then you decide what happens next.”

My stomach dipped into something sour. Another fear realized, maybe? “N-No, but I?—”

Tana cut her gaze away, glancing further down the road, where the rumble of a crowd grew loud enough to add pressure to what swelled between my cousin and me.

Something so big it threatened to erupt.

How long had this been churning—growing—between us?

“I will heal him because it is the way, my duty. And then we will go out on our own paths.”

She might as well have struck me with the staff secured to her belt. It would have bruised my heart less.

Was that what these years had been? Duty? When she chanted prayers to the aether and encouragement over me as she pulled my babe from my body? When she lay amongst the tall grass of the Ralthan meadow, pressed against my back and crying with me after I scattered Soleil’s ashes in the wind?

When she buried with me Elián’s medallion in the soil, where I’d felt our son move within me for the first time?

Duty. The way.

“Right. Okay,” I croaked, any fight draining out of me faster than I could hold onto it.

More footsteps approached, but I averted my gaze downward, unprepared for Tana or any passersby to see whatever unrest was visible on my face.

These did not skirt around us, but stopped some paces away. Which, in the raw state I found myself in the face of my cousin’s words, only made me angry. My head pulsed with the fast pinging between emotions, and I snapped my head toward the ones staring.

Of course, I picked up on the scent right as my mind homed in on the armor of guards surrounding a figure cloaked in flowing fabric.

Instead of the gray steel, however, the yellow glow of lights overhead highlighted the golden plates armoring the six standing before us. Violet jewels adorned the gleaming vambraces and spaulders, and the breastplates were damascened with more gold decoration, in the likeness of scales.

At the front, presumably leading the group, a guard with bronze skin and plaited pink hair moved to the side. The remnants of a name pulled at my memory, but when the center of the procession was revealed, my jaw opened in more shock than when I’d watched a male walk out of a tree.

“Hello, Mamba.”