Page 12

CHAPTER 12

Please Forgive Me

I whirled.

I’m coming, Willow, don’t move, don’t move , I chanted, sprinting past plates of burgers and bewildered glances, ignoring the shouted warnings. A waitress dodged out of my way, dumping a full glass of pinot grigio on a woman’s lap. She let out a strangled cry, her husband flying out of his seat in outrage. But I was already past the mess when I snagged the exit door at last and sucked in a blast of salty air.

I yelled Willow’s name as I rounded the doorway. I’d forgotten my sweater, but despite my thin shirt and the rain, I barely felt the cold as I barreled down the sidewalk.

She hadn’t disappeared.

There was no mistaking my sister—no mistaking the cocky gait, the over-plucked eyebrow she’d laughed at, the freckles that matched my own.

My eyes burned. “ Willow ?” I called, voice breaking.

She stepped away, her lips curling with that old mischief. Grief wrapped around my throat and squeezed.

I didn’t care why. I didn’t care how. But my twin had come back from the dead.

And I’d tell her I was so very sorry—sorry I hadn’t been with her that night, sorry I’d left her recital, sorry that it was me in Ireland and not her, sorry that she’d died before Ruhaven ever had a chance to pick her, sorry that I hadn’t felt when she’d died, and—

A force struck me from behind.

“ Nooooo !”

Willow darted away, vanishing into the crowd.

I plowed headfirst into the boulevard, my palms tearing open as I slid over cement, glass, and prickly weeds. Pain throbbed in my knee, but it was all secondary to the voice screaming inside me to get up, get up, get up !

Someone panted in my ear. Tires squealed, and a wave of icy rainwater drenched my jeans, sending a bone-chilling shiver through me. I shifted onto my elbows, saw that I’d torn a hole in both knees and blood was oozing from one. It didn’t matter. Willow was here, frightened but alive.

As I struggled to push up, a weight pressed between my shoulder blades, shoving me down. My chin hit the ground with a clack that rattled my jaw. I would lose Willow again—already had lost her, because I’d tripped into a sidewalk. Why had she run? Why hadn’t she—

“ Rowan .” Bryn?

Bryn .

That son of a bitch .

With renewed energy, I fought to get my hands under me, swore.

“It is an illusion,” he snapped. “You must ignore it.” I hated that no-nonsense tone, the command in it that sliced like a slow-motion whip.

He’d tackled me, frightening Willow away, and after refusing to explain anything about the disease. The traffic light flooded the sidewalk red, or maybe that was my vision.

“ You ,” I growled, and tossed an elbow behind me. His satisfying grunt barely registered over the adrenaline pumping in my ears, but the weight was gone, the way clear.

I started to get up—I’d chase Willow all over Oslo if I had to, jump on a Viking ship if she decided on it. That’d be just like her too. She was made for this country, for the port and the boats and the adventure of it all. She was made for Ruhaven.

Strong hands gripped my shoulders, flipping me into a freezing puddle that muffled my hearing.

“Get off me,” I growled.

“No.” Bryn pinned me, blocking out the sky as he watched me through irises carved from a Norwegian glacier. There was no warmth there. No remorse for the chance that was slipping away with each minute. “Do you believe I would permit them to harm you as they did me?”

Them? Harm? The man was as delusional as the colorless spiral artwork in his office.

We fought a brief, almost childlike battle, with me yanking on his arms and him batting my attempts away. Rain soaked through my shirt until I could see the outline of my bra. My braid resembled a rat’s tail dragged from the sewer. And meanwhile, Willow was getting away.

Bryn slid a knee over my gut, applying enough pressure that I had to curse him or breathe. I went with the former. “You can go fu—”

“What you are witnessing is not real ,” he panted, breathless.

Good. At least I’d landed some of my punches.

“Willow!” I screamed. “Willow!”

As I fought with Bryn’s knee, James slid out of the pub, tossing apologies behind him like he was fielding a football. He skidded to a halt at the sight of us, eyes widening behind glasses askew on his nose. “Bryn, what’s going on? Did ye feckin’ do this?” He grabbed Bryn by his shoulders, wrenched him off me, and I had never been more grateful. “Roe’s bruised and bleeding—have ye lost yer goddamn mind?” he shouted, fisting Bryn’s collar.

I grunted in agreement. “James, it’s Willow, she was here and…and then…”

Wait, what was I saying ? Willow was dead. Dead .

Lying in an open coffin with a face so much like mine, but done up with caked makeup when she’d never worn any. Buried with her hair in ugly blonde ringlets, lotuses clasped in her rigid hands. Dead .

“Rowan?” Bryn’s voice cut through the memory as James slowly released him. I stared at Bryn’s pale face, his shadowed eyes, and steadied.

“I mean,” I said, swallowing hard. “I mean, I thought I saw someone who looked like her. Then Bryn tackled me. For no reason.”

With a grunt, Bryn planted his cane, bent, and gripped my bruised elbow. I winced as he pulled me up. “You may lie to James,” Bryn warned, his cool breath washing over my face, “but never to me. I know what you saw.”

I withered under twin jewels that belonged somewhere deep in the Mariana Trench. “And what did I see?”

“An Inquitate.”

“An Inquitate ?”

“That is what they are called, Rowan.”

My breath stalled. “They?”

His eyes glinted. “Your disease .”

“ W hat is an Inquitate ?” I repeated when we were back at the bed and breakfast.

Saying nothing, Bryn brushed back the curtain of the room James and I had rented and squinted into the dark waters off the port. He’d hung up his cashmere sweater on the heater’s slotted surface, and now wore only a collared shirt, looking more like a Viking professor than an artist.

Our room in the converted-farmhouse-turned-bed-and-breakfast was one of four, with wallpaper the color of Bryn’s sweater—in that it had none—and a kitchenette, where James was currently busying himself to distraction with tea. He’d changed into an embroidered sweater with a patchy bluebird over the heart.

“Why do you think I saw my sister?”

Still, nothing.

In Willow’s old college sweater, I crossed my arms against the cold, my fingertips grazing the worn felt of a faded treble clef on the breast. My knees had stopped bleeding on the way here, but my palms needed Band-Aids I didn’t have, so I’d stuffed them into a pair of James’s fingerless gloves for now.

Whatever Bryn claimed, it’d been Willow who’d stood on a street in Oslo, alive for a brief moment with that wild smile and the mole below her right eye that she swore was a freckle. I should have left faster instead of standing there, staring at her through the pub window, debating how much of my sanity I was willing to part with.

But why had she run away?

“Roe, would ye sit down?” James chided me, “Either the carpet will have a hole from yer pacing, or Bryn’s head’ll have a hole in it.”

I shot him a parting glare before selecting one of the twin chairs opposite the bed, my fingers grazing the raised pattern of ugly roses on its armrest. Beside it, an end table sported two magazines on interior design—James’s—and a glass lamp.

Bryn glanced over his shoulder, his gaze sweeping my puddle-soaked hair and landing on my unpainted toes. His frown deepened.

I sucked in my cheeks, worked all my annoyance into the stare I leveled back at him. This morning, I might have gone back to L’Ardoise, might have resigned myself to never knowing the truth of Willow’s death—but now?

“Rowan, I must inform you that as we are not in Ruhaven, your act of staring me down shall do absolutely nothing to further your objective.”

I could only imagine what my Mark would let me do, and briefly hoped we’d meet in the memories so I could find out.

James faced Bryn with the whistling teapot in a white-knuckled hand. “How long have ye known?” he asked softly, but not nearly as composed as I’d thought. It’d been his mother, after all, who’d suffered like Willow had.

Port lights flickered over Bryn’s face—reds, greens, yellows, all playing in the hollows of his cheekbones. “Since I was first attacked.”

James set the pot down with a clatter that had the pewter teaspoons jumping. “And yet ye didn’t think to tell me? To warn me?”

Bryn ran a hand over his jaw. “I did not think they would target…” His eyes flicked to me.

“A repair woman?” I finished for him, ignoring the twisting in my gut that wasn’t at all the steel I imagined.

He didn’t bat an eye. “Precisely.”

“And what about James’s mother,” I pushed, “did you think she’d be spared, too?”

James shook his head at Bryn, then he crossed to me with the tray of tea, set it down on the doily over the coffee table, and started filling me a cup before I’d asked. I tugged up the suspender he hadn’t noticed had slipped over his shoulder.

“Thanks, Roe,” he murmured, handing me the teacup. “Black, is it?”

“Yes, I—” The cup and saucer rattled in my palm, my cut hand burning through the thin glove. I was going to drop the damn tea right in my lap and I’d really—

In less than a second, Bryn plucked it from my grasp, setting it on the side table’s doily in such a smooth motion, the tea barely rippled.

I sat there, hands still in the air, palms still stinging, with my heart thundering a staccato rhythm as loud as the heater. Fast, he was so fast. How ? His Mark again? The speed of light was a thing, but that sounded ridiculous.

“I apologize for injuring you, Rowan,” Bryn said, folding himself into the opposite chair and crossing his legs. I flexed my fingers, willing them onto the armrests until my pulse dipped. “I panicked when you chased after the Inquitate and reacted poorly.”

That was right. He’d been fast then, too, hadn’t he? Fast enough to tackle me at a run, though I’d been in a dead sprint when I left the bar.

I glanced at the cane resting beside his leather satchel. “How did you catch up with me so fast?”

“I was near the exit when you ran. You caused quite a commotion.”

Liar.

He’d been at the bar with James, over twenty feet from the door, with a cane . “Are you sure it wasn’t another…” I glanced at James, who came to sit heavily on the end of the bed. “Glimmer?”

“Hardly.” Bryn’s lips tightened under the lamplight.

But James had had enough.

“Bryn, what the feck happened out there today? Yer flying out the pub, Roe thinks she saw Willow, and the only thing I know for sure—besides that it’s raining in Kerry—is that we’ll never be allowed back at that pub again.”

Bryn stretched out his leg, and in the tiny guest room, it bumped against the foot of the bed. “It was an illusion, as I have said. The Inquitate are able to create them to lure Ruhavens, and should you acquiesce, you shall find yourself dead. Because the cause of our sudden aneurysms was never a disease but a creature like us, born and bred of the Gate. They are sentient, highly aware, and their illusions are the beginning of the attack.”

The faded wallpaper swam in my vision. A creature? Not a disease Willow had been infected with, but something that had intentionally targeted her. For what reason?

And what did it want with me?

“A creature ,” James repeated. “Yer telling me, ye think me mammy was killed by some creature from the Gate! How the bloody hell would ye know that?”

“In my research, I have read journals written by Ruhavens which describe such a creature as one that is neither Ruhaven, nor Drachaut. That can wear the skins of others, a creature which—when attacking—causes a brain bleed, even in Ruhavens. I must assume that the Inquitate have somehow escaped the Gate and now hunt us here as well.”

Hunt us? Then this was on purpose? They’d attacked Willow on purpose ? Not only my sister, but the others, like James’s mom.

“You knew what’s been killing Ruhavens and you’ve said nothing ?” I accused. “If James had known, my sister might not be dead .”

Bryn started to speak, but James cut him off. “She’s feckin’ right, ye know.” His mouth opened, shut, fury radiating out of him. “What are ye thinking ? Another bloody creature of the Gate, and not even in the Ledger ? Yet ye say nothing.” Seeming to need a minute, he braced on his knees and rose from the bed. “Do ye not know how much I’ve worried of this? Yet ye’ve suspected we’ve been targeted all along? Me own mother deserves some feckin’ peace, like. I can’t be recruiting Ruhavens if this is true.”

Bryn looked at him sharply. “You will.” An order.

James lifted his finger, drilled it at Bryn. “Don’t ye sit there and look at me like that. ‘Tis yerself who’s responsible for yer exile, and if ye hadn’t done what ye did, ye’d still be recruiting.”

Bryn’s eyes flashed, a thunder strike in a cloudless sky, then he seemed to reel himself in, smothering even that brief emotion.

I looked between him and James, my sympathies lying entirely and completely with the Irishman. Whatever Bryn had done to be exiled—and his current actions seemed bad enough—I could be sure that he’d deserved it.

Face stony, Bryn rose and moved to stand by the window again, where the boats bobbed in a purple-hued night and the dripping vertical streaks of the port lights illuminated the waters. He cracked the window, and the sounds of lapping water rushed in.

If Bryn wasn’t going to explain why he’d kept everything to himself, I’d figure it out for Willow.

“James, you told me the disease causes an aneurysm,” I began.

He lifted his tea, hands nearly shaking. “That’s right.”

“But not in Bryn? Why?”

James looked at the Norwegian peering out the window, the boats docking beyond. “I don’t know. Maybe that’s another thing he’s keeping from us.”

I rose from my seat, leaving behind the tea I hadn’t touched. My palms burned where the glass had torn, my knees ached from Bryn’s tackle to the pavement, but I paced the tiny room again, walking from the washroom to the twin chairs facing the beds and back.

Because things weren’t adding up.

“If it’s supposed to cause an aneurysm, then how does Bryn know it’s the disease at all that caused…” I didn’t need to gesture at his leg.

“That’s for Bryn to answer, but I’ve no doubt meself.” James tucked in his knees as I passed. “Roe, yer making me bloody dizzy.”

“Has anyone else survived the Inquitate?”

“No. Just Bryn sure.”

Exactly. It didn’t make sense. How could he be the only one to survive? And who knew if he’d been attacked by the Inquitate at all? It was only his word that said he’d been a victim. But…

I stared at the leg he kept bent, supported by the strength of the cane.

Maybe he was lying about that too. After all, he’d chased me out of the pub, hadn’t he? He’d tackled me to the ground, stopped me from pursuing Willow, then he— he said she was an illusion.

But what if she wasn’t? What if she really had come back, just like our Marks could appear here?

My pulse started to pick up, and a little trickle of sweat slid down the back of my neck. Bryn could be lying about the entire thing.

“Maybe you weren’t attacked or infected,” I said softly.

“Excuse me?” The curtain swayed to a stop as Bryn turned, disbelief coating his carved features.

James murmured under his breath. “ Roe …”

I hesitated. But James was too nice, too trusting, and Bryn could be inventing a story about the Inquitate to get back into Ruhaven.

“You were kicked out of Naruka,” I began, and his lips thinned. “Forced to give up the memories. Exiled for over two years. When did you say he was infected, James?”

“Roe, ye’ve not the right way of it—”

“ When ?” I insisted.

“Six months ago,” Bryn answered in a voice like dry ice.

I swung back to him as James protested. “Yet you don’t tell me anything about the disease when I flew across countries to ask about my own sister. You don’t tell me the symptoms. Why?”

Bryn’s entire body settled into eerie stillness. “Because you should not be here, because it should not have targeted you.”

A cold weight settled over my shoulders. He knew then—knew it wasn’t me.

“Here’s what I think,” I said, pushing away the hollowness in my belly. “You were obsessed with the memories of Ruhaven, and James forced you out because of it, but like any addict, you needed to find a way back. You didn’t know that James was—only recently—trying to reach you.”

Cold leaked from Bryn, as black and dark and depthless as the sea. Light? No, that he wasn’t.

James laid a hand on my arm. “Roe, ye don’t know what yer—”

“You could have just told me what happened to you,” I pushed, addressing Bryn. “But you didn’t. Maybe because you can’t .”

“You have no idea of what you speak,” Bryn said, voice low, dark.

“I know exactly what I speak . You wanted— needed —to find a way back to Naruka,” I continued unabated. “So you decided to blame your accident on this disease. Except that wasn’t enough to convince James to let you back, you needed it to be deliberate—an attack . So James would feel guilty enough to lift your exile.”

“So I crippled myself?” Bryn seethed, and I could have sliced my hands again on the sharp edge in his voice. “Rowan, should I wish to return to Naruka, I assure you I would find better ways than permanent injury.”

As if he didn’t want to return, as if every fiber in his body wasn’t humming with that otherworldly need.

James started to stand. “Can we just try to calm down a wee bit and—-”

“Sit down, James,” Bryn said, voice going to steel. My entire body wilted under the command in it, like he could funnel some strength from the Gate even here.

James sank quietly onto the squeaky bed, as affected as I was.

Then Bryn turned his burning stare on me. “Well, Rowan, let us hear the rest of your inflammatory theory.”

I swallowed the thickness in my throat, forced myself to weather the coldness beating at me from across the room.

What if I was supposed to see Willow today? Maybe it wasn’t an illusion but some—some ghost of her created from the Gate, and I was supposed to talk to her.

And yet Bryn had stopped me. Maybe—well, maybe before Willow could tell me something.

“I think you’re a liar,” I accused, my voice surprisingly steady. “You ran out of the pub on a leg you say is crippled, to stop me from speaking to my sister—or some ghost of her. You make up that she’s an Inquitate—a disease that caused an aneurysm in everyone except you. You lied about why your roommate knows me, or someone like me. So I don’t believe you, Bryn, and I think I should go back out and look for whatever it was that tried to—to—that tried…”

He didn’t say a word. Didn’t need to when the room dropped two degrees and cold heat pumped off him. My knees shook like a weed shriveling in an unexpected frost as he shoved away from the window and crossed the room in slow, deliberate steps.

I took one step back before my spine decided to reappear. Then I planted my feet, squared my shoulders. He wouldn’t hurt me, would he? Not in front of James, not…

“A liar ?” Bryn whispered, brushing past James, who didn’t seem the least bit concerned. “It is you who traveled here, Rowan, you who disturbed me at my place of work. Do you recall that I was exiled? Perhaps you might consider the effort it took for me to move on from what you continually disabuse.”

He never raised his voice, never so much as lifted it above a whisper, and I trembled all the more because of it.

“I just needed to know about Willow, about the aneurysm,” I insisted. “You could have told me or—”

The back of my knees hit the chair, knocking me into a seat still warm from where Bryn had sat. His briefcase tumbled off the armrest, scattering papers, pencils, and binder clips.

But still, he advanced on me like a wave spilling on the sand before the icy cold washes over your ankles. On the wallpaper behind his unmoving face, winged horses galloped into the sky, their veins throbbing, sweat glistening on their necks, tendons straining against the bit that yanked them back.

“You enter my office, uninvited, and demand that I tell you every detail of what has been my personal nightmare these last six months,” he said in a low voice. “Not because you wish to help James resolve this affliction, but because you wish to verify that of which is so obviously true—that your sister died by the hand of the Inquitate.” He bent over me, bracing a hand on one armrest at a time, deliberately, slowly, his fingers clenching the rose-patterned fabric. The cane fell to the side. “And once you have extracted this information, you tell me you shall go home, shall abandon what I was forbidden to see.”

I shrank into the cushions as his breath whispered over my face. He was like a frozen lake at night when it was the most terrifying—a black mass, endless and opaque.

“And in doing so,” he continued, relentless, unforgiving, but still in that same breath of calm dispassion, “you spit on a world I have given my life to. You sneer at what is mine . And when I prevent the Inquitate from destroying you as well, you call me a liar. Because you did not come here to find the truth, you came to find the lie. To shove your thumb in the eye of Ruhaven.” He inhaled through his nostrils. “So look, Rowan, and see what a liar I am.”

When he pulled away, I sucked in a shuddering breath.

“ Look , Rowan,” Bryn repeated coldly.

Look? I could barely take my eyes from his face. What did he…

And then I saw that he was pulling up his pant leg.

I dropped my gaze.

Oh. Oh, god.

Dark veins flooded up his calf, spilling into stained puddles under his otherwise perfect skin, like the blood had oozed out and found nowhere to go. Bones. I could see his bones . Or his, his ligaments, like his skin was a black nylon pulled over the inside of his leg.

I doubled over, nearly retching, the carpet blurring for a second.

He dropped his pant leg again, covering the deadly evidence.

“Well, Rowan? Is it a liar I am?” he asked in a whisper.

“No,” I murmured, staring at the sketches on the carpet, the ones that had spilled out of his bag. Of eyes too large to be human, of scaled beasts and twisted ears, of eggs that grew instead of leaves.

All— all were of Ruhaven. Even now, years later. Even after what the Inquitate had done to him, even after how long he’d waited.

Bryn bent and scooped the lot into a pile, shoving them into his satchel. “Are you quite satisfied with my humiliation, Rowan? Or do you wish to look through more of what exiling has done to me?”

“You’ve made your point,” I said thickly.

“I am glad to hear it.”

He picked up his cane, took the seat I’d previously been sitting in, lifted my tea that must have gone cold, sipped.

My insides felt like they’d been ripped out and returned in all the wrong places. I tried to gather myself, running my hands over my thighs to warm them, but I wanted out of this room, away from him .

James loosed a breath, having not moved from his spot on the bed. “Jayzus, yer one scary langer. Ye didn’t need to frighten Roe to make yer point.”

“I’m not…” But it was a lie, and I didn’t have the heart to make it a good one. But I didn’t need to stay here, either, with the shame and humiliation and guilt that was all but suffocating.

“Where are you going?” Bryn demanded when I rose.

I shoved an arm through the sleeve of my jacket. “I’m taking a walk.”

“No, you are not,” Bryn said calmly. “Sit down, Rowan .”

Ignoring him, I strode down the thin hallway, past the bathroom with a claw-footed tub and the rows of flower paintings. I reached for the doorknob—

A hand gripped my elbow.

I spun around, nearly colliding with Bryn’s chest as I ripped my arm from his grasp. “I’m not—”

“You are,” Bryn said firmly, planting a hand on the door and boxing me in. The fear he’d summoned paled next to my own humiliation now. “You will stay inside, as the Inquitate are likely still nearby waiting for one of us to leave, and I will not have your death be on James’s conscience.”

Behind him, James offered a hesitant smile from the bed, one that had my shoulders slumping in defeat.

James had warned me about Bryn, and I should have known I couldn’t get my answers with a quick trip to Norway and a few questions. Instead, I’d tried to resolve Willow and her aneurysm like Bryn had rewired the fuse box—by carelessly shoving everything into whatever fit.

Sensing the change, Bryn lifted his hand, moved aside.

Ashamed, and with little dignity left, I dragged myself to the chair again, tucking my knees to my chest and resting my cheek on them. I was so tired, so goddamn tired of all this. Of me.

James cleared his throat. “Well, suppose we might get answers, at least, to what ye know of the Inquitate. Attacked, ye say?”

I closed my eyes, hearing Bryn take his seat again. I shouldn’t have come here. That’d been my first mistake—wanting Willow’s death to mean something. Or worse, maybe I’d just wanted to mean something.

“Yes, I believe so,” Bryn replied. “Because, like Rowan, I also saw an illusion that was sentient. And until today, I believed there was a reason it targeted those it did. I no longer do. Rowan does not fit the pattern.”

No, I didn’t. I wasn’t a Ruhaven. I shouldn’t be involved in any of this.

“Are ye gonna tell us yer theory or no?” There was a brief silence, then James sighed. “Well, are ye at least going to come back and help me figure this out? I don’t want another Ruhaven to suffer. And I’ve never seen it so bad, attack or no. Both yerself and Roe in a year? ‘Tis unheard of. What if they come here again?”

They . James already believed Bryn’s theory that it wasn’t an infection.

“If they return, then it appears that the way to prevent an attack is to break the illusion they present. If Rowan had persisted, she would be dead. But I did not see the projected version of Willow today, I saw nothing, so they must only be able to deceive one person.”

Then how did he know what I saw? You cannot lie to me , he’d said afterwards. So had he seen something ?

“…so if we remain close, it shall be more difficult to fall victim,” Bryn finished.

“And yet ye want to stay here, in Oslo? Alone?”

“I…” Bryn hesitated for the first time.

“Ye’ve not seen them here before and not told me?” Concern darkened James’s voice.

“I have not.”

Another long pause. Then James said, more forcefully, “Ye need to come back to Naruka. As ye said yerself, yer safer with other Ruhavens around.”

At least I wouldn’t be there, but how long was Bryn going to stay in this room? It was taking everything in me not to fall apart on this chair and there wasn’t much left.

“And what of Tye?” Bryn asked.

“He’ll not stop ye from visiting the Gate. Though, I don’t expect that to be a problem now, do you?”

Bryn said nothing for a moment. “It is not Tye’s reluctance to see me visit the Gate to which I am referring.”

The bed creaked, blankets rustled. “Ye mean what ye accused me of at the bar? Well, I don’t think ye’ve the right way of it. He wouldn’t have. Didn’t, as far as I know.”

I hugged my knees tighter. Just go. Go .

But Bryn replied, “Tye rang me before I moved from my old apartment. He was very, very clear, James.”

Clear about what ? This must be how dogs felt.

“Maybe he wanted to be sure ye stayed gone. Ye did a feckin’ number on him after yer stunt in the Gate.”

Leave. Just leave. It was too late to be here, nearly midnight. I wanted to face-plant in my bed and forget today. Forget all of this.

I flinched when Bryn suddenly spoke from above me. “Tye is aware of the rules, James.”

“Not everyone lives by Ruhaven’s,” James replied evenly.

He’d never mentioned any rules from Ruhaven, but then, I hadn’t stayed long enough to find out.

“Rowan, where are your socks?” Bryn asked.

When his hand brushed my freezing toes, I yanked them under me. “When are you leaving?” I said instead.

He tucked his hand into the pocket of his beige slacks. “I will stay here tonight, in case the Inquitate return.”

I yanked my head up, quick enough to catch the barest hint of amusement in his eyes before it was wiped away. Stay here? The hell you will.

Do you truly find me so unpleasant?

“Why?” James asked, and relief flooded me. “Do ye not have roommates?”

What did that have to do with it?

Bryn studied me as he answered James. “No, but even if I did, it is only fellow Ruhavens who can interfere should an Inquitate return.”

Oh. Oh . He was afraid it’d come back for him, finish what it had started with his leg—the blackened skin, the poisoned veins. I should have thought of that. He’d avoided Naruka since the attack—because he was hiding from the Inquitate? What if, somehow, I’d brought them here with me? What if I’d somehow brought them to L’Ardoise? To my sister?

Shame had me reconsidering. “It’s fine, James. Bryn can have my bed.” I wouldn’t be able to sleep anyway.

James rose with a huff. “Don’t ye take pity on him, Roe. I’ve seen him pass out drunk in Naruka’s kitchen chair.”

I made a small choking sound.

“Rowan,” Bryn drawled, “I was not raised so poorly as to force a woman out of her own bed. I shall sleep on the chair.”

Before I could demonstrate my own good manners—namely, not forcing a six-foot-four cripple to sleep on a decrepit chair—he settled into the old thing and propped his leg on the stool.

After murmuring a few half-hearted protests about him having the bed, all of which he again declined, I uncurled and rose, keeping my head down so Bryn didn’t see the puddle he’d reduced me to.

At least he’d be gone in the morning.

If I’d been thinking clearer, I’d have dragged in a pillow and blanket and slept in the tub just to avoid having to face him again.

So I gave myself time to settle, brushing my teeth until they hurt, trying out James’s face moisturizers and serums, and rebraiding my hair the way Willow had taught me.

By the time I finished, James was snoring under the comforter, his hair growing over the pillow like a black weed. Bryn sat in his chair, reading in silence under the lamp, face calm in thought.

I inched past him and slid under the crisp cotton sheets, pulling the quilt to my chin.

A minute later, Bryn folded his book with a snap and clicked off the light. “Good night, Rowan,” he murmured.

I pulled the blanket tighter like I could cocoon myself off from him. And much later, long after James’s snoring filled the room and my cheek warmed the cool pillow, Bryn’s blue eyes still winked in the night.

And I swore I could hear his pulse, as thick and slow as Ruhaven.

Thump.

Thump.

Thump.