Page 20

CHAPTER 20

The Place Where Lost Things Go

E verything hurt. My brain. My toes. My skull. Something pounded between my eyeballs, something that wanted to escape my head.

Rowan?

Did I know that voice? Soft, lyrical, musical. Like the piano—that’s what I’d first thought. A buzz under the veins that hummed even now, when every part of me hurt.

Rowan. ROE !

His voice echoed inside me, like the muscle that had yanked me out of Ruhaven, a fury that tugged me out with the force of a deep-sea current. This time, I hadn’t seen the nothingness between worlds, the Prayama, I’d been thrown out of it with a fist on my spine.

And landed here.

Someone screamed again. No, not someone. Him.

A shudder swam through me. Bryn? I could feel him even in this numb state, like I could in every room. He’d know what was wrong—he knew everything. I just had to…

A moan slipped through my lips when I struggled to open my eyes.

Emerald leaves swirled into a crystalline blue sky. No—not a sky, Bryn’s eyes.

Except it wasn’t him, not really. Because for once, his face wasn’t unemotional stone perfection. Deep grooves carved a V between his eyebrows, and a welt rose under his left eye.

“ B—Br— ?” I croaked, my voice scratching the length of my throat.

As I struggled to keep his face in focus, to keep my eyes on his perfect blue ones, something sparkled in the corner of my vision. Colors fractured and broke apart, like my sister had once told me they’d done when her retina had detached after she’d fallen in volleyball practice.

But my body was swollen and heavy from the Gate, my lips too numb to ask Bryn what was happening as the glimmer moved from the corner of my eye to surround us. Not just fractured colors, but an imaginary sky hovering just behind Bryn, with millions of tiny, golden stars winking in its depths.

I think Bryn was touching me, that even in this dizzying state, it was his cool fingers I felt on my neck, my shoulders. His voice whispering over the dull ache in my ears. His warm breath at my cold, cold cheek.

Was I dying? Had the Gate taken too much, just like James had warned? Or had it finally recognized me as the false Ruhaven and thrown me out?

The stars winked away. One by one, their gold light faded into the darkness, into the void of space, until they were nothing. Until I was.

I don’t know if I slept, but I went somewhere.

It was like being a child again with Willow, lying next to her in the camping tent on a cold summer night, where the slight chill in the air somehow made the sleep all the better. The air tasted different then, like it did now, except I knew—somewhere—it was Bryn I felt, tasted.

Would he tell James that I’d snuck to the Gate? Maybe. Probably.

I drifted further, deeper. Floating, if not sleeping.

Distant thwacks of something being chopped echoed like a base tempo of a song I couldn’t hear. The trees shimmied the next verse with the quiet, so quiet rustling of oak leaves.

In the cool shadows, I searched for Bryn again. And when his hand found mine, I slipped into sleep.

S lowly, I pried open my eyes. And stared into Bryn’s.

“ Rowan ,” he breathed.

Hands slid under my back, firm, warm, lifting me even as Ireland’s greens swirled into pistachio ice cream. My stomach lurched, but I forced down the bile in my throat. How long had I been in the Gate? Had I awoken before? A vague memory of Bryn, of stars, poked through the fog in my brain.

“Head between your knees,” Bryn insisted, pressing on my neck until I was forced to watch a ladybug crawl between my boots. “You slept for an hour, nearly enough for the effects to wear off.”

Effects?

I ran my tongue over my lips, finding them dry and cracked, my throat rusty. Because I wasn’t sure I could form words yet, I sucked muddy air through my nostrils and prayed to every Ruhaven god that I didn’t throw up in front of Bryn.

He moved his hand from my neck to my forehead. “You do not have a fever,” he murmured after a moment. “Or at least, not anymore.”

Then it all came back to me—my escape to the Gate under Bryn’s nose, the alarm clock I’d rigged, the numbing pain upon waking.

I craned my neck to look at him.

Bryn knelt in the dirt and weeds beside me, linen slacks ruined, the knees two soaked splotches like he’d fallen multiple times. The sleeves of his sweater were muddied to the elbows. Sweat and rain curled his hair, so it looped under each ear and framed the slope of his cheeks. A single bruise marred his otherwise pale, porcelain face.

I blinked at it. “What happened? Are you okay?”

His hand fell away. “You struck me with the alarm clock.”

When? Why?

“Because I could not wake you quicker,” he said when I asked. “It took me too long to notice you had stolen to the Gate. When you did not appear for lunch with me, I assumed you had been caught up in your work. But you were not in the gate lodge, not in your room, not in the garage or the woodshed.”

Because I’d grabbed my knapsack and hiked directly to the Gate. And now he was here and…

“I thought perhaps you had gone for a walk, though I have never seen you do so,” Bryn continued, voice scarily monotone. “But then I checked your room and I saw the empty hook above the dresser where you keep your rucksack. I arrived here as quickly as I was able, but the cane slowed me down—initially. I thought I may be too late, Rowan.”

“Too late for what?” But I could see it in his eyes. The alarm clock hadn’t worked, and I hadn’t woken up in an hour. Stupid—that’s what I was, and it was why I wasn’t in the Ledger. “What time is it?”

For a moment, he looked like the portrait in his bedroom again, wild and windblown and dangerous. “What were you thinking ?”

A bird chirped painfully near my ear.

“I—I—well—”

“Why did you not ask me to accompany you?” Bryn demanded, all earlier understanding gone—so much so that I wondered if I’d imagined the worry in his eyes, the hand that had lulled me to sleep. “You did this intentionally. Misleading James and I, and risking—risking yourself with this foolishness .”

Because the real answer had a whisper of shame creeping into my cheeks, I flubbed a response. “I just wanted to visit the Gate alone, that’s all.” He’d never understand, not Bryn, who revered the Gate and everything in it.

“Rowan, do you not understand what may have happened?”

My pulse stuttered in my veins. “I—no, I didn’t…”

“Did James not explain this?”

“He only said we needed an anchor.”

“ Then perhaps you should have listened ,” Bryn bit out, dragging the brass clock through the dirt. “And this .” He flicked the bell, the sound thundering like a bullet through the woods. “This would have done nothing. Why, Rowan, why would you take such a risk?”

I firmed my lips, looked away. I hadn’t asked him to watch over me, hadn’t asked him to come here, even if I was grateful he had. If the Gate had taken me, it’d have been what I deserved for lying to it. Didn’t Bryn know that? Hadn’t he seen me from the very beginning and known what I was? Or more accurately, who I wasn’t ?

“Tell me now, or else I shall inform James of your suicide attempt today.”

I swallowed at the harsh words, at the reality I hadn’t wanted to acknowledge. “It wasn’t that,” I said quietly.

“If it was, I should never let you near the Gate again.”

He forced me to meet his eyes, shifted so that our knees were nearly touching, the mud staining his now dry. “This was about the Azekiel,” Bryn stated.

If I could be sure I wouldn’t be sick, I’d walk home right now on my own. “No, it’s not.”

“You are lying to me again, Rowan.”

How did he always know? From the moment I’d stood in his office, he’d looked at me and known . Who I was. Who I wasn’t. Maybe the Mark of light gave him a gateway to truth.

I twisted a pile of loose ivy in my fist. “It’s Roe.”

He grabbed my hand, forced my fingers open until the prickly leaves fell loose. “Why is it that you are so ashamed of yourself?”

I stole my hand away, my skin now tingling like I’d grabbed a patch of nettles. Maybe I had. “I’m not. That’s my name.”

“You know what I am speaking of.”

It must be nice to never doubt yourself. To be confident enough to let everyone and their uncle watch you in the Gate, to know the person you became in Ruhaven really was you.

“Rowan?” Bryn pressed, but without the bite.

I was failing at Naruka, Ruhaven, Willow, all of it, just like I’d failed at everything else.

“You do not wish to be with the Azekiel in the Gate,” Bryn stated, voice utterly blank. “I understand, but I do not see why you have stolen to the Gate alone, have put yourself in danger, because of it.”

“It’s not that.”

His fingers drummed softly into the earth. “You do wish to be with the Azekiel?” Bryn clarified.

“No—I mean, that’s nothing to do with it.”

The fingers paused, flattened. “Then what?”

His breath misted before me, Bryn’s silence so potent that it felt like I was at a confessional, waiting for something or someone to grant me absolution.

“When Tye and I were anchoring at the Gate,” I began in a small voice, “James was in Ruhaven with Essie.” Of all the people to have to explain this to, why did it have to be him ?

“Yes?” Another fog of breath hovered. Waited.

I stopped biting my cheek. “I mean with Essie.”

A lowly potato bug crawled between flattened grass. It stopped an inch from Bryn’s ring finger, then skittered in another direction.

“Rowan.”

I didn’t look up.

“Rowan.”

When he covered my hand with his, I met his eyes. Torrents of rain, the breaking of icy snow in winter, a chill at midnight—that’s what they were. What he was.

“You are embarrassed by how you may react in the Gate,” Bryn clarified.

“Yes,” I admitted. Like any sane person would be.

Blue eyes crinkled. “Rowan, James reacts as he does because he has spent over thirty years in the Gate. You, as such a beginner, shall react to a lesser extent,” he said, mild amusement replacing his earlier bite.

But the hand that grasped mine was dizzyingly distracting. Bryn never touched me, never touched anyone if he could help it. Kazie might have launched herself at him, but he seemed to endure rather than enjoy it. He never shook hands, never hugged, never made a passing touch like Tye often did.

I stared at our joined hands like they could distract from the heat working into my ears. I’d never noticed the scars on his before. The slight dent on the knuckle of his thumb. The raised scar on the third knuckle. Even what looked like a rope burn that had healed poorly between his thumb and first finger. And still, he was beautiful. A pianist’s hands without a piano.

“Rowan?” Bryn prompted.

I forced my gaze up. Talking about this while he was practically holding my hand wasn’t helping. “But still, I’ll react ,” I acknowledged lamely. “With the Azekiel.”

He smiled slightly, then lifted his hand from mine and grabbed the knapsack, slid the canisters back in. “Yes, you will still ,” he confirmed. “Strong emotions always transmit, as your pain from the Tether did.”

So there was no avoiding it.

Light rain began to pad softly around us, the drops sliding down Bryn’s neck and disappearing under the collar of a shirt that was ruined from burrs when he’d hurried to the Gate. With a cane. I’d made a cripple chase me into the woods.

“Rowan,” he said carefully, pivoting with the bag. “Perhaps you do not wish to speak of this to me, but I do understand how you feel about the irregular expressions of the Gate.”

I nearly laughed. Irregular expressions . “What, because of all those fairy women?”

His eyes crinkled, just slightly. “I believe I have already told you there are no fairies—women or otherwise—in the Gate.” Well, maybe that explained why I’d never seen a hair out of place, or a single heavy breath slip between Bryn’s wide, perfect mouth. “And while there is no need to be embarrassed of your Azekiel, I may have an alternative.”

My eyebrows shot up. “Really?” Then suspicion took hold. “What?”

He looked almost amused. “You know, Rowan, despite our unfortunate start in my office, I am not predisposed to disliking you.”

It took me a second to unravel the words. “That’s…good.”

He shifted closer, his pale fingers digging into the black soil. “You are aware I can anchor myself, but I am also able to anchor both of us from within the Gate,” he said, adding in a soft voice, “I would not need to wake up first.”

“Anchor us both from the Gate?” Then he wouldn’t see me here. No one would if we visited the Gate together. “How? Are you sure? What if we both end up lost in Ruhaven?”

Rain beaded on the tips of his eyelashes. “I am absolutely certain.”

I worried my bottom lip. “But if you’re wrong, I might cause both of us to get stuck.”

“I would never risk you,” he stated, so simply, it seemed like the absolute truth. “And I am certain it will work, as I have anchored us before. For it was not Tye who awoke you when your Tether broke, but myself.”

“You—what? No, you didn’t. You weren’t there. You were in the Gate when Tye anchored me.”

“Because I woke you from within the Gate, then anchored myself shortly after,” he explained patiently. “So you see, I am quite capable of anchoring both of us should you prefer this solution. Or,” he drawled, “you can continue to thwart my efforts of keeping you safe by pretending a suspicious level of interest in my painting subjects.”

Caught red-handed, I winced. But why hadn’t Bryn admitted it’d been him to anchor me? Maybe he didn’t want Tye to know. Still, if he could anchor both of us, then my embarrassing, feathered problem was solved. “I’m sorry I lied to you about the vegetable patch painting.”

“You should be, as I have never painted so terribly. Though, perhaps, it is because I exclusively paint nudes.” I blinked, then his lips quirked. “That was a joke, Rowan. So tell me, would my proposition prevent any further alarm clock heists?”

I shook the image of Bryn painting nudes from my head and spun a finger in the dirt. “You definitely wouldn’t need to wake up first?” And see me.

“No, we would be quite alone.” His breath brushed my cheek. “Would you prefer that, Rowan?”

I felt myself flush at his suddenly teasing tone.

“I—I…” I shoved up before Bryn could stop me.

Oh no.

My stomach swam like a fishbowl, and I wasn’t sure there wasn’t a guppy floating around too. Bryn tried to steady me, but when my braid tick-tocked in a nauseating pendulum, I clapped a hand over my mouth, dived away, and ended up face-planting in a prickly fern.

Just. Great.

“Can you…” I shot out my index finger from the shrub in what I prayed was a direction far, far away. “Look—go—somewhere else, please? Anywhere else.”

A twig snapped by my leg. Then Bryn was kneeling beside me, stroking my back like he had when I woke, and recalling some distracting story about how he’d once caught Kazie sneaking off to the Gate as well.

Please don’t let him see me hurl yesterday’s oysters.

But I relaxed into the firm strokes, each one easing some of the nausea, and sighed into the dirt as a slug crept by my nose.

When I peeked through the fern again, the sky had cleared to a powder blue with a few wispy clouds. A seagull soared by with a mighty caw .

Bryn’s mouth curved into an easy smile. “Will you tell me what you saw in the Gate? Perhaps it will help distract you.”

Nothing could be more distracting than Bryn, but I told him about the machine I’d encountered, then added, “Sahn stuck his head in the lens.”

An interesting nickname. Amusement danced in the corners of Bryn’s eyes. “Have you ever seen a sextant before?”

I coughed. “Uh, what? A sex ant?”

A quick chuckle escaped his wide lips. “Not a sex ant, a sex tant . A nautical instrument used for navigation at sea. It resembles what you are describing, except that it can be held in the palm of your hand. But in Ruhaven, what you saw is a Florissant —a machine that Ruhavens use to travel. Jamellian, Kazmira, and Nereida are likely configuring it to transport themselves to Drachaut to find your Tether.”

I was still picturing a couple of ants crawling over each other. “Why?”

“Because they must repair the broken bond between you and your tethered Drachaut. With each minute, Nereida’s life is depleting.”

“So they need to find her—the tethered Drachaut—and figure out why she’s injured?”

“I suspect so, yes.”

I frowned into the dirt. How long did I have before Nereida’s life ended? What would James do when I had no memories left to witness? “Will you tell James? About today?” And doom me for eternity.

“Only to cause him the same heart attack you inflicted upon me?” Bryn rubbed the golden stubble on his jaw. “I think not. No, I shall hold this over you until there is an appropriate time for leverage.” But he smiled when he said it.

I released a sigh and lifted my sticky forehead. This was not the impression I wanted to leave, especially after Bryn had offered to anchor us both. I probably looked like one of those Irish badgers James kept shooing out of his garden.

Wait, what was that?

I shielded my eyes, squinting at something golden and rectangular shimmering under a fern.

I reached toward the object, found it cold, hard, and grooved. Thick ivy had grown over the thing, the sharp leaves pricking my hand when I tried to pry it from the dirt. It took me three tries, but when I did, I dragged the plaque toward me with dirt-encrusted nails.

Istilick mi liom, shakila, was engraved on the side coated in dirt. I’d seen this before, hadn’t I? On some painting…

I flipped it over. On this side, a larger name was written in cursive trenches, the shiny gold reflecting an unblemished sky.

Mohammed Riulinimi …, I read, dusting off the dirt. Mohammed. Mohammed Riulinimi. Who was Mohammed, and why was a plaque dedicated to him buried here?

Then I noticed the others.