Page 30

CHAPTER 30

Light of Love

S awdust coated my goggles and billowed up my nostrils.

I pushed the pine two-by-six into the flattop grind blade until the garage filled with a high-pitched squeal of protest. In the corner, a cast iron stove glowed with coal and warded off the leftover storm. When the wood fell apart like a split banana, I switched off the saw, watched the heat of the wood stove blow the dust of sweet-scented pine in silence.

I hated that smell. The smell of clipped answers with my father in the shop, arguing about different jobs because everything I did and said annoyed him in the end. The smell of how much he hated seeing me—that’s what it was.

It’d been two days since the incident outside An Béal Bocht.

An incident that I had caused.

I was supposed to be a Ruhaven. But I’d lied, I’d pretended, and because of that, Bryn had needed to summon an unholy ability to walk again. Now, he was bedridden, exhausted, and on crutches .

Shame filled me, thick and ripe and suffocating.

James had offered no explanation for Bryn’s transformation, for how he could stand in the middle of Capolinn like a burning god.

There were a lot of things they didn’t tell me.

How Bryn was able to summon his Mark? No answer. What exactly a ball of light was? Nothing. Where Bryn and Tye were exactly in Ruhaven? Silence. What the supposed rules of Ruhaven were? Well, for that, James dropped a book in my lap.

But I knew why they hadn’t explained things, why even now, they wouldn’t tell me what I’d seen, what Bryn had become—they’d begun to suspect what I’d known all along.

“Roe?” James’s fuzzy form strode in, a whip of rain on his heels.

I snapped off the goggles. His zigzag-patterned orange sweater threatened to bring my two-day hangover recovery back to square one, as did the butter wafting off the plate he held.

I hefted the next sheet of pine, already embarrassed that he was bringing me scones when I was the one who’d caused all of this.

My tone was brisker than I intended when I said, “What do you want?”

He pushed a scone and two white pills onto my workbench, knocking screws, wrenches, and bolts askew in a loud, rickety dance. His brows lifted at the rose perched on the windowsill that Kazie had left. “Ye know, that’s the only flower that exists in Ruhaven and here.”

“That’s nice,” I said shortly, and busied myself by arranging the wood cuts, their edges still warm from the blade.

James scoured his eyebrows into fuzzy pipe cleaners. “I know yer mad that I’ve not explained what happened at An Béal Bocht, but ‘tis for Bryn to tell ye. Now, ye need to ice that jaw, but the aspirin should help.”

But I wanted to feel the pain, because it reminded me of the lie I was. Of what I was pretending to be every time I slipped through the Gate and awakened as Nereida.

I tugged the goggles down and flicked on the table saw. As the blade warmed up, I said, “I don’t need you playing nurse Jamellian.” But apparently, I did need Bryn to embody a planetary evolution to protect me from one delusional human.

James threw up his hands in dismay. “Ah, come on, Roe, I—”

BZZZZZZZZZ .

The saw screamed over James’s protests, spitting sawdust as it gobbled the pine sheet.

He cut in when the blade slowed. “Listen like, I’m sorry for snapping at ye that night.” He ran a hand through his tousled hair. “Have ye gone to see Bryn yet?”

“No. Why would I?” I stifled the thrum of guilt in my belly. “I don’t deserve to know what happened, right?” Not Nereida, not a real Ruhaven. An imposter.

“Roe, don’t ye be like this.”

“Watch the miter saw,” I barked, sending James scooting away from the hot blade.

Recovered, he stalked to eye level with me and planted his palms on the table saw I’d luckily turned off. “Ye know Roe, Bryn shouldn’t have been able to do what ye saw. He’s in the Gate every morning, every evening. It’s too much.”

And what, exactly, had I seen?

But James was right—I was asking too much of Bryn, just because I was too weak to anchor myself.

Still, I wasn’t the only reason he visited the Gate. Where did I fit in with this mate of his? I’d had the last two days to gnaw the bone of that argument to death, and didn’t enjoy the teeth marks I’d left. Would we kiss in the kitchen next time, then hike to the Gate to enjoy someone else?

James barely ducked the stack of planks I swung over my shoulder. “Maybe if I keep going in, I’ll be able to transform into magic too,” I said dryly. “Should make the next bar fight easier.”

“Don’t ye be getting cross with me now. Bryn told ye to stay at the pub. What if ye’d left and the Inquitate appeared again? Ye want Tye to kill me?”

I booted the garage door open and winced at the raging Atlantic wind. “Guess you’d have to get someone else to replace your banister.”

My tool belt clanged annoyance with each step on the gravel path to Naruka. They knew it wasn’t me in that Ledger . God, I was so stupid—stupid for believing, for hoping, for wanting it to have been me, even for a second.

I entered Naruka to the woodstove pumping a hot breath in the kitchen, a blessing against the otherwise freezing house. “Pub night” was written in purple marker below November’s priest of the month—a naked Father covered in an unseasonable amount of maple syrup.

Balancing the planks, I maneuvered through the kitchen, knocking into the overhead light as Jesus judged me.

James’s brisk clomps followed me into the lounge. “Roe, just what are ye doing?”

“Fixing your rotten banister before Kazie tries to tie another hammock to it.”

Bang. I tossed the planks at the foot of the stairs, loud enough to wake Bryn and any Ruhavens alive, dead, or Fallen.

James stomped up the first three steps and spun around. Afternoon light haloed his hair as he frowned under the end of his crooked nose. “What the bleedin’ hell is going on with ye? ‘Tis me who should be pissed at ye and not the other way around.”

“Nothing is going on with me. Bleeding or otherwise. And you’re in the way.” I hefted the first cut, the jagged edge biting into my palm.

He jumped a step higher and spread his arms, blocking me. “When we agreed not to tell Tye about the Inquitate in Oslo, ye promised to stick together. Then ye went off on yer own. I don’t see why ye’d do that.”

As if Bryn didn’t go off by himself all the time.

“Get out of the way,” I warned.

James gripped the end of the two-by-four and wrenched it from my grasp with strength that didn’t belong to his waif body. He tossed it over the railing with a bang. “Why are ye so mad at me? ‘Tis me who should be ringing yer ear, ye know. Ye’ll hurt yerself and me sister.”

“Nereida,” I muttered, fisting my hands to keep them from shaking. “Except you know I’m not her. Don’t you, James?” Knew I’d been lying to him for months.

His eyes widened. “Roe, me love, I’ve not a bloody clue what yer on about.”

It wasn’t too late to take it back, but I pushed onward, needed to get it all out now before I became a coward again. “Yeah, you do . It’s why you won’t tell me what happened,” I said, forcing anger into my voice to bat away the pain. “ Willow’s Nereida. You know it, Bryn knows it. God, Kazie and Tye probably figured it out months ago.”

Everyone had known, surely, but they’d let me have my humiliating delusions.

“What?” James stilled, brows knitting as if he didn’t know. Then he said, very slowly, “Roe, yer reborn as me sister, ye live her memories. How in the world can ye think it’d be yer twin? ‘Tis not how it works like.”

For a moment, I held on to the words, wrapped them tightly in a bundle of hope that I never dared hold on to for long, then let them go.

It was time to stop pretending. Even if it meant James wouldn’t look at me the same, even if it meant they forced me from Naruka.

Spinning on my heel, I stalked to the library, tool belt jingling. I’d show James exactly how it worked.

Slivers of swan-gray light crawled through the murky windows that nobody bothered cleaning, and with the fireplace untended, the temperature dropped at least two degrees.

I gestured at the Ledger , at the bog-encrusted pages spread like a bearded merchant showing their wares, at the line I’d stared at again and again, wondering if there was any chance it was wrong.

But it was exhausting to lie to myself. To know for months that it had never been me in the book, in Ruhaven. That all its glory and promise and dreams were meant for a woman who’d always deserved them more than I ever had.

“We were born minutes apart, James. Willow before midnight, me after. It’s not me written here, it’s her .”

My words cracked in the suddenly minuscule library.

Willow. Always Willow.

Hot needles stung my eyes, and the rows of coordinates, dates, and times blurred. Hundreds of Ruhavens. But not me, never me. I was a poor replacement for Willow. A throwaway the Gate begrudgingly accepted as a consolation prize. Maybe that’s what Kazie had been trying to tell me all those months ago—that there was some transference that allowed me to witness the memories in Willow’s stead.

James slipped off his glasses as if his short-sightedness would reveal the truth. “Roe, ye listen to me now,” he said, voice low and soft as he walked to me. “I don’t know where ye’ve been keeping this, but yer wrong. Ye think I don’t recognize me own sister?”

When he reached for my hand, I pulled away.

I wanted to believe him—God, did I want to, but I didn’t want to lie anymore. “Of course it’s Willow.” I wiped at my eyes, hating that I was crying over a dream that wasn’t even mine.

“Roe, whatever ye might think, whatever ye believed of yer birth, I know in me soul that ‘tis yerself that Ruhaven wanted. She doesn’t make mistakes, so I’d take her word over any time ye think ye may or may not be born. ‘Tis proof enough that ye can see the memories.”

I had to smother the spark of hope his words ignited. “But there’s never been twins, has there?” I said softly. “You don’t really know if it’s me, or if Ruhaven accepts me because I’m close enough.”

James just shook his head. “‘Tis only yerself who doesn’t know, love.”

I shifted deliberately away from the Ledger . James stood with his hands in his pockets, opened his mouth to say more—

“Why didn’t you recruit her first?” I blurted out. It wasn’t fair to James, I knew that, but the possibility had been eating at me for months. That it could have been Willow standing here right now, alive, living in Ruhaven, if only he’d gotten there sooner. “If you’d gone to L’Ardoise years ago, maybe you’d have found her before the Inquitate.”

He closed his mouth, looking stricken. I shouldn’t have said that, shouldn’t have—

“Roe, we did ,” James whispered.

The words landed like a blow. “What? What !”

He looked around helplessly, dragging a hand down his face. “Roe, I—I made a mistake at first. Yer records are very restricted, ‘twas nearly impossible to locate them. So when I found a woman—Willow—who was born nearly a match to the time, well, I had Bryn try to recruit her. Three years ago.”

James’s words died on the roar in my ears.

Bryn had gone to retrieve Willow. That’s why he’d known from the moment he saw me in his office what I was—a dream-sucking thief living off someone else’s memories. Enjoying their past life that had done things I’d never even aspire to. Worse, I was a cheat. What else could I call it when I slept with Nereida’s boyfriend? He probably knew. Even in the memory, I bet some part of Sahn knew I was a fraud.

Crack .

I glanced over as the library door swung open and banged off the wall.

Bryn ducked under the doorway, breath wheezing through his nostrils, a rare beard darkening his angular chin. For the first time since I’d known him, he was in jeans, not slacks, as if even his clothes were tired. Instead of his cane, twin crutches dug grooves in his armpits.

I should have gone to him, helped him, done something. But I couldn’t stand to look and see my failure written in the hollows of his cheeks, in the shadows under his eyes. Mortifying—that’s what it was, to see my own shame reflected back at me. I lifted my chin, like the act could save me from the judgment I deserved.

His eyes flicked down my body as if he could see the purple bruises on my knees and the side of my thigh.

“James, get out,” Bryn said like cut steel.

I held my breath, waiting for James to shout at him too.

But after a quarter note of silence, he inclined his head and strode out, shutting the door behind him with a soft click. The library shuddered in the silence, the pews of bookcases waiting in the dusty window light. But with the Ledger beside me, it felt like there were still three of us in the room.

Bryn and I stared at each other, his eyes lingering on the bruise at my jaw.

On a shaky inhale, he thumped a path to an armchair by the fire, and its tired leather cracked under his weight.

“I’m sorry,” I muttered, dragging my sleeve across my eyes, my runny nose, then winced as I bumped my jaw. Sorry I hadn’t visited him, sorry that I’d lied to him, to everyone, sorry that I wasn’t Willow. Sorry that he’d almost kissed a fraud.

His wide mouth dipped into a frown. “My Rowan, I do not know what you feel the need to apologize for. However, it does appear I owe you some answers.” He laid the crutches alongside the chair, braced his hands on his knees, and grunted at even that small effort.

“You tried to recruit my sister,” I said hollowly. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

He stared at his hands, face a mask of emotion. Anger? Sadness? It was so hard to tell with him.

Then he looked up at me. Regret. That was it. “Because I failed, Rowan. I believed she to be you, and I was too late. She was dead when I arrived to recruit her. So I returned.”

Returned to Naruka while my life was destroyed. I didn’t know why that part upset me. What else was he supposed to do? Stay and comfort a grieving sister? I wasn’t anything to him, until I was.

“But you came back when James realized I might see Ruhaven in her place.”

His face registered surprise. “Of course not, Rowan. You have always been Nereida. It was me who mistook Willow as you. It is difficult to recruit, to locate the documents and photos needed to find the correct Ruhaven. There was never a twin before, Rowan. It should not have been possible. So we did not check. I did not check.”

He loosed a breath. “In 1989, James located what he believed to be the 1274 th entry in Ruhaven’s Ledger . As I was living in Naruka at the time, I was tasked with retrieving this Ruhaven.” He interlaced his hands under his chin, elbows digging into his knees. “I left shortly after for L’Ardoise in hopes of returning with her here, and showing this woman the Ledger .”

Would I have passed him on the street in L’Ardoise? Would he have stopped for Mrs. Baker’s blueberry scones? Something so mundane for him that it’d be like an angel having coffee.

“However, shortly after I arrived, I learned of Willow’s death,” Bryn murmured around his folded hands. “I believed I had been too late, Rowan.”

Hadn’t he?

Behind the dusty glass, Ruhaven’s Ledger spread its pages, baring its decree—one row for the person born at 23:58. Not two.

“You didn’t know Willow had a twin.” Wouldn’t have mattered, anyway.

He coughed, chest rattling with strain. “No, and I did not consider this, as a Ruhaven has never been born with one before. After I discovered Willow was dead, I returned to Naruka and began my research of the Inquitate. Six months later, James forced me to leave.”

I turned slowly. “If he forced you out, why were you in L’Ardoise almost a year ago to recruit me ?” That timeline never made sense, and he’d never given me an answer.

Bryn’s wide mouth tightened into a white line. “I had difficulty accepting the death of what I had believed to be the 1274 th Ruhaven. Years later, when James discovered Willow had been a twin, he rang me in Norway as a favor. I returned to L’Ardoise that same week to see for myself. And I did—I saw you, Rowan. I knew you to be a Ruhaven, and I should never have given up. Even after the Inquitate.”

I looped my fingers in my tool belt, the soft leather a last birthday gift from Willow, and reconciled myself with what I had known to be true since I first believed in the Ledger —that I had stolen her memories in Ruhaven.

That was why she was the only Inquitate death that didn’t make sense. Every single one had been a Ruhaven, had either met their recruiter or seen the Gate. She’d been killed because she was Nereida, and now maybe with her death, it jumped to me. Another type of energy transfer.

We were twins, not just sisters, and didn’t that mean we shared something more fundamental? Enough that when she died, whatever part of her soul had been destined for Ruhaven became mine.

The chair croaked. “Rowan?” Bryn’s voice softened. “Please, please don’t cry.”

I wiped at the warmth gathering in the corners of my eyes. Why wouldn’t I be? Of everyone, Bryn would understand what Nereida had come to mean to me.

I inhaled against the rope binding my chest. “I’ve stolen Nereida from Willow,” I admitted and, standing before the Ledger , it felt like a confession.

The silence of the library thundered in my ears. The journals, papers, and paintings blinked at me in judgment. The Ledger most of all.

I turned at Bryn’s hiss of pain to see him reaching for his crutches, then collapsed back almost immediately. “If you need help, I’ll—”

“No,” he said abruptly, then repeated softer, “No. Rowan, you have not stolen anything. You are Nereida. That has never been in doubt, not since I first saw you in L’Ardoise. What it is about Willow that should make her Nereida instead of you?”

“Besides her birth?”

“I do not believe birth times are not subject to mistakes.”

Was that possible? Of course, but—but—did he believe there’d been a mistake? Why should that matter to me so much? That Bryn might look at me, and think I belonged.

My eyes darted to him. Would he still think there’d been a mistake if he knew Willow?

“My sister was a musical prodigy,” I said, and of course, my first thought made no sense. But somehow, that piano had come to represent everything I’d loved and envied in one person.

Bryn waited with that impossible patience, one that had been nearly frightening in its quiet quality when I’d first met him. Now, it was a kind of gentle encouragement to what I didn’t want to admit even to myself.

“We were identical, we shared the same blood, the same DNA—maybe the same soul—yet one of us had come out right, and one of us wrong. That’s what my parents told me, what I’d always known. I just knew it more after she died, when it became so obvious how lacking I was when her talent couldn’t cover us both.”

Willow had been someone more like Bryn, someone who’d stand out in a crowd of ordinary people.

“You’d like her—everyone did. She taught me piano, but I wasn’t like her—gifted, driven. She’d never have dropped out of college because she knew herself—knew what she wanted—and had that rare gift of being selfish about it.”

“Why did you drop out?”

“At the time, I told myself it was because our parents didn’t have money for both of us. But really—really it was a relief . To just give up. I hadn’t found some calling, nothing in the writing or reading or drawing or music ever spoke to me. I always wanted what Willow had—a purpose. A reason for being right where she was, never doubting it. She graduated with honors in music, but that didn’t matter. It was just a piece of paper to say what she already knew. Me? I wanted the paper. Needed it. Something that could tell me what I was supposed to do. A label. I’m this thing. How pathetic is that?” I finished, tired and exhausted with myself.

“So you think you do not belong to Ruhaven because you are not as accomplished a musician as your twin? I do not need to tell you that who we are is not a skill.”

Maybe. But at the core, I’d never deserved to be Nereida, never deserved any of this. Never deserved Bryn.

“I never felt her die,” I admitted. “My own twin. That night, when she was walking home alone in L’Ardoise, when the Inquitate killed her. I slept. I slept .”

That’s how deep our connection had gone. Something to sleep through. Something to forget.

Outside, the storm broke so the sun heated the skin between my shoulder blades, caressed the back of my ears, stroked sunny fingertips up my neck.

Rowan .

Something as light as a fishing line snagged around my ribs, under my heart. Tugged. Then it was gone, and I stared across the room into Bryn’s lightning-flecked eyes.

He gestured to the floor in front of him, patting his chair. “Would you sit here a moment? I wish to show you something and I cannot stand.”

“Show me what?”

“Come, Rowan. Please.”

I was so exhausted I didn’t argue this time, just stepped between the teacup chairs, around the books James hadn’t put away, and the tray of tea and half-eaten biscuits beside them. I shouldn’t be talking about Willow, I should be forcing Bryn to tell me what I saw in Cappolin, what had left him so drained.

Bryn tilted his head back when I stopped in front of him, and golden eyelashes framed washed-out eyes that were far too dim in his pale face.

He widened his knees and patted the floor between them. “Sit.”

Between his legs? When I hesitated, he offered a weak smile. “I promise not to attempt to kiss you again.”

Images of the kitchen flooded my mind—his lips, the journal, the golden eyes.

He held out a hand. Waited.

Sunlight danced over the soft skin of his palm, pooled in it like water, like it had when he’d stopped Colm, when he’d strode through the streets of Capolinn as some miracle— mine .

I slid my hand into his, felt the connection zing up my arm, met his eyes.

He only smiled and squeezed lightly.

I let him steady me as I lowered to the embroidered rug. Didn’t flinch when he scooped my braid over my shoulder and leaned forward, hair shielding his eyes from the sun. “Can you look towards the window, so your back is to me?”

I did as he asked, twisting between his calves, my fingers brushing the flowers unraveling under his suede boots. The afternoon sun glowed through the clouds, rendering the window sash invisible in the tangerine burst of it, and everywhere the light brushed, the wood floor glowed a vibrant orange.

He shifted until his legs framed my body. “I want to try something,” Bryn whispered into my ear, voice like spice in the desert. “I am going to cover your eyes with my hands.”

Trusting him, I nodded. His fingers shadowed my eyelids, a balm against their prickling heat. Energy pulsed under his fingertips like a circuit grounding itself through me.

As I struggled not to fidget, he spoke from behind, murmuring in a language I didn’t know.

“Bryn, what…?”

And then something amazing happened.

Visions began to dance under the weight of his fingers. A world of indigo light and shimmering songs whispered in their place.

He was showing me his…his memories.

I flew as him over Ruhaven where the trees tumbled in a rainbow of colors. Volcanic wind lapped at my nose and tickled other ligaments I couldn’t identify.

A female called to me from the woods below. Her voice carried like the chimes of Ruhaven in a melody of well-rounded tones, but laced with something else as well, like the aftertaste of ice cream and honey. We banked left, then plummeted through wet leaves that harmlessly whipped our body.

It was strange to feel this strong, to see Nereida-sized branches snap in half as we spun through the trees and his muscles barely strained at all.

We landed with a thump on Ruhaven’s soft earth, the impact harder than I was used to in this body.

The female scanned him from head to toe with a fanged smile that was a quick one-two punch. I’d never met a creature like her, a little whimsical and lithe, like she might bound away at the slightest provocation, but I couldn’t tell if I was seeing her through my eyes or his. There was what I knew I should feel—revulsion at the enormous eyeballs, terror at the gangly length—but I only saw beauty.

She wore a thin iridescent dress half off her shoulder, its folds sweeping over a body taller and thinner than proportions were supposed to be. Her skin was like Nereida’s, with flickering translucency that hinted at a skeleton while clouds swam beneath the surface. She moved like a ballerina except faster. Her toes—clawed—dragged along the pearly soil as she approached, her heels lifted, her arms splayed as if to turn in a pirouette.

But it was her face I couldn’t look away from—or rather, that Bryn couldn’t.

Her hair was glittering silver. No, more like melted metal carved into strands that ran in a sparklingly waterfall to her waist.

Her face was long, thin as the rest of her, with ears that speared up and resembled a butterfly’s wings. Sparkling freckles ran in a line over her cheeks and nose, then continued in a swirl down the left side of her neck and over her collarbone. A single tattoo, or some kind of marking I couldn’t make out without Nereida’s zooming sight, decorated the woman’s left shoulder.

Metallic eyelashes blinked slowly at me, revealing an eyelid of a matching color. They should be revolting, but I stared at the moonlit irises like the answers to the universe were written in them.

The female lifted a hand, stroking something invisible in the air. Then darted away.

In the dream, my heart thrummed like a struck harp, should have burst from my chest on a flock of birds and disappeared into the lavender sky.

The woman had to be the mate Tye had mentioned, the reason Bryn visited the Gate so often, the reason he’d walked to the Gate and nearly ended everything two years ago.

This was his truth Bryn was showing me. So I would know why we couldn’t go back to the kitchen, couldn’t make that mistake again.

Bryn followed her through the woods where the indigo sky cast her sparkling hair in vivid hues, through trees that glowed even brighter, over the pearls that stirred beneath our feet, and when we burst through the forest at last, a sprawling land awaited.

Ruhaven.

A mountainous range so vast it hurt to behold the depth of it. The world was an artform in and of itself, like a painter had created it in her perfect vision. With mountains carved in the shape of lattices, flowing white water that streaked from one end of the world to the other, the clinging purple mist that descended upon everything.

As he chased after the woman, I could feel Bryn’s love. A devotion that was as fundamental to his makeup as bones, skin, or teeth—an organ more vital than a heart. An unending faith that explained why he’d been driven to the Gate after losing her here.

I didn’t know how long I floated in the peaceful vision, but eventually, Bryn’s words slowed, and the last fell from his lips like a Christmas ornament from a tree.

Then the library and its dusty tomes replaced the dream that had, for a moment, felt as real as Ruhaven.

Bryn rested his hands on my shoulders, his breath warming the back of my neck. I leaned into him on a sigh.

And his lips brushed the soft space below my ear. Oh.

He whispered against my neck, “I lied about the kiss.”