Page 31

CHAPTER 31

Dead Sea

I told myself wearing a tool belt made it more official.

Halfway up Naruka’s staircase, the tray wobbled in my clenched fists, the china rattling louder than the hotel’s pipes. Sugar cubes tumbled out of the miniature bowl. He didn’t take sugar. The overflowing pitcher of milk spilled with each creaky step. He didn’t take milk, either.

This was worse than when my mom made Willow and I play dress-up. I was only missing the frilly apron and tea towel.

When I passed a shuttered clock, I prayed something would fly out so I could blame shock when I tossed everything over the new stair rail.

Maybe I’d get Kazie to bring this tray up to Bryn instead.

“Oh, for feck’s sake, Roe, it’ll go cold by the time ye resign yerself to this.” James fisted his hips, scowling at me from the bottom of the stairs. “Or else it’ll be dinner and I’ll have to bloody cook something else. What are ye up to, like? Go on. Go on!”

I swallowed, unbearably grateful he hadn’t turned me out after yesterday. That he accepted I could see the memories, that he hadn’t mentioned the Ledger .

“James, I look ridiculous.”

“Now that ye certainly do, standing in the staircase for ten minutes like an eejit.” With a huff, James tossed a tea towel over his shoulder and marched into the kitchen.

He was right, I should get this over with. Preferably before I started sweating.

Resigned, I plodded up the staircase. It was perfectly normal to bring someone tea when they were sick. It wasn’t weird. And it certainly wasn’t after whatever had happened in the library. Of course not. He’d shared a memory—through some Ruhaven magic—and that was that.

I paused outside his door. The hallway was filled with daylight’s brittle sincerity from the mid-floor window, showing every dusty frame and torn section of wallpaper on a house that hadn’t seen a décor update in a century.

I hitched up my tool belt. I was stalling again.

Maybe I didn’t know how Bryn had shown me his memories, but I knew why. Ruhaven was sacred, whether I was Nereida or not, and that’s why he’d shown me his mate. I’d been too embarrassed to be caught with Sahn, but Bryn hadn’t balked from letting me see his own experience in Ruhaven—memories that were intimate, loving, sensual.

I held my breath.

Pushed open the door.

And loosed an exhale when I saw he was asleep, lying under a pressed linen quilt in the crisp, dewy room. Sunlight glittered over blond hair spread on a starched pillow, casting long shadows where his thick eyelashes remained closed. Across his chest, an open book rose and fell with his breaths. He looked like an angel tucked into bed.

I winced as my work boots echoed on the flooring.

The area under the window glowed with soft, wintery light that cast the floorboards in a pale ochre, crawled up the lime- washed walls, and bleached the wool blankets at the end of the four-poster bed.

“Hello, Rowan.”

My pulse spiked, but I turned slowly with the tray.

Twilight eyes met mine, lighting with amusement before he set his book on the nightstand, sat up. “Why, Rowan, I was certain that would startle you. Have I lost my touch?”

When his lips curled, all my thoughts leapt out the window and dangled there for a few healthy seconds before I reeled them back in. “Maybe you’re not as scary as I first thought.”

“Or perhaps Ruhaven suits you.”

Did it? Or was he trying to convince me I was Nereida again?

“James wanted me to bring you up something,” I explained, standing like a support beam in the middle of his room. “Don’t worry, I didn’t bake it.”

“If I suspected there was any chance of that, I may well have pretended to remain asleep.”

I pursed my lips at his weak grin. “I may not be able to cook like James, but I can rewire your entire room so you really feel like you’re in Ruhaven.”

He let out a coughing chuckle. “Indeed. Though the chance of your extended stay in my room may not be the threat you so intend.”

I sucked in my bottom lip. Didn’t know what to say to that, other than to wish the butterflies in my stomach took a sleeping pill.

He smiled at my awkwardness and started to rise.

“No, I’ll bring it. I…”

The sheet slipped from his shoulders, baring skin as pale and perfect as the rest of him, except for faded tattoos curling over his left shoulder. And he was muscled. Not bulging, like Tye, who attracted stares at the L’Ardoise beach last summer, but leaner, slimmer, with hard dips disappearing under—

He yanked the quilt up. “Rowan,” Bryn said while I stared like an angsty teenager. “Will you turn around for a moment?”

Caught red-handed and glassy-eyed, no doubt.

I swiveled with the tray. Was the rest of Bryn naked too? “That’s uh, not a pirate tattoo, is it?”

Bryn’s quick laugh turned into a cough. “Naturally, it is the lost map of El Dorado.”

Funny, but I’d seen them before on his arms, and the Bryn I knew would never get tattoos. Had he had a bit of a wild youth? I bit back a grin. Bryn on the streets of Oslo with his tattoos was quite the picture.

“Were you a teenager when you got them done?”

“No, I received them after I was exiled.” There was a soft bite to his tone.

I didn’t want to remind him of what he’d done to be exiled but… “Do you regret getting them?”

“Never.”

Did they cover his entire body? Just where… No, stop thinking about that .

“You may look now.”

I blanked my face before I did.

Bryn sat upright against the headrest, a long-sleeved shirt covering all the porcelain skin I’d glimpsed and—unfortunately—wearing pants. “Do you want to place the tray here, Rowan?” he said, patting the mattress.

Rounding the bed, I slid the milk, sugar, and scalding tea onto the smooth quilt.

Bryn reached for the teapot. “I assume, because you were given two cups, that James wishes for me to explain things.”

Like with the tray, he patted the space beside him.

I must have looked like a confused mule because he added, “There is also a rocking chair if you find the bed too forthright.”

I pulled my shoulders back at the faint amusement in his voice. “No, no.” Then I bent, awkwardly pulling at my shoelaces.

I could rewire a house, replace a railing, make intricate cuts with a jigsaw—if James ever bought me one—but I couldn’t serve tea. Or get my damn boots off.

I was sweating by the time I untied the third string.

“You may leave them on, if you wish.”

His bemused comment only rattled me more. “I know how to untie laces, Bryn.” One would think, anyway.

While I struggled, he sipped his tea and continued reading his book. I rolled my eyes behind his back.

When I eventually toed off my work boots, I lined their muddy soles on his clean rug and slid beside him, careful not to upturn the tray—just what I needed to do, spill an entire pot of Barry’s Tea on these pressed linen sheets the first time I’m in bed with him. You’re not in bed ! But the idea had my neck heating as our shoulders bumped.

Then I stared at my feet, at the pink toes poking through the holes in my socks. Mortifying.

I started to switch to cross-legged when Bryn reached out and snagged my foot. “Do you find yourself in need of socks still, Rowan?”

I pried my embarrassment away from him and stuffed my toes firmly under me. “Maybe I’m waiting on the sock fairies. They’ve been very generous.”

Bryn replied in a nearly inaudible purr, “If I see them in Ruhaven, perhaps I shall tell them to leave a pair under your pillow.”

He handed me a cup of tea, then a plate of biscuits from the tray while I scanned his room like the loose papers were more interesting than Ruhaven. He’d drawn these sketches before he’d been exiled, and I could imagine him hunched over the whitewashed desk by the window, drawing his fantasies and living his dream of Ruhaven even when he wasn’t in the Gate. Did he lie here at night and look at them?

My eyes trailed to the bookcase stuffed with novels and medical texts and art history books like it had been when I first arrived. The desk drawer where I’d first seen a photo of him.

I started at the memory. At how I’d stood here, inspecting the forgotten things of a man I didn’t know, a man who’d eventually become… become a lot more to me. And the ring that had been amongst the clutter.

Had it been his mated ring? Had Bryn taken it off before he left because she was killed by the Inquitate? Or had it been something else—the symbol of Ruhaven and his life here, slipped off and packed away before James exiled him, because he’d needed that clean split.

Maybe it’d just been a ring, a family heirloom, a trinket from the market, something of no significance.

“What are you thinking, Rowan?”

I burnt my mouth on the tea. “I—I— Do you read a lot?” I asked stupidly with a mountain of evidence staring me in the face.

“I previously enjoyed adventure novels, but now I find my time consumed by The Handy Handyman ,” he answered easily. “Quite a tome you have given me.”

He settled back into the cushions, sipped his tea through lips that were the palest shade of red, darkened only by the over-steeped brew. Even in bed, he didn’t quite look relaxed, more like a grown-up doll that had been arranged just so.

“I am sorry I did not explain things,” he said after a moment. “I had not experienced such a change before that night, or not to that extent.”

I held my breath. “It happened in Oslo, didn’t it?”

He nodded. “Yes, when you saw the Inquitate, for a moment, I could walk again as well.”

“You weren’t just standing close by, or got lucky, or whatever you told me in the hotel room.” I wet my lips at the memory of him standing over me, of the sight of his leg, of the power that had rippled from him, of Ruhaven. “Why did you lie?”

He stared up at the lantern swinging inside the four-poster bed, seemed to struggle to find words. “Because, Rowan, I was unsure of how much to reveal to you then, of me.”

“Because you didn’t trust me.”

“No, because you could hurt me.”

My brows knit. Hurt him? Did he think that if I knew he was weakened afterward, I’d—what?—take out my frustration on him? Was that what he thought of me?

Of course not, Rowan.

“I believe,” he continued as my worries spiraled, “that it is a manifestation of my Mark from Ruhaven.”

Yet nobody but Bryn had ever shown a glimmer of themselves. Not even James.

“What exactly is your power? Running?”

Bryn’s face broke into a wide grin. “No, not running, Rowan. And you may rest assured I am not an underground dwarf either,” he added, dancing around my question.

“Is it sharing memories then, like you did yesterday?”

The teacup clinked softly in his palm when he shook his head. “No. For that, I used a connection in Ruhaven. I was not certain it would work, but I am glad that it did.”

So he wouldn’t tell me what his Mark actually was—because it was clearly more than just light . Light didn’t explain his sudden strength, how he could stand without the cane.

The bed’s curtains billowed like a ship’s sails, tossing their crisp, Atlantic scent so the room tasted of summer nights back home.

Bryn drained his tea, set it down. “Will you tell me of your last time in the Gate? My voice is leaving me, and I enjoy hearing you speak.”

And that was the biggest lie ever, because compared to his melodic accent, mine was an axe on brick.

But I shuffled through the recent memories. Since I wasn’t going to describe the mid-flight sex I’d had with Sahn, I searched for an alternative. When I found it, I settled into pillows as crisp as snow and relayed an elaborate game I’d witnessed.

Bryn’s laugh was like quiet waves when I described Nereida jumping off a tree to land on a balloon. She’d punctured it and ended face down in mushrooms, but Ruhaven was as soft and squishy as the balls, and falling never hurt.

“Willow would have loved it,” I added wistfully, before I realized I’d spoken aloud. I wasn’t prioritizing her enough, not keeping the goal of finding why the Inquitate killed her first and foremost. And the reason was the man next to me. “I’m thinking that when Tye’s back, I’ll see if he knows Carmen’s address. I want to write to her about Levi, see if he knew something. Maybe it’s why she left.”

Bryn stiffened ever so slightly beside me. “And what else will you ask Tye when he returns?”

I knew what he was asking. “Absolutely nothing.” I didn’t want Tye, hadn’t since he’d shown me the Gate, not really. “I thought he was a friend in L’Ardoise, a good friend, and maybe he was, but it was always to get me to come here,” I admitted to the sketches on the wall. “And, I guess, I’ll never know if any of that was real. If he was real. If we were.”

Bryn had gone completely still, so much that I glanced over to check if he hadn’t lapsed into sleep at my monologue. But no, his eyes stared like mine had, unblinking, at the desk drawer.

I probably shouldn’t talk about Tye, not after we’d almost…well.

“What’s Odda like? The town you said you’re from.”

He cleared his throat. “It stands at the mouth of a fjord, a fishing village where I first worked at the port, but it is very small.”

His description of his fishing village and the locals was as soothing as the tea had been. I imagined the younger version of himself, gangly and uncoordinated, shy and funny, a boy without the weight of Ruhaven.

When he finished telling me about his most embarrassing story in school, silence hung comfortably between us.

Rowan ?

I blinked open my eyes, and even with overcast skies, the light in this room was as pure as snow. “Yes?”

The bed squeaked when Bryn set the tray on the floor.

I sat up. “I’ll go, sorry I’m—”

“No.” He reached for my wrist.

I glanced at the rough fingers curling around a pulse that must be nearly audible. He rotated my hand face up, and, with his thumb still warm from the tea, began to map each line of my palm, slowly, delicately, until I nearly purred.

“I know it is not appropriate to ask while you are on my bed,” he began as my heart sat up and begged. “Though it is likely no surprise to you that I am rather poor at expressing myself. I intended to ask you the evening you cut my hair in the kitchen, except you were so close, and, well, I suppose I forgot all about my good intentions.” He drifted into silence while I said nothing, could say nothing. “But—but I fear I have made a rather poor impression since we met, and perhaps more recently you have begun to forgive that, and so I should ask you now, while I am more agreeable to you, if I may take you to dinner?”

Dinner? A date? Was that what he meant? There wasn’t some weird Norwegian translation that—

“There is a place on the Kerry islands I have wanted to show you. A tiny restaurant on the seafront with live music and a pianist next Wednesday. I thought you might enjoy that. With me.”

Definitely a date. I tried to pretend like my every cell wasn’t singing at the fingers stroking up my arm, whispering over the crease at my elbow as he slid under my sleeve.

Say something, idiot. Tell this Ruhaven god you’ll sing a damn tune yourself if it means you’re going on a date together.

His fingers skimmed down my arm to link our hands. The act jolted me enough to remember why I’d ruined things in the kitchen.

I glanced at the desk drawer. Had he left her here? Did that release him from whatever rule James clung to? Or maybe I was getting ahead of things.

Bryn followed my gaze, tensed. “The ring,” he said quietly. “I did not realize you knew I had one. I could no longer wear it.”

I was a jolt to realize he’d nearly plucked the thought from me.

“Because you had to let go of Ruhaven.” After James exiled him. After he’d nearly died.

“No. Because I broke its promise.”

I met his sincere eyes. Its promise? “And what’s that?”

“To protect. To love. To be faithful.” He lifted our joined hands to his mouth, brushed his lips over my knuckles. Each touch of him sent whispers down my spine. “But Rowan, I will not break that promise again. Will you come to the islands with me next week?”

His eyelashes lowered to slits of blue, watching me while he kissed the tips of my fingers. Each and every one.

My insides went molten. “ Yes, ” I breathed.

I t took Bryn a week to recover.

And while he did, I visited the Gate with James and Kazie each morning, always swapping who went into Ruhaven first and with whom. I made them swear to stay at least twenty feet away so they couldn’t see me, even if they could still hear me with Sahn. Although James swore I didn’t react to the Azekiel, Kazie wasn’t as good at lying.

But if I waited for Bryn to take me himself, I’d lose some of my Gate endurance, and I’d just started feeling comfortable with the full hour inside.

Nereida continued dancing and sword fighting while they waited for the Florissant to be configured. I had hoped the Inquitate might appear while we were still in Ruhaven, but it seemed more and more likely that we’d meet them in Drachaut. Yesterday, Nereida had tried James’s bow and arrow, much to the relief of Jamellian, who really did have blisters on his fingers, though Essie hadn’t been as accommodating for me in moving the rock used for target practice. I think she wanted James to feel better.

After our morning trips to Ruhaven, I worked on the gate lodge until lunch, then spent my evenings researching the Inquitate or reading the history of Tallah, which James and his family had steadily compiled over centuries. The library was more than just a collection of journals, and held encyclopedias of Marks, mates, and every other term in Ruhaven I hadn’t yet discovered.

I pulled a book down dedicated to Azekiels and found Bryn had been—of course—right about their Marks being protection. Then I researched Kalistas, the Mark that James and I both had. According to the book, Nereida hadn’t yet bonded with a spirit because she hadn’t gone through the rite.

“You mentioned that before,” I said to James as we sat huddled on a library couch. “What is it?”

“Yera, just something all Ruhavens go through to unlock their Marks. A wee bit like moving through adolescence.”

I set the book aside. “What was yours?”

“Finding Essie,” he answered with a grin. “But if yer wanting the story on that, I’ll need a pint or two.”

When I rose to get him just that, I asked, “Shouldn’t Tye be back by now?”

Kazie replied, “He sent a postcard saying he’d be a week later. Should be in on Monday, or is it Tuesday?” She shrugged. “Time difference.”

The roommate situation must have been worse than I thought—that, or his old manager who owned the farm dragged him into working some job.

The next day after a vegetarian full Irish, James, Kazie, and I visited Ruhaven again while Bryn stayed behind. Except this time, even Kazie kept her distance while James was in the Gate, because as he’d warned us both, “It’s Essie and me’s anniversary and I don’t give a shite.”

We waited until the last minute to yank him from the Gate.

And it must have been good, since he spent the rest of the day cleaning Naruka for the first time while jiggling—his dancing resembled a plastic bag caught in the wind—to seventies music on ear-splitting volume.

But it was on a Tuesday when Bryn came down the stairs with a tap-tap-tap, not from the crutches but the cane.

And when he stepped into the kitchen and looked at me, I knew one thing.

We were going to the Gate.