Page 33

CHAPTER 33

One Day, You Finally Knew

“ B ryn?” I whispered.

He knelt over me, the aging sun silhouetting his face. In the shadow, his freckles seemed more pronounced than ever, all those tiny imperfections I’d once counted. But here he was, more beautiful than anything in Ruhaven, and glowing as if visiting the Gate had filled him with a new source of life. Ruhaven’s golden child.

“Yes, my Rowan?” His breath fanned my face, a cool caress of winter and mint and wildness.

I licked my lips. “Why?” I might have been asking why I’d forgotten he was light, or why he’d felt the need to anchor me like that, or why I’d never felt anything like him before.

He shifted, sliding onto an elbow to free his other hand and cup the side of my face. I went very still as my blood started to hum. Could he sense that? Hear me? I didn’t know what to feel—embarrassment, worry, arousal. Though the last I certainly felt, with his thigh pressing against mine as we lay here together, like we had a hundred times before.

“Why?” he murmured, and my skin tingled where his calloused fingers brushed, softly, carefully, his thumb sliding over the dent in my chin. His eyes watched mine, as if waiting for a sign to stop.

But I’d never tell him no, because this was the Bryn from my dreams, when he was briefly unguarded, wild, reckless, and mine.

When I pressed my cheek into his palm, he said quietly, “I enjoy these stolen moments with you. Watching you wake, seeing the endearing flush to your cheeks. The brief, foggy silver of your eyes when you wake that I have never told you of. The freckles on your cheeks that stand out more starkly when you are tired.” His thumb rested there for a moment while my chest rose and fell on shallow breaths. “Or do you mean why did I anchor you in such a manner?”

Such a manner. That manner would give me at least a month’s worth of dreams.

“Yes.” It was all I could manage.

“You were distracted while under attack, as you were when your Tether broke.” He offered me a hesitant smile. “I could not wake you as normal.”

No, that had certainly not been the normal way.

The wind tickled goosebumps from the porcelain skin under his collar. “I forgot you were light,” I admitted. Silky, sensuous, embarrassing light. Was I fantasizing about light ?

His lips twitched, his eyes warming in liquid amusement. “I apologize. I could not speak in that form to explain.”

I nodded like it made perfect sense, like I hadn’t wilted under him, like I hadn’t been ready to give up my very existence just to stay a few minutes longer under that touch. “Right.” The word sounded forced, so I tried again. “It’s nothing. I mean, it’s fine. You don’t have a body, or—or sight , so…”

He stroked a knuckle over my trembling jaw, up my cheek, over my lips, lingering there as his eyes smoked to gold. “Yes, Rowan, I saw you,” he answered, low and husky.

I swallowed so hard I think we both heard it. I couldn’t concentrate when his irises were gold —it was like trying to think in front of Zeus.

“Why are your eyes doing that?” I whispered against his fingertips, fighting the desire to circle my tongue around one. Just to see what he’d do, what line he’d draw.

Faint amusement flickered over his face. “My Rowan, I think you know why.”

I did know why. “A manifestation of the Gate?” Just admit it .

He studied me carefully. “If you prefer to think of it as that, then yes.”

Anything else would only make me combust further. “So that’s—that’s what you look like in Ruhaven? You’re…”

He brushed a distracting knuckle along my collarbone, still hovering over me and braced on one elbow. Anyone passing by would think we were lovers in a park.

“You’re some form of light,” I finished on a shiver.

“Not quite.” Bryn searched my face, like he was waiting for me to explain how he’d manifested as light in my own room, of how he could embody it even here. “Rowan…”

I reached toward him hesitantly, catching a lock of his hair. “Yes?” I smiled as the strand fluttered between my fingers, as soft and silky as Sahn’s feathers.

Bryn clasped my hand, stopping me. “Rowan, we must talk.”

Something staggered in my chest, like my heart had been skipping along and suddenly snagged its foot. Talk? Had he changed his mind? Come to his senses? Remembered he had a mate? My eyes darted to his right ring finger, as if I’d see the golden band confirming my worries. But it was empty.

Carefully, with my hands in his, he pulled me to kneeling. But he didn’t rise, didn’t reach for the tea or the sandwiches we’d packed.

I wrung my now-empty hands. “Bryn, if this is about your Prayama—I’m sorry. I thought you were stuck. I didn’t mean to just…appear.”

“No, Rowan,” he said, not unkindly, and when the quilt slid off my shoulders, he tugged it up, tucked it in. “This is not about you seeing my Prayama.” He settled in front of me, our knees almost touching. The gold that had lit his irises had all but faded to a rusty blue.

“Then what, Bryn?”

He undid the top button of his sweater, the collar brushing the faint golden stubble at his throat. “Something I should have explained when we met in Oslo.”

Oslo—how far away that seemed now. Had he felt what I did then? That terrifying connection? No, I’d only annoyed him, insulted him. I could see how I’d have offended him, knowing what I did now about his connection with Ruhaven.

As he had in the library, I reached out, took his hand. Even that simple connection caused something to flow between us—that energy Kazie was always talking about, like his recognized mine. But he didn’t smile or acknowledge it in any way, only kept his steady gaze on me, unblinking.

“Rowan,” Bryn said, voice deep, “these past months have been the most fulfilling of my life, and the most difficult for me.”

I knew that, knew what it meant to be back in the Gate. How difficult it must have been for him to see his mate there and know she was dead here. That all he had of her was a memory.

Should I admit I knew what he’d tried to do in this very spot? Of how much of a struggle returning to the Gate would be? Of how I saw the longing in his eyes each time he did?

Instead, I squeezed his hand. “I understand.”

No, you do not.

I blinked, sure I’d heard him this time. Inside me, not just a feeling, but actual—

You did .

I dropped his hand. “Bryn?”

He smiled a little, a crooked lift of the left side of his lips, the only time I ever saw a wrinkle on his porcelain face. “Yes, Rowan, I can speak to you…” Like this.

Dear god, he could read my thoughts. My thoughts !

No, only loose inclinations.

Close enough!

“Is this your—your Mark?” I stuttered, trying to wrap my thoughts in a vice-like grip.

Bryn grabbed my hand again, held it tightly. “No, Rowan. This is not my Mark, but a connection between us in the Gate.”

But then he knew how I felt and—and he knew what I was thinking now. And all the things I’d ever thought about him. But no, it was “inclinations” and not thoughts. But my inclinations had been even worse .

I shook off his hand, jumped up. And swayed.

Bryn rose impossibly fast, steadying me by my elbow before reaching for his cane.

“Bryn, I—this Mark of yours. Or, what did you say? A connection? It’s…” Making me want to throw up. Christ, did he hear that too? Did I incline to throw up?

He should have told me. Way before now, so I could have a chance to get a grip on all my ridiculous fantasies which— No, stop thinking. Stop thinking !

I stopped pacing when Bryn gripped my shoulders, forced me to meet his eyes. “Rowan, you need not worry so. I have not always enabled this connection. Though I apologize for telling you of this now—”

“I can see why you waited. It’s—”

“—but it is not that which I needed to tell you.”

That drew me up short. “What? Why? What else can you do?”

His thumbs smoothed circles over my shoulders. Do not worry overmuch of this , he reassured me, his voice sliding like slowly freezing water in my mind. I do not hear your words as you do mine .

Are you sure?

I braced a hand on his chest. As soon as I did, that same grounding energy flowed through my fingers. His breath quickened, his heartbeat filling my palm, my own eardrums, echoing in my veins. An entire hive of bees seemed to have taken up permanent residence in my chest.

He glided a hand over my spine, stopped at the small of my back, drew me in.

I looked up through fluttering eyelashes, watching as his irises darkened to another, almost familiar color. When his hand moved to cup the base of my neck, my lips tingled in anticipation.

“Whatever else there is, tell me later,” I whispered. Not just because I wanted him, wanted that rare, unguarded closeness, but because I felt that approaching before-and-after moment Tye had talked about months ago.

Bryn smiled softly, wide and perfect under the sunset hues, his skin a canvas to everything I’d never noticed before—the flickering purple shadows cast by the leaves, the near-crimson glow of the tips of his ears, the lightness of his bottom lip next to the top.

Sometimes, things were better closer than afar.

How I wish it could wait , he admitted.

The wind picked up, raising goosebumps along his jaw. He pinched a strand of my hair and tucked it behind my ear. Inhaled. “James was not fully truthful when he told you my Mark was light.”

I curled my fingers into Bryn’s shirt. “You looked like light in my Prayama.”

He stroked the back of my neck, twisting fingers in my hair, each touch perfectly tuned to what I didn’t know I liked. “Light is a part of me. What you saw in your Prayama was a form that I may at times take, an embodiment of my Mark. But it is not how I normally appear.”

I toyed with the soft cashmere of his sweater, imagined plucking the pearly button open, seeing what that map of El Dorado really looked like. “You’re not a dwarf, are you?” I joked.

His hand tightened on my neck, not amused, not playing. “Rowan, you do not understand what it is to have lived for so many years in the Gate. What it can do to you, what it can take from you.”

How close he’d come to dying right here, right where we were standing, in the Gate that had driven him to it.

I released the button, had to take a breath. “I know. I know what it did to you.”

He caught my wrist, brought it to his lips. “No, you do not,” he said against my pulse.

My fingers curled reflexively, trying to capture the warm breath gliding over my skin.

“Because you do not yet understand that I have waited years for you.” He nuzzled my hand, breathing in, the gesture strangely tender.

Waited for me ? But those words didn’t make any sense, not in that arrangement. Waiting for me to what? For what?

“Bryn, I don’t understand.”

Bending, he cupped my face in his hands, touched his cool forehead to mine, our noses almost brushing. He inhaled shakily.

“Years, Rowan,” he breathed. “Years of imagining how you would look, how you would speak, how we would be together. Years of searching for you. Of praying that I shall find you in this world . To share with you every whispered secret from the years in Ruhaven, to live the memories together as we have done. To find the connection I have missed.”

I started to shake. In that moment, I think there was a tiny, far-off part of my mind that knew what he meant, that understood exactly what caused his voice to tremble.

But the Roe of the present couldn’t accept it. No— wouldn’t a ccept it.

“What connection?” I asked weakly.

The hands on each side of my face tilted my head back so I couldn’t look away. Couldn’t look at anything but him .

Bryn brushed my nose with his. Tender, playful, affectionate.

“Since I saw you in L’Ardoise, I have never been truly alone,” he whispered. “I thought of you every day in Oslo, I have wondered silly things of you, Rowan. Like what time you wake in the morning, whether you prefer to sleep on cold nights or warm, if you take sugar in your coffee. When I walk into a room, I imagine what you shall make of it. I wonder how you would speak with my friends, whether you would enjoy hiking in Norway, which flowers you like or if you like them at all. And sometimes… sometimes I wonder whether you ever think of the man you met so briefly in L’Ardoise.”

I—I couldn’t even remember meeting him.

“Why?” I whispered, though I knew the answer, knew what I hadn’t wanted to accept, to admit, knew what flickered between us was no random chemistry.

“Because there is no piece of my soul that does not have yours written upon it.”

My pulse hiccuped when he dropped his lips to my jaw, kissed the bruise still fading there, his touch like snowflakes on my skin before he brushed the tender shell of my ear.

“And because, my Rowan, I am the Azekiel.”