Page 34

CHAPTER 34

The Greatest Bastard

I trembled as he whispered soft, gentle endearments I couldn’t hear over the roar in my ears.

“You can’t be,” I insisted, though every rapid beat of my heart screamed it was the truth.

His hands tangled in my hair, tilting my head back until I had no choice but to meet those impossible eyes again—gold and liquid and endless. “But I am, Rowan. Of course I am. You know this.”

My mouth felt like it was full of lead. “No, no. James would have told me. And you…you wouldn’t have…”

His eyes tightened, almost imperceptibly, in a man too beautiful for Naruka.

No .

I pushed against his chest, lightly, but it was enough to have him drop his hands, for the gold to cool to blue. “I am sorry,” he said softly. Yes, I am O’Sahnazekiel. It is why I can anchor you and only you, why I could share my memory with you, why I can speak to you like this.

I shook my head vigorously. “But he’s…” A winged beast that I’ve been sleeping with for months. “And you’re—you can’t .”

It couldn’t be true. It couldn’t . Because then every touch and kiss I’d shared with Sahn was really with—with…Bryn.

And then, well, that would mean that he’d known exactly what I was living through. He wouldn’t have just taken me to the Gate, and let me… with me, while he was there, watching—no— participating .

I stifled a sob.

Bryn’s hand shook on the cane.

He’d watched Nereida—watched me. Had seen my most intimate moments with the creature in my past life.

He’d lived it.

God, he’d lived it with me!

Someone was screaming in my head; it might have been me.

And I’d thanked him. Thanked him for anchoring me, for slipping through the Gate and watching every sordid thing Sahn and I had done—no, that Bryn and I had done. Together. And now, now I was like his Ruhaven pet he could take out and play with.

“Rowan, do not cry, please,” Bryn whispered, emotion thickening his voice as his thumbs wiped away my tears. “I am sorry I did not tell you before when—”

“Don’t touch me.” I shoved at his chest.

Bryn slowly pulled back, unguarded eyes blinking in confusion.

Behind him, the sun dipped between the Kerry hills, its arms gripping the edge for the last bit of light. I was freezing and sweating and boiling in his coat. I threw it off me, tossing it with the backpack.

“You’re Sahn,” I repeated, for myself. For him.

He swallowed. “Yes. Yes, Rowan.”

The wind tossed the silky strands I’d brushed away back into his eyes. He was Sahn. I was Nereida. I repeated the words over and over, waiting for them to settle into some semblance of truth.

But it made sense. It made perfect sense

It’s why he’d hated me when we met. He was looking for Nereida, but he hadn’t found her in L’Ardoise, he’d found me instead, and he hadn’t wanted—hadn’t wanted what he saw.

I did, Rowan, how I did.

“Stop that!” My shout drained more color from his face. “How long were you going to keep this from me?”

“I—I thought you would recognize me, Rowan, as I did you. When you didn’t, it was difficult to find the appropriate time, but I have been trying to tell you.” He dragged a hand through his perfect locks.

“Trying to tell me?” I echoed, aghast. “You never told me, you never said anything. You didn’t even like me.”

His brows winged up. “You know that is not true. And I attempted to show you instead—in the library.”

I dragged a hand over my lips. The library? What had he shown me in the library? Something of Ruhaven, of his own memory of—of the woman who’d leapt through the woods, the one he’d chased after.

My tongue felt numb. “That—that was Nereida?”

His eyes softened. “That was you.”

Bryn stooped to pick up the blanket, folding it over one arm. Once, I’d have thought he was indifferent. Now I knew he needed the brisk movements to think over his lies.

“Rowan, the first time you met me in the Gate—met Sahn—you feared him, you thought he hurt you. Do you remember how you reacted when we woke from the Gate?”

I’d called him a beast. He had been. He was.

“I had planned to tell you,” Bryn explained quickly, “but I was nervous at how you may react and was uncertain how far you and O’Sahnazekiel had…progressed.”

“Had sex,” I interrupted. He’d wondered if I’d had sex with his memory yet. Because that’s what he’d been doing with mine. Before. Now.

“Yes,” he agreed, a man who must have thought nothing of it after being with her for years. “So I waited for the correct opportunity, and to visit Ruhaven myself and determine your understanding of O’Sahnazekiel. As it was, they were parted for the duration of your initial visits and you had not yet encountered him.”

Liar. He was a liar, just like Tye. Manipulating me so he could enjoy Nereida in peace and quiet.

“You forced me into the Gate,” I bit out.

He let out a shaky breath. “Yes. Yes, I needed you to understand. Tye insisted I tell you, but—”

The breath left my lungs. “He knows ?”

Bryn looked taken aback. “Yes, of course, Rowan. They all know. I asked them to allow me to explain things in my own time.”

No wonder James had protested when Bryn told him he was taking me to the Gate.

They’d let Bryn humiliate me for months.

No— I had let Bryn humiliate me, and I’d thanked him for doing it.

I covered my burning face with my hands, sucked in a ragged breath. “You’ve made such a fool out of me,” I whispered behind them, wanting to carve each memory from my brain. “Did you get some kind of cheap thrill from having sex with me in the Gate?”

He jerked back like I’d hit him. “It was never about that, Rowan.”

I pressed the heels of my hands to my eyes, fighting for control of something . “So you don’t enjoy their mating ?”

A muscle twitched in his elegant jaw. “I will not apologize for that.”

Tears burned but didn’t fall; I didn’t let them. Bryn believed I was Nereida, and who—I thought bitterly—would know better?

I dragged the knapsack toward me, shoved the tea canister in, the sandwiches he’d made for us, the bar of chocolate. “Then what do you want to apologize for?” I demanded, and it was hard to confront him, to stand in the eye of a storm and know how small you were.

I didn’t have golden eyes, couldn’t anchor myself, wasn’t Ruhaven’s chosen one. Until this moment, I didn’t even think I was Nereida. “Because, Bryn? You’d better think of something.”

He paced the clearing—nervous, if I didn’t know better—rustling dead leaves under the weight of his cane. “Rowan, I thought it would be easier if I kept my identity from you. I thought it would give us a chance to know each other without the complication of Ruhaven.”

I wouldn’t break down, not again, not like I’d done with Colm. I slapped a frozen leaf and faced Bryn. All the times I’d lain with Sahn circled in my mind like crows over carrion. “You think you’ve made it easier by humiliating me?”

Bryn ducked the swinging lantern, the only light between the bent oak trees. “That was never my intention,” he said carefully as we circled the altar of blankets and candles. “I had lived in Ruhaven for so long myself, and you were so very new. I could hardly place my years of burden on you as well. Could not confess my own desires to someone who despised the Gate.”

“You forced me into it!” Forced me to make that bargain. “You manipulated me from the beginning.” Had any of it been because he honestly believed I’d find answers for Willow in the Gate? Or had it been for him? So that he could play with…with whatever I was.

The last bit of color started to leech from his face. “I—Rowan, I was desperate. And then, when you met me at last, you feared O’Sahnazekiel.”

“So this is my fault?” Unbelievable.

“No, of course not, but I…” He rubbed the back of his neck, looked almost embarrassed if I didn’t know better. “I admit I did not anticipate this reaction.”

My breath huffed to curdled smoke as I gaped at him.

So Bryn thought I’d be happy to hear he was Sahn, happy that the man I was about to go on a date with had been secretly lying to me for months, had been sleeping with me in Ruhaven, had been mocking me with it?

My fingernails dug into my palm. “You thought I’d be happy to know you’ve witnessed every intimacy I’ve shared with Sahn? That I’d be happy to find out I’ve had zero privacy? You offered to take me to the Gate, to anchor me because you wouldn’t see. But all this time, you’ve—you haven’t just seen, you’ve been living it with me!”

Bastard .

Disgusted, I hefted the knapsack and spun on my heel.

I’d taken only two steps before Bryn snagged it and forced me around. But it wasn’t anger that hollowed his eyes and shook the hand he curled on my shoulder. It was fear.

I tilted my head back, met the shadows flickering across his face in the candlelight. If I felt sympathy for a man who’d once lost himself in Ruhaven, who’d been exiled from Naruka, who’d waited for Nereida, I pushed it aside.

His voice was rough, urgent. “Rowan, I thought you would understand. That day in the kitchen, you understood what James had been through with Essie. Why will you not afford me the same understanding?”

I had to resist breathing him in, the scent of him, the overwhelming vulnerability he so rarely showed.

All I could think of was the sacrifice he’d nearly made. For Nereida. For Willow.

I lifted my chin. “You want to talk about James? Let me tell you something about James—he’d never have done what you did.”

Bryn flinched, and I had to shove down every instinct that screamed at me to reach for him, to take it back.

“You lied, Bryn. You lied to me from the beginning. This wasn’t for my benefit, but for yours. Because for one second, you might not have control over Nereida.”

He shook his head disbelievingly. “No, Rowan, it was for us . Why do you always believe the worst of me?”

I stabbed my finger at him. “You don’t get to turn this around now. You wanted another version of Nereida and instead you got this one. So you tried to manipulate the situation. That’s why you say ‘ my Rowan,’ isn’t it? You think Nereida belongs to you .” My voice wavered. “Well she doesn’t . She’s supposed to belong to me.”

Couldn’t he understand what it did to me to have him believe there might be a possibility it was my birth in the Ledger ? To have Bryn stand in the library and tell me he believed Nereida was me? To be such a coward that his opinion alone was enough to put aside my doubts, however briefly? Only to learn I was just the closest thing left to Nereida after Willow died. That it’d been her meant for him. Her he’d tried to die for.

“I know that,” he said softly. “‘ My Rowan ’ is what O’Sahnazekiel calls Nereida. Finita Nereida . My Nereida.”

Fuck .

The tears I swore I wouldn’t shed burned my cheeks, salted my lips. All the memories between Sahn and I were a lie—Sahn’s bark of laughter under the indigo skies, the time the flying lizard had nestled in his hair, the mud he’d accidentally landed in, soaking us both and staining his wings.

I’d thought I’d known him. I thought he’d been mine . But he was as much mine as I was Nereida.

“You’ve stolen Sahn from me.” But what right did I have to complain when I’d stolen Nereida from Willow?

Confusion tightened Bryn’s forehead as I backed away. “Rowan, I am Sahn. I do not understand you.”

He’d made all the decisions for us. Decided what I needed to know and when he’d tell me—why? Was I just the stupid repair woman? Not a sophisticated art history major who took people out to piano bars, not well traveled with five spoken languages or however many he knew. I didn’t dress like him, didn’t iron my jeans or layer my shirts or—

An itchy suspicion slithered between my shoulder blades.

I stared at his cashmere sweater, the color of pale oatmeal in the dim woods. In all the days he’d spent at Naruka, he’d never once worn a T-shirt. Even when the sun peeked out, and every Irish man, woman, and child would lie in Capolinn’s park to soak up the heat, he was always fully dressed. He never even rolled up his sleeves, not when he was milking Simona, not when he cooked or washed dishes, not when he chopped firewood, never. Not because he was shy or conservative as I’d first thought, and not because he was cold—the man was from Norway, so Naruka wouldn’t bother him—but because he was hiding something.

The evidence had been staring me in the face when I brought him tea that day in his room. A map to El Dorado, he’d joked.

I met Bryn’s wary eyes. “Take off your shirt,” I ordered.

Annoyance creased the corners of his mouth. Oh, he didn’t like that, didn’t like it at all. Too bad—I’d take control of something between us, starting now.

Crossing my arms, I spread my legs in a stance Tye would have approved of. “Now, Bryn.”

His look narrowed in warning. “I have told you the truth, Rowan. Why do you persist?”

I whipped out a hand and fisted his sweater so hard, his lips popped open in surprise. He’d been waiting for Nereida, he said.

Well, I’d give him Nereida.

“ Persist ? You haven’t seen persist yet. Now, either you take this off, or I’ll rip it off,” I warned, my voice like mulled ice. “Pick one.”

He curled his fingers around my fist. “You have made your point, Rowan. I—”

“I don’t think so.” I tightened my grip, stretching up on my tiptoes so my mouth was a painful few inches away from his. “And don’t think you’ve got any moral high ground after your stunt in the Gate. Maybe you got used to violating my memories with Nereida, but you had no right to see me naked.”

Our breath fogged between us in the crisp glade.

But his face stayed carefully blank. “Rowan, it was far past the hour mark. I could not wait any longer for you to respond to my anchor’s call. If I had not lifted you out of that room, you would still be in the Gate. You know that it was not me who rendered you naked in the place between worlds.”

Naked . The memory of it still burned in my gut.

“No, but you did… something . You didn’t need to touch me like that.”

His blue eyes flickered before warming to liquid honey. God, he wasn’t actually... “Don’t even think of showing me that gold, Bryn.”

A muscle twitched in his jaw. “It is hardly within my control. But as I explained, you were not answering my call. I needed you relaxed, calm, so that I could lift you from the Gate. I did not have the strength to do so otherwise.”

Because he’d had to rescue me from Colm.

“And that was the only way?” I challenged, though it grated to know how transparent I was. “To touch me? I didn’t know it was you, Bryn.”

Some of the tightness left his face, and his bottom lip shined with the mist creeping in. “It was not my intention to offend you.”

He probably thought it was just another form of flattery, or maybe he’d rolled naked with Nereida for so long that there was no difference between her and me.

I yanked on his sweater. “I said take this off. Or do you want me to ruin your thousand-dollar shirt?”

With one hand, he carefully loosened my grip. “Very well, Rowan. If this is how you wish to begin things with us.” His cane thumped to the earth.

“Us?” I nearly gaped. The actual nerve of him. “There will be no us, Bryn. Take off your shirt. Off!”

The look he threw me could have curdled milk, but he shed the wool sweater and gripped the bottom of his shirt beneath, gathering the layers in a white-knuckled fist. They shook violently, and for a moment, I wondered if I’d embarrassed him. Then I remembered I didn’t care.

I held my breath as he peeled up his sweater.

Muscled lines crisscrossed and disappeared under the band of his jeans. The brewing storm licked skin paler than moonlight, carved from the same marble as his face. Delicate amber hair trailed a path up a lean torso, taut and firm with abs he shouldn’t have. Goosebumps prickled his skin as the moon took ownership of the skies.

My pulse became a swarm of bees in my ear.

He lifted the sweater over his head, barely disturbing his hair, before he slid the cashmere off his arms and squeezed the shirt at his side, tendons straining.

With his skin exposed, he’d laid bare what I’d suspected.

The tattoos were not bronze, as O’Sahnazekiel’s were, not engraved metal poured into a cast, but they were the same gears that intimately mapped the Azekiel. Thorns twisted through the cogs. Roses bloomed in dark ink.

A dream brought alive. And another lie.

“Why?” I asked weakly. Why carve yourself with the image of Sahn after you were exiled?

Winter heat rippled off him. “To remind me.”

I couldn’t stop myself from looking, from admiring the markings spiraling up his forearm, over his left shoulder and pec, drifting down his abs and a corded hip, where they disappeared under his pants and—

I jerked my gaze up when he shifted.

Smoked gold irises stared back. “Will that suffice, Rowan, or do you wish to see the rest?”

It was a challenge. And a threat.

But I didn’t look away as I closed the distance between us, keeping my eyes on his until I stood a foot away. Until I could see the trail of delicate hair down the center of his chest and his nipples pebbled with cold.

He sucked in a breath when I trailed my fingertips over the tattooed vines on his bicep, followed every swirling gear and rose I’d mapped with my tongue on Sahn. I didn’t even need to look.

I skimmed his pec until my fingernail scraped the gear framing his nipple.

“Rowan,” Bryn growled, his low voice turning my knees to jelly. “What is it you want?”

I wanted to hear him say my name like that many, many times. So I thumbed his nipple, watching his irises shoot gold with pleasure at each tug.

And swiped his sweater.

Surprise flickered the gold into blue.

“What do I want, Bryn?” I repeated as my blood hummed for him. “I want to not be made a fool of.” I stuffed the sweater in my backpack. “You can wear all your lies if you’re cold. I’ll meet you at Naruka.”

He didn’t reach for me as I spun around and left him half-naked at the Gate.