Page 35

CHAPTER 35

About Today

B ryn was Sahn.

The three words hammered at the memories I tried to box up on my hike back to Naruka.

Three weeks ago, when he and I had visited Ruhaven together, I’d swam naked with Sahn in a milk lake. Had made love on its lavender sand shore. Watched Sahn’s eyes burn into a golden flame when he slid inside Nereida.

Bryn had not only seen that, he’d lived it. Lived it all while lying next to me on the damp soil under the swaying lantern and autumn birds.

Yet he’d felt every ounce of pleasure Sahn had given me, knew exactly how much I enjoyed it. All while I’d pretended nothing had happened.

He said he’d been waiting for me. But it hadn’t been me he wanted at all—it’d been Nereida. Every look and touch between us had been meant for a silver-haired female in Ruhaven.

In the kitchen, I clenched the scalding mug of tea James had fixed for me.

Was I just some physical body Bryn could pretend with? Then he didn’t have to break his rules .

Planting my elbows on the table, I tried to concentrate on the car manual I’d fished out to settle me. I’d thought about going upstairs, huddling in my room while I burned off the worst of my fears, but this was the only room with the stove on—and maybe I wanted to wait until Bryn returned safely. I shouldn’t have left him up there alone.

The storm pounding the window thundered in agreement.

I couldn’t even be happy that Tye was back. He’d gotten in while Bryn was lying to me at the Gate and greeted my sudden return with a bottle of nice French wine I didn’t know L’Ardoise had and a smile that had wilted at my expression.

But Tye, James, Kazie—they’d all lied too. I swore I wouldn’t be softened, not even by the barley stew James left out for me on the stove.

I turned my glare on Tye.

He rested against the counter, wearing a plaid shirt with what looked like stray bits of orange fur on the sleeve, and strumming a four-chord progression on a Rickenbacker guitar that drilled a hole in the center of my head. A hole I would have gladly thrown the guitar and Tye into.

James arched an eyebrow when my stare landed on him. He opened his mouth, drawing back a bow of questions, then snorted through his nose and returned to reading Ruhaven in the 70s .

Grumbling to myself, I flattened my manual and read the steps on how to replace spark plugs for the fifth time.

The low kitchen light swung in a tiny pendulum, flickering over the faded diagram. How would I disconnect a battery whose wires had rusted into it? I glanced at James. The answer wouldn’t be in a book about the great seventies revolution of Ruhaven.

This was what I should focus on. This and Willow. I’d gotten sidetracked by Sahn, started to believe that for a moment, I might be meant for Ruhaven. Because Bryn had wanted me to be her, to be Nereida in Willow’s place. Maybe I would—maybe I’d take her back from him, make her, make Nereida, my own again—just like Willow would have done.

And she’d be as pissed at him as I was.

Lightning flashed outside, blinding us for a heartbeat before the sky slurped it up again. Kazie let a whoop of excitement, then adjusted her telescope by the window. What could she even see in this weather?

Across the table, James lowered his book and sighed like an old dog. “Roe, ye didn’t feckin’ kill him, did ye?”

Now, there was an idea. Maybe Nereida would come to her senses and take care of that for me.

I licked my finger and flipped to page 203 on battery removal. “No.”

Tye chewed on the guitar pick. “Darlin’, ya know I’d help you bury him.”

The idea mollified me slightly.

Thunder roared from the Atlantic, rippling over Naruka’s dark-turquoise fields and smacking into the bay window. Bryn would be walking—limping—back in that storm. Without a shirt. Tock .

We were definitely not going to the islands anymore.

I felt Bryn long before I saw the candle flicker in the tack room, heard the soft thump of his cane up the concrete steps, or the jingle of the skeleton key in the lock.

Click.

The door creaked open, a frigid wind on its heels.

Tye let out a low whistle as Bryn ducked into the kitchen. His accusing stare landed on mine. I yanked my shoulders back, staring defiantly at him.

Are you quite pleased now? he growled in my mind.

I’d be pleased when he showed some actual regret. Not even close.

The rain had drenched his hair to a muddy brown and plastered it to his reddened neck. Fat drops dripped off his nose, brow, and chin. Soaked jeans clung to his thighs, and goosebumps covered a chest whipped raw by Naruka’s thorny brambles. His shoulders shook with cold.

I still wanted to lick every dripping inch of him.

Thick, juicy waves of emotion rolled inside me—embarrassment, arousal, fear, humiliation, love. I wanted to thread my fingers through his blond hair and drag his lips to mine, then strip him naked and parade him through the streets of Capolinn so he’d know the humiliation I felt.

But Bryn’s face was a portrait of self-restraint as he swiped his sweater from the clothesline.

James gawked, his glasses skittering down his thin nose. “Bryn? What the bloody hell did she do to ye?”

Not enough, not nearly enough.

I hid my face behind the manual and said, “Don’t you mean O’Sahnazekiel ?”

The kitchen went dead silent. Even the clock shut up. When Bryn limped to the woodstove, I could have measured the tension in the room with my voltage meter.

Tye slid off the counter and crossed his impressive arms. “Well, Stornoway, guess ya finally admitted you got a dick. Sure fooled me though.”

Oh, he had a dick.

James shot out of his chair, palms slapping the Guinness placemat. “ Lads ,” he growled, conveying warning, exasperation, and amusement with one impressive syllable. But I wasn’t going to forget he’d lied to me too.

“You told me he was light ,” I accused James.

He fidgeted with the placement. “He is, it wasn’t a lie. But he didn’t want ye to know and I didn’t feel comfortable pretending I didn’t know him. Light is one of an Azekiel’s forms. Which ye’d know if ye ever read that feckin’ book I left ye.”

So he’d tried to tell me. What had Bryn said before? That he outranked the others in Ruhaven— that was why they’d listened. I turned my glare on him, his tattooed back rippling as he dragged a towel through his hair. A gear ended at the curve of his lower back where the tops of his hips brushed his belt.

Tye planted a boot on the sheepskin bench, bent forward, resting his forearm on his thigh. He peered under his ball cap at the cause of my ire, but Bryn wasn’t looking at anything but me now. Had there ever been anything between us, or had it just been a Nereida-shaped lie?

“Didn’t your undercover operation go well, Stornoway?” Tye drawled. “Guess Roe’s not too happy to find you’ve been bonein’ her in the Gate and lyin’ about it—and James says I don’t know women.”

Bryn shoved off the wall.

I slapped the manual shut. “ You lied to me too,” I said, raising my voice to Tye. He’d let Bryn sleep with me in the Gate for months, right under my clueless nose.

Kazie spun on the stool, watching the commotion with the horrified exhilaration of a car crash rubbernecker.

Tye squirreled a finger into his knee. “Now listen, I never wanted to keep that from ya, but it was Stornoway’s call.”

My voice dropped to a growl. “That’s bullshit, Tye. Ruhaven rules don’t tell you to lie to me.”

He raised his eyebrows at James before dropping them on me again. “Well, that ain’t for me to say. But damn, girl, there’s a paintin’ of you in the library. I never thought it’d take this long.”

Me? He’d painted me? No. Not me —Nereida —and now I felt even dumber, if possible, and suddenly ridiculously jealous of a woman he shouldn’t even know about.

Bryn clenched the towel in his fist, the top button of his pants undone when they’d simply given way to rain. Stop looking there. Stop thinking about him.

“There is much you do not see, Rowan,” Bryn clipped out.

He had no right to look at me like that, not when he’d been manipulating me for months. There could have been something between us, but he’d ruined it because he was as selfish as human men.

Kazie piped up. “Don’t worry, Roe, Bryn’s a terrible painter. You’re much prettier than that portrait.”

Talk about not only missing the point, but driving right by it at ninety miles an hour. “It’s not the prettiness I care about, Kaz.” Then I turned on Bryn. “I care that he’s been using me.”

Bryn twisted the towel and tossed it on the stove. “Rowan, I will not talk to you about this here,” he said, like I was a woman with bad manners arguing in front of the guests.

Well, he had no idea just how poorly I’d been raised. I wasn’t going to take this from him, not from Tye, not from James. Whatever rank Bryn had in Ruhaven didn’t entitle him to manipulate me here.

I stabbed my finger into the Ford’s manual. “You’ve had months to talk about it. Instead, you made a joke out of me.”

His chest heaved, muscles rippling under his frozen skin, reminding me just what he could turn into when pushed. I didn’t care. Let him burst into light, into the Azekiel, and when he did, I’d show him what Nereida was made of.

James rose, a tea towel over his shoulder as he refilled the blackened kettle. “Listen, I know yer upset, Roe, but when Bryn asked us to say nothing, it made sense like.” He shoved a glass whistle in the shape of a magpie into the end and clacked it on the stove. “And ye were with Tye.”

What? “I was not .”

Stuffing a cigarette between his lips, Tye shrugged off my annoyance. “Roe, darlin’, I do so recall my hands full of you right here in that tack room.”

I had a brief, exhilarating vision of whipping Tye with his own guitar strings. But as I rounded the table, a growl ripped from Bryn’s throat.

Everyone looked at him. Cold fury rumbled under his skin, in his eyes.

So Bryn didn’t like his Nereida body bag being with other men. It nearly made me want to run naked into Capolinn’s fifteen pubs, including that one with the priests.

Bryn leveled his gaze at me. Try it .

Maybe I will . Maybe I’d bring them right back here and see what he made of Nereida’s stunt double doing the— Wait.

He looked away.

“No, that’s not—that’s not why he was…” I trailed off. No, it was ridiculous. Ridiculous. He hadn’t seen, hadn’t heard, but had he— felt me? I swallowed, hard. “Why Bryn was sick after the night we went to the game?”

Tye’s laugh was low, rough, and long. “I told ya he was obsessed with the Gate. Can’t smell meat, can’t eat meat, can’t stomach his reincarnated girlfriend enjoyin’ my very skilled hands, if I do say so.”

When he wiggled his fingers, Bryn looked ready to rip them off.

James elbowed between everyone. “Tye, ye feckin’ stop that now. And Roe,” he waved his hands as if I were Tye’s prize thoroughbred preparing to bolt, “do ye forget how terrified ye were? Ye called O’Sahnazekiel beast man for a month. Sure, it wasn’t going to be me who told ye it was this git here.” James jerked his chin at Bryn. “He didn’t want ye to know, and ‘twas business between him and yerself like.” He lifted a googly-eyed canister and withdrew a teabag.

“Why?” I pressed, curling my hand on the table. James had shown me the Gate, endured my barrage of questions, and even forgiven me for suspecting he killed and buried Ruhavens beneath those plaques. But when he could have saved me from this embarrassment, he’d said nothing.

James gave my shoulder a reassuring squeeze. “Ruhaven rules. Sure, it seemed ye had enough on yer plate anyway, what with the Tether breaking and yer research on the Inquitate. To be fair to ye, it was a lot for anyone to take in.”

Tye coughed. “Seems ya took him in just fine though.”

James groaned, Kazie chortled, and humiliation scorched a raw line from my head to my toes. It was a miracle the old floor didn’t catch fire.

Crash.

Glass exploded a foot from Tye’s head. Colored shards scattered on the floor in what was left of the kettle’s whistle.

Kazie covered her ears as Tye gritted out, “Take a fuckin’ joke, Stornoway.”

I spun around. Bryn’s eyes flashed, showing a glimmer of the man I’d seen after An Béal Bocht. Not a monster at all— Sahn . Because it was the Azekiel’s protection that had saved me after the bar. That was Bryn’s mark. Protection.

He yanked a sweater over his flushed skin. “You push too far, Tye.”

“You wanna go a round again, Stornoway?” Tye dusted porcelain flakes off his sleeve. “Why don’t ya stop chuckin’ pretty birds at me and I’ll show ya just how far I can push.”

At that point, I’d be happy if they both got a few good shots in, but James jumped between them, interrupting my fantasy as his waving hands knocked into the kitchen fixture. Bryn ducked the light’s swinging loop.

“Must be a bitch to be so useless,” Tye taunted Bryn over James’s shoulder. “Gotta throw Christmas ornaments instead of actually defendin’ your Gate girlfriend, and when you’re some ugly beast in Ruhaven too.”

I glanced at Bryn, then at his crippled leg shaking from the walk I’d made him do in the storm alone. When he escaped into Ruhaven, he’d experience Sahn running, swimming, and flying—among other things. Living like Bryn could never do here.

Do not look at me like that.

I jerked my gaze to his just as Tye advanced and James shouted, “Lads. Lads. Lads !” The kettle enunciated each word with a howl of steam. “Ye’ve already destroyed me mum’s favorite whistle, I’ll not have ye ruin the place like last time.”

Kazie skidded into the mix, a ballerina in a jungle. “Boys, boys. I can fix this.” She twirled her finger in the air before bringing it down on Tye’s chest. “You’re an asshole,” she declared with some affection. “And Bryn, you probably shouldn’t have made us lie to Roe for months.” At least somebody had my back, even if it was a tiny woman in a leprechaun suit. “And Roe?”

What, me? Why was I part of his lies?

Her cobalt-lined eyes softened. “Bryn’s been waiting for you for years. And I mean years . It messed with him, really bad. And now you’re here, and yeah, okay, maybe he didn’t go about it right, but cut the guy some slack.”

I would only if I could cut it from Tye’s guitar string.

Bryn drew himself in like a textbook snapped shut. So I’d get no answers as usual. He’d tell me what he wanted me to know and when he wanted me to know it.

He deliberately stepped away from Tye, who shot him a suggestion behind James’s back. “James, Kazie, we have other things to discuss besides our private business,” Bryn said in a way that made me want to walk up and shake him. “You should be aware we are in Drachaut now. O’Sahnazekiel and Nereida were ambushed—Kazmira, Essie, and Jamellian too. I met you outside the cavern before finding Rowan.”

Bryn’s quiet words defused the atmosphere like a plug yanked from the wall.

“Essie—is she alright?” James asked immediately.

“She is fine.”

“Drachaut attacked us?” Kazie clarified.

“Just one. Rowan’s Tether.”

James nodded. “I was wondering when we’d meet him.”

I tuned him out. Tuned them all out.

That beast was my Tether ?

But it wasn’t…that wasn’t me, wasn’t Willow . It was just some demon with blue scales. It meant nothing. He meant nothing. I’d felt no recognition.

“—I suppose they’ll need to figure out why this Drachaut severed its Tether, but right now, I’ve got to go see for meself, make sure Essie’s alright. Who can anchor me?”

Tye fluffed his ball cap over brown locks. “I’ll anchor. Are ya gonna be okay, Roe?”

“What?”

Tye shot a look at Bryn, whose frozen skin was still getting its color back.

“Fine. I’m fine, go. The Tether doesn’t have anything to do with me.” Never did.

Tye frowned after me, but left quietly once James and Kazie had bundled into coats.

When the door closed behind them, Bryn released a long breath. “We need to talk.”

“I agree.”

He looked taken aback as I strode past the woodstove, the heat licking up my calves. I fisted the kettle, poured hot water into the teapot James had readied but hadn’t used. Turned. “I want you to tell me something.”

He hesitated, then took a shaky step to the bench, sat. “Anything, Rowan.”

I let the warmth of the tea seep through my fingers. “When I came to you in Oslo and asked you about Willow, I hadn’t planned to come back to Naruka. I was going to get answers and leave. But you swore she’d been a victim of the Inquitate.”

“Yes.”

I took a breath. “You told me then, that you believed the answers to why the Inquitate attacked us were in the Gate. That the only way for me to find out why Willow was targeted was to relive the memories, to find out what we’d done that had caused this.”

“Yes, that is what I said.”

I squeezed the teacup so hard that black liquid spilled over my fingers, trickled down my wrist. “Did you say that because you believed it, or because you wanted Nereida?”

The kitchen clock ticked rapidly before puttering out.

Bryn sucked in his cheeks. “I did not believe the answers to the Inquitate would be found in the Gate, though Kazie and James did. I believed the reason we were attacked was due to something we had done here. You proved me incorrect when you discovered the triplet connection.”

I let the words soak into my bones, nestle there, and get comfortable, because I’d need to remember this when just looking at him threatened my resolve.

“Bryn?”

“Yes, Rowan?”

“James was right to kick you out.”