Page 38

CHAPTER 38

No Memories of Tomorrow

H is body burned beneath mine, porcelain skin glowing to gold, lightning skittering over his skin in a pulsing rhythm. The fog shone with it, revered it. The air behind him rippled for wings that didn’t exist in this world.

And my blood sang.

It was like Nereida recognized some part of Sahn and called to him, a song as clear as the thunder rolling overhead. Here was the only piece of him I could hold on to. Not in a dream or a memory, but flesh and blood and real. The truth of it fizzled in my lungs, burying deep under my heart in the place I thought there’d only been space for Willow.

Bryn?

His eyes shot wide a second before he yanked me against him, spinning me around until my spine hit the trunk and his body blocked mine.

Something exploded against us, against him.

I gasped.

A million firelights winked in a perfect, protective dome, blocking out the fog and the evening sky. I couldn’t hear the howling wind or the roaring river. The only light was from the flickering stars in the tiny world Bryn had created. Impossible. Magic. The same one I’d seen when he’d rescued me from my trip with the alarm clock.

Slowly, his eyes blinked open.

God. It was him.

Sahn stared back at me, let out two heavy, misted breaths.

Then, on a long groan, he dropped his head onto my shoulder. When I looped my arms around the warm heat of his neck, he skimmed his nose down my throat in a feather-soft touch, and all the while, the shield rippled around us. Its gentle lights were just bright enough to cast Bryn’s face in midnight hues, the tips of his eyelashes into burnished amber. Indigo splashed the top of his shoulders as if the sky and stars above us were from Ruhaven and not Earth at all.

Pulling back, I grabbed his face in my hands, searched for any sign of the pain that had sent him convulsing into the tree. “Are you hurt? Are you—”

He pried my hands away. “No, Rowan. Not like before.” Relief flooded my veins, but when I made to leave, Bryn boxed me in. “We must stay within this shield, as long as it is active, there is a threat outside.” Then the Inquitate were still here, beyond the shield of stars that obscured the forest. “I do not know why they appear yet again. It seems they will not stop following us until one of our triplet is dead.”

“James? Is he okay? Kazie? Tye?”

Bryn’s eyes clouded briefly, then he said, “I do not believe they are under threat.”

How could he know that? Just how far did his Mark extend? And why hadn’t he told me about how his protection works?

“I’m sorry about what I said in Naruka,” I said hurriedly. “I don’t want you to go back to Odda.”

“No, Rowan. No, I would never leave,” he whispered, breath warm against my frozen skin. “You asked me not to before, when you awoke from the Gate.”

The first time I’d slept with the Azekiel, when Bryn had hovered over me, eyes a burning gold.

His hands moved over my shoulders, my arms, my neck, then paused when they grazed my swollen lips.

I closed my eyes. “Bryn, it—the Inquitate—it said it was the one that hurt you. That it appeared as Nereida to you in L’Ardoise.”

Something flashed behind his eyes. Pain? Embarrassment? “Yes, that is true.” He drew back just an inch, but I felt the distance, more than just physical.

I slid my hands down his shoulders, braced my palms on his chest. “What happened in L’Ardoise?”

“Why were you in the woods, Rowan?”

I frowned at the sharp clip in his voice. “I—what? The clocks stopped. I thought the Inquitate had you.”

His gaze darted to my lips again. Show me, he repeated.

“Show you what?” I asked aloud.

His thumb brushed my mouth. This . The words were a gentle caress in my mind, like feathers again, brushing a soft space between my eyes, relaxing. Show me what happened. He trailed his hand to my eyelids, waited for me to flutter them closed, then laid his fingertips overtop. As I did before, except you shall give me a memory instead.

Nerves jumped as I remembered sliding down the hill, thinking it’d been him drowning. Of every second of bone-chilling terror.

Then his hands warmed, and the memory replayed—my panic, its teeth biting my tongue, the shock of the water, and then the Inquitate’s admission.

He dropped his hand, face unreadable.

“Why won’t you tell me what happened to you?” I asked. “In L’Ardoise?”

But Bryn looked away, monitoring the stars swirling in the walls of the shield that even now kept the Inquitate out.

I gripped his chin, pulled him back. “You tell me nothing,” I said quietly. “You kept your identity from me, you didn’t tell me why you wanted me to visit the Gate. I don’t really know you.”

His eyes flashed. “Everything you need to know of me is in the Gate.”

That didn’t make any sense. “You’re not Sahn. You have a life here. You grew up in Odda, you have a mother who captained a ship, you went to school for art, you enjoyed glacier walking, you had a pretty apartment with tulips.”

He planted his palms against the bark, framing me with his body again. “Rowan, I tell you what I believe you are prepared to understand. Consider how you might have felt if you had known it was me in the Gate with you. Would you have visited?”

Not in a million years. “I can decide what I need to know.”

He studied me coolly. “Very well, Rowan. Yes, the Inquitate showed me Nereida, and if I had known what I do today, I likely would have seen through the illusion immediately.”

“Why?”

“The Inquitate show you something you desire. I do not know if it is always the case, or even always a person, but after you saw Willow, I assumed it must be.”

I blushed to know I’d just shown Bryn a memory of them appearing as him .

He glanced at the shield, checking that it was intact. “I was running in the park outside L’Ardoise,” he continued briskly, but at least he was telling me something . “I used to make a habit of doing so—running, I mean—and I quite enjoyed the landscape in your town. It reminded me of the west of Norway. But it was while I was jogging through the pine trees that she—it—stepped into my path.”

Nereida. An Inquitate.

“She glowed like a fallen star and was surprisingly taller than me. I had never seen her but as O’Sahnazekiel. Now, she stood before me amongst the changing leaves, and I could barely utter a coherent word. She said, ‘Hello, Brynjar,’ in English, and it was strange to hear her speak it from lips that had only known Ruhaven. While I was staring at her, immersed, besotted, in awe—something else was eating away at my leg. Dissolving the bone and muscle.”

His face had gone white, but he pushed on. “I was able to escape because I remembered you, as I had seen you in L’Ardoise and knew you to be Nereida. When I recalled this, the illusion began to dissolve. Then I felt what they had done to my leg. Someone called for an ambulance, believing I must have been run over by a car. After they stabilized me, I flew home to recover, to learn to walk again.”

I should have been there, should have known. He’d been only a few miles away, suffering from the Inquitate, and I hadn’t helped him.

He gently pried my hands from his shirt, dropped them. “You still do not recall meeting me in L’Ardoise?”

I sucked in my lips. “I think, maybe. I…”

His eyes cooled to clear ice. “No,” he said softly. “After everything, you still do not.”

“If you would just—Bryn!”

I screamed when something grabbed him through the shield, the starry dome bursting as Bryn fell backwards.

I lunged for him.

And was hauled off my feet.

“Goddamn it, Roe,” a familiar voice cursed as it crushed me to a body that smelled of leather and soap and pine. “You ain’t got any goddamn idea what a scare you gave me.” Tye dropped me on my feet and whirled. “And you!” Tye jabbed a finger at Bryn’s sprawled form, the paintbrushes from his pocket now littering the forest. “Fuckin’ neckin’ out here in the woods with the Inquitate everywhere.”

Then he hadn’t seen what Bryn could conjure.

I fisted Tye’s leather jacket. “No, Bryn stopped them.”

Tye wiped at his forehead, disbelief darkening his eyes. “ Stopped them ? Like he stopped Colm? Yeah, James told me all about that.” He whirled back to Bryn, watching as he searched for a makeshift cane. “From what I hear, he was wanderin’ the streets lookin’ for a carrot or somethin’ ‘cause he’s so far in the Gate he can’t eat nothin’. Convenient, Stornoway, that you’re off dilly-dallyin’ while Roe’s gettin’ the shit kicked out of her by Colm. Now here we go again. Funny how you’re always just a little too late, ain’t it?”

Bryn tried to stand by planting a gnarled oak branch in the mud, but when I started to reach for him, Tye blocked me.

I elbowed Tye. “Would you stop? The Inquitate were—”

Like a dog struggling to keep up, James burst through the trees with Kazie on his heels. I closed my eyes for a moment, just took a breath, then another. James was okay .

When I opened them again, I saw that his jeans were drenched, his eyes wild and worried, and the relentless rain had finally tamed his unruly hair. “I feckin’ come back, Kazie’s yelling about clocks, ye two are gone. I thought ye were both dead!”

“The clocks stopped !” she squealed, her voice tinged with a manic excitement only slightly less crazed than her skirt. But god, I wanted to hug every stupid feather of it.

James glanced between us, then turned to Bryn and tackled him. Bryn swore as James wrapped him in a fierce hug. Kazie joined the fray, diving on top and crushing them into a bush of shriveled blackberries. They spoke over each other, pelting Bryn with questions as he lay sprawled under their weight.

“C’mon, Roe,” Tye said, tugging me toward Naruka, his face devoid of humor. “You’re gonna tell me everythin’.”

S calding water pummeled life into my bones.

I planted my hands on the tiles, groaning as the shower spray cascaded over my shoulders, dripped off my breasts, and plastered my waist-length hair into a dark curtain.

I tried to wash away the twisted memories the Inquitate had conjured, and how close I’d been to losing Bryn.

He’d looked beaten. Mentally. Physically. And he’d been quiet on the way home, even as Tye tossed questions out in a rapid-fire assault. But Bryn had admitted nothing. Not the shield that had appeared to protect me, not the river I thought I’d drowned in.

Why had the Inquitate appeared again? And why did they need to root out the triplets? Was it related to mates? I’d found two others who were both mates and had suffered aneurysms, but the rest either weren’t mated or never discovered they were. Had they been killed before they could ? Stupid. What did the Inquitate care?

I wilted against the stall door. Dead ends—that’s all I had, and now they were on our doorstep.

When even the water didn’t help, I turned off the taps and stuffed my arms into the housecoat Kazie had left for me, my limbs moving like worms through dirt. Then I slipped on the matching dog slippers and strode out. If their drooling tongues dragged on the floor, I pretended not to notice.

In the main hall, Naruka’s roaring fireplace stole some of the fear even the water hadn’t been able to wash away. The apple coal burned to bright jewels, and logs the size of tree trunks sent five-foot flames scorching up the chimney. Everything from the paintings to the television to the glass tables was soaked in the smoky, golden light.

Kazie sprawled on a velvet teal chair near the fireplace, a biscuit halfway to her lips and wearing her hair in a poofy bun with jeweled pineapples dangling off the scrunchy.

Bryn slouched in a matching loveseat by the fire, his leg propped on a tattered footstool. He wore the simple, cotton pants he preferred sleeping in, with the bow of their drawstring half undone. Tattooed gears disappeared under the cuff of a gray T-shirt. For Bryn, it was a wardrobe in disarray.

I didn’t want the hot shower, didn’t want the warmth of the fireplace, had only the inexplicable urge to climb into his lap and wrap my arms around his neck.

I turned my focus on Tye. He leaned on the kitchen doorjamb, arms crossed, with a steady gaze that saw through me. Tye hadn’t bothered with a shower or changing after the forest, as if the mud smearing his clothes proved a point.

Behind him, James tossed open the kitchen door.

“I can’t feckin’ believe this like.” He crossed the room, draped himself on the velvet sofa beside me, and rubbed at his eyebrows until they resembled Irish moss. “In all me years, ‘tis never been this bad. I’ve called who I could to warn them. But Jayzus, when I came home and didn’t hear those feckin’ clocks, me bloody heart stopped altogether.”

I leaned forward. “Did you know they would stop for the Inquitate?”

James shook his head. “No, sure, but me mum was superstitious, and she told me once she put them up to protect us, never said why. Now I know. Aye, now I know.”

But they hadn’t protected her.

Tye rolled his shoulders in the kitchen doorway. “Maggie kept a lot of things to herself.”

Bryn leaned forward, his damp hair hanging in silky trails over his eyes. “She did, indeed. This is why we must speak to Carmen, Tye.”

“Carmen?” Tye barked. “What’s she got to do with this?”

Bryn pulled an envelope from his pocket. “I believe she has everything to do with this. I have found earlier letters from her to Maggie.”

“Goddamn, Stornoway, you’re some snoop.” Yeah, and pretty good at it.

James set down his tea. “What’s this about letters from Auntie Carmen?”

Bryn thumbed one open, tossed it to James. “I found these hidden amongst your mother’s old things. Carmen believed the Inquitate were created from Drachaut during the original Fall from Tallah.”

Because, like a circuit, they’d needed an existing energy to be created? No, an existing soul —the Drachaut.

James blew out a breath. “That’s some theory, like. But sure that’s all it is. And what would Carmen know of it when she’s not even been at the bloody Gate in years?”

Kazie nodded around a biscuit. “But it kind of makes sense doesn’t it? Everything’s energy,” she reiterated, voice pitching up. “Mates. Tethers. The Gate. It’s all about balance. If our souls get to make the journey here, it makes sense there’s something that happens to the sacrificed Drachaut.”

An Inquitate for a Drachaut’s soul.

“Yes, that is what Carmen believed,” Bryn agreed, shifting so his loose shirt showed a hint of taut torso.

Tye banged a fist against the wall before shoving off it. He paced in front of the kitchen doorway, his shadow blocking the light every few seconds. “She never told me nothin’ ‘bout the Inquitate,” he growled, then yanked out a baseball from his pocket. “And Maggie? If she knew the whole time, why didn’t she say nothin’? Instead, she ends up damn well killed with the rest.” He tossed the ball in the kitchen, where it ka-plunked against the metal fridge, then strode toward Bryn.

I started to get up.

Stay there .

“Maggie’s death is not her fault, but that of the Inquitate,” Bryn warned in a low voice.

Tye brushed past me. “Ya know, I don’t believe a word you got to say, Stornoway. So you let me see that letter now.”

Saying nothing, Bryn handed it to him.

Tye unfolded the paper, read it with a frown that puckered his chin and widened his nose. He let out a muttered oath before swinging toward the bar. “Stornoway ain’t lyin’ this time, anyway.”

I uncrossed my legs, then recrossed them when cold whipped up my thin housecoat. “So Carmen gets a wild hunch that the Inquitate are created from Drachaut and writes to Maggie about it? No, Carmen knows something, or someone.”

I chanced a look at James’s furrowed brow.

“Tye, yer close with Carmen,” James said. “Maybe ye know her better than I do now. Do ye know how she’d come across this?”

Tye poured a lick of James’s preferred whiskey, swirled his glass, then tilted his head back and downed it. James winced. “Close? Wouldn’t say so, no more than anyone is to their recruiter. As far as the energy thing goes, I don’t know nothin’ ‘bout that. We didn’t talk ‘bout that stuff.”

“She never mentioned the letters to me mum?”

Tye shook his head, seemed to consider pouring another glass before he stalked around the lounge. He’d always been intimidating, but in a different way than Bryn. Meaner, stronger. “She never mentioned none of these theories. She was my recruiter and I respected that, but we ain’t pen pals.”

James slipped a bottle of whiskey from his pocket and doctored his tea. “Ye know Carmen’s a triplet too. Ye think she’d want to be with us, be worried about an attack like.”

Not if she knew how to avoid one. And why wouldn’t she? She knew how they were made—maybe she didn’t have anything to fear.

Tye rested his elbows on the back of an empty chair. “I told ya, ever since y’all found the Inquitate were causin’ aneurysms, she don’t want much to do with this place. But the fact is, there’s a connection between goin’ to the Gate and the Inquitate, whether you wanna believe it or not.”

James lifted a black eyebrow. “Between the Gate and the Inquitate?”

“Well, ya don’t see humans dyin’ from ‘em, do ya?” Tye shot back as he prowled the room, jabbing at each of us. “Souls bein’ transferred, Inquitate created from Drachaut voodoo, triplets are magical—y’all don’t want to admit why we’re bein’ attacked. Of course it’s the goddamn Gate. But that wouldn’t suit none of ya ‘cause you’re addicted.”

I felt my hackles rise. “This isn’t James’s fault.”

James waved me back. “No, no, don’t ye go defendin’ me, Roe. Tye, if ye’ve something to say to me, then come out with it.”

Tye scooped back his hair into a short ponytail. “Ya want the truth, James? Because I sure am tired of holdin’ my tongue,” he said, looking like a horse picking up speed for the finish line. “I risked bringin’ Roe here only ‘cause you were gonna solve this problem. But it’s gettin’ worse! Fuckin’ Inquitate in our backyard and not one of you is takin’ it seriously. Kazie’s got her head in the clouds. You, James, are gone stupid over a walkin’, talkin’ rock—”

“Rock spirit ,” James hissed.

“—and Stornoway spends his days gettin’ his dick stroked by a dream.”

I choked on my tea.

James just steepled his fingers. “Alright so, I know yer concerned for Roe. I am meself. There’s never been a Ruhaven targeted more than once, but I don’t think ye should jump to—”

“More than once ?” Tye snarled like a coyote sprung from a trap.

Goddamn it, James.

I braced when Tye rounded on me, leaning into the pointed toes of his cowboy boots. “Roe, did you go on and lie to me?”

We stared at each other. If I admitted the truth, that Bryn and James had asked me to lie, they’d be in worse trouble than me. Tye was right to be angry—this affected him too. He didn’t understand how close the Inquitate might be to him.

“I’m sorry, Tye,” I said, thinking up excuses on the fly. “I was in Oslo when I saw one, and I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to worry you.”

He bent down until we were nose to nose. “Darlin’, do I look worried?”

Bryn had better be worth this. “Uh, no, but I didn’t know how you’d react when I saw them and—”

“It was me who asked Rowan not to tell you,” Bryn stated.

In the fireplace, logs popped like dislocated bones.

Tye whirled on Bryn. “ You? ” he uttered—condemnation, trial, and executioner.

It was a testament to Bryn’s stone exterior that he didn’t wither under the living torrent that was Tye and only adjusted his injured leg on the footstool.

“In Oslo,” Bryn continued evenly, but I heard the steel under it, honed and sharp, “Rowan was approached by an Inquitate. I intervened.”

Intervened—a careful phrase for tackling me as I chased after Willow. I’d been in danger, and he’d been able to run because of O’Sahnazekiel’s Mark.

As usual, Bryn left me in a state of confusion. He’d lied. He’d protected me. He’d been a friend. He’d made a mockery of me.

“Ya know, I went along with your bullshit with the Gate for James’s sake. He tells me you’ve got some misplaced right to keep that from Roe, and I go along with it. When you drag her up there to anchor together ‘cause she’s too embarrassed to go with us, knowin’ full well you’re fuckin’ her when she thinks you don’t know nothin’, I hold my tongue. For James,” Tye continued, but Bryn’s face had started to lose color.

My own stomach twisted, because not one of those words were a lie, even if I didn’t like the way he said it.

Tye slipped bunched fists from his pockets. “Now I hear you’ve put her in danger? Made her lie about the Inquitate? Not even for James am I gonna swallow your bullshit anymore, Stornoway.” He planted his hands on each side of Bryn, grasping the armrests in an almost exact parody of what Bryn had done to me in Oslo.

“The first is between Rowan and I,” Bryn said, gaze level. “The second, because you could never deal with the realities of the Gate.”

Palpable rage rippled under Tye’s skin. “You ain’t got no fuckin’ idea what I know of the realities in the Gate,” he warned, voice barely more than a whisper.

I could taste Tye’s hate as much as feel it, a loathing that went beyond a lie about the Inquitate.

His grip tightened, stretching the jacket over a body that would flatten Bryn. Flames withered in the fireplace, eating the oxygen not consumed by the men staring at each other.

I started to rise off the couch.

“Rowan, sit down ,” Bryn ordered, never taking his eyes off Tye. When I ignored him, he added, “James, stop her.”

Then all hell broke loose.

Tye reared back and kicked the footstool from under Bryn’s crippled leg. It flew across the room, smashing into the wall the same time his heel hit the floor.

A low groan hissed between Bryn’s teeth in a face gone sheet white.

“What the hell are you doing!” I screamed, but James caught me as I lunged for Tye.

“This ain’t about you anymore, Roe,” Tye said, looking ready to draw blood and taste it.

“Get away from him!”

I fought with James. The tea went flying, scalding my toes right through the stupid dog slippers as he muscled me onto the couch with Kazie’s help, her inch-long nails pinching into my housecoat.

Tye hitched up his jeans, crouching to eye level with Bryn, who was only a shadow against the fire. “What the fuck were you doin’ out in the woods, Stornoway?”

Had he been? Had that been real?

Tye’s hand snaked out and gripped Bryn’s foot by the ankle.

Bryn didn’t look at me as he said, “James, take Rowan out of here.”

This was bullshit. “The hell you are,” I said, swearing at James for the first time since he’d shown me Naruka.

James gripped my arm, looking torn between jumping on Tye and wrestling me, then ended on the latter when he pinned me to the couch, a knee on the small of my back.

“James, I swear, I don’t care how much Irish charm you lay on,” I hissed into the musty fabric, “I won’t forgive you for this.”

“Ah, but ye’ve only seen half of me wiles. Ye think I run Naruka for nothing, so?”

Kazie patted my head. “It’s not for us.”

What kind of weird Ruhaven law were they following now? “Tye, if you hurt him, I’ll use my pliers—the rusty ones—on your toes.” He wouldn’t really hurt him, would he?

Tye didn’t spare me a glance. “You’re a cheap date, Roe. One Inquitate attack and you’ve forgiven him already.” Bryn flinched as Tye began to twist his ruined leg. “Not going to stop me, Stornoway?”

Sweat beaded on Bryn’s temple, his arms straining on the chair. “No,” he said through clenched teeth. “I neither can nor will stop you, as you know.”

So he’d just sit there and let Tye hurt him?

Tye pulled his lips back, baring a perfect set of teeth. “Where the hell were you tonight, Stornoway?”

“It was my fault,” I bit out. “I told Bryn to go away, to paint a flower. Insulted him.”

Tye cocked his head with an incredulous look. “Roe, this man’s got one fuckin’ job. And it ain’t to paint no dandelions.” He flashed his teeth. “Stornoway, I’m startin’ to wonder why you’re so goddamn bad at it.”

“You are right,” Bryn said tightly, his breathing strained now as Tye twisted. “It was my fault. I should not have left Rowan alone.”

Tye wrenched out another hissed grunt. “Ya know, that just makes me wonder why ya did. Weren’t you supposed to be watchin’ her, your precious Nereida?”

“Yes.”

“Protecting her?”

“Yes.”

Tye curled his lip, leaned closer, his knuckles whitening, squeezing, twisting. Then he said softly, voice a dull dagger, “I hope she’s worth the pain.”

“Kazie,” Bryn hissed a second before she slapped a biscuit-scented hand over my eyes.

I didn’t understand, not at first.

Then it dawned on me. He was going to break his leg.

I fought against James and Kazie, bracing for the sound of breaking bone just as I tore Kazie’s hand away at last.

How bad was it? How bad—

Bryn panted, his chest heaving as Tye stood slowly and wiped his knuckles across his chin. “Next time, I’m gonna fuckin’ do it,” he warned, voice low.

Relief had my knees going weak.

“Bryn, are you—”

He shook his head, wouldn’t meet my eyes.

Tye unzipped his breast pocket, pulled a smoke from the pack he stored there. “Ya know, Stornoway,” he began, sliding a cigarette between his lips, “it’s a damn coward who only fights when he knows he can win.”

I cursed Tye with enough zeal to make Bryn’s mother blush, but Tye only squared his shoulders and let my words pummel him as he puffed on the smoke.

“That’s some mouth on ya, Roe. Pick that up on the job, huh? Wouldn’t mind hearin’ it a bit more often. Could use some truth around here.” He flicked hot ash at Bryn.

“Tye,” James spluttered, “ye’ve got no business threatening him like that.”

“He’s lyin’ about something, and he better stay away from that Gate.”

James’s mouth gaped. “Ye’ll demand no such thing. The Gate’s a bloody blessing like.”

“A blessing!” Tye picked up the cane Kazie had found in the woods. For a heartbeat, I thought he’d hit Bryn with it. Then he whirled on James and I.

Bryn shoved out of his chair.

Tye kicked his leg out from under him, sending Bryn sprawling into the rug.

“This is your goddamn blessin’, James.” Tye waved the cane under James’s shell-shocked face. “ You caused this, and you keepin’ things from me almost got Roe killed today too. As for you, Stornoway.” Bryn grunted as the cane caught him in the chest. “Get your dick out of Ruhaven.”