Page 40

CHAPTER 40

After Many Miles

I let the music carry me out of the cold and into Naruka’s stifling warmth, past portraits and paintings, and the bathroom Bryn had been sick in.

The notes grew louder, insistent, exotic.

Mocking.

How many things would Bryn keep from me? A man who’d decided since the day we met what I should know and when I should know it. Who’d left me standing in his office, ready to beg for any scrap of information about my dead twin. Only after the Inquitate had appeared had he decided that I should know about his research. But not before forcing me to commit to the Gate and Naruka. Not to help me find what happened to Willow, but for him.

I elbowed into the music room.

Candles flickered against the worn brick and every-color lights dangled around the window. Two musty-pine wreaths pinned back the curtains on each side, their needles littering the carpet beneath.

And in the middle of mirrors and portraits, of plants and tapestries, below a chandelier, sat Bryn. He hunched over the piano, hands gliding over keys, his skin glowing under the light of two candelabras. James’s shellac had left a thick sheen on the piano, like a lady with too many layers of makeup.

Bryn didn’t look up as I stepped from his shadow.

His stiffened fingers pounded keys, his thigh tightening with each stomp of the pedal as he rolled into the next verse, tattoos flexing on his forearm. He’d removed his jacket and scarf and draped them so precisely over a bird sculpture that no one would ever guess it wasn’t designed for precisely that purpose.

I stared at the dusty-blond hair parted precisely down the middle and hiding his eyes. I was tired of being the electrician the book had made a mistake on. If it had, it was my mistake to do something with. I could make this life my own and to hell with whatever birth the monks had written in the Ledger all those centuries ago. I was here, for better or worse. It was me who could live the memories, and I wouldn’t let anyone else use them against me.

“Did you enjoy making a fool out of me, Bryn?”

He fixed his gaze on the piano. Moonlight rolled over his carved nose like two halves of a mountain, one in shadow, one in silky, yellow light. “That was never my intention, Rowan. But I infer your comment to mean that you do now recall where we first met.”

Infer . “I do.”

He gave a quick jerk of the head that fell into perfect tempo with the music before reaching for his wine, his throat bobbing under an open collar as he drank. A hint of his collarbone gleamed in the light. The hemp bracelet Kazie had made him months ago hung loosely from his left wrist.

Bryn set the glass down, the clink of it rolling like thunder, and curled his fingers to the keys.

“You were working in the Blue Nose, fixing a circuit board behind the bar, when I walked in.” His words were clipped, even, factual, like he wanted to keep all personal emotion out of it.

“And you sat down and played the piano,” I finished.

“I needed an excuse to speak to you, to introduce myself, and to eventually convince you to come to Naruka,” Bryn explained. “I knew you’d attended music college, and of course, I knew your sister had been a prodigy of a sort. I suspected the piano would attract your attention.”

It had, but maybe not in the way he’d intended. I’d listened to him for a long while, imagining that’s what I could have been, if I’d stayed in college, if I hadn’t been afraid of always being second to Willow.

“So you saw me, saw some other version of Nereida, and thought I’d jump to Naruka for a song.”

“Yes,” he said boldly. His fingers, orange and pink from the glow of the candelabra, struck the notes pointedly, carrying from C major, F, G, A minor, and F again.

Ping. I jabbed a broken ivory key on the highest octave. I was tired of this, the cold wall of feigned politeness he shoved between us, the clipped words. “You didn’t introduce yourself, didn’t talk to me.”

“You were at the bar,” Bryn continued like I hadn’t spoken, “wearing your tool belt with a roll of electrical tape bouncing off your left thigh, workman’s boots with striped ochre laces—the left shoe in a loose bow, and a checkered Venetian-red shirt with half the hem tucked into your pants. Your hair was in a ponytail.”

And I hadn’t remembered him. Point taken.

“Bryn, you looked different. Your hair was in a braid like mine.” No, like Sahn’s . That’d been a year ago, when he was exiled, because he’d wanted to cling to the image of the Azekiel. Until he hadn’t. “And you had a beard, a toque—”

“Yet I have never forgotten you, Rowan. Not the feel of your eyes, not the sound of your voice.” Bryn coaxed the keys into the next melody, pausing on a whole note, and for the first time, lifted his twilight eyes to mine, eyes that had been too dark to see in the pub that night.

I took a deep breath. “Did you expect me to recognize you in Norway?”

Disappointment sliced his glass cheekbones. “No, Rowan. I expected you to recognize O’Sahnazekiel.”

To recognize that ripple of something other in his bones, the aura I’d felt from him in that stifling office. But I hadn’t. Because I hadn’t seen the Gate yet? Because I wasn’t Nereida? Had this all be some kind of test?

“Is that what this is about?” I pressed. “It is, isn’t it? You wanted to get back at me. I didn’t recognize you in Oslo, so you’d make a fool out of me here. Humiliate me. Are we even now?”

He stroked the keys into a raging chorus. “The fact that you believe that of me proves how little you understand of us.”

I slapped his hand into the second octave, crunching out a high-pitched wail. “Stop talking to me like that.”

Like a dam about to burst, frustration rippled over his face before he quickly smothered it. “The choices I made to keep details from you—of us, of O’Sahnazekiel—were for your benefit. Not mine.”

The gall of him!

“For my benefit?” I repeated, my disbelief pitching up to match the piano’s higher octaves. “You lied to me for months ! You let me think I was safe with you while everyone else knew exactly what was happening, what you were doing. I was na?ve and embarrassed and you preyed on that. You made them keep your secret. And worse, Tye had to watch me go with you, saying nothing, keeping your secret. He, at least, had the decency to—”

Bang.

Bryn slammed the keys.

“ Decency? ” he growled, eyes flashing with temper. “Rowan, should decency and that man ever meet, I expect the world to be at its end.”

The pedal snapped up into ringing silence, the aftermath of a comet dropped into the ocean when the shoreline retreats into the sea.

I took a careful step back as he swiped his cane, shoved up. My pulse pounded at the intent darkening his eyes.

“Bryn, don’t—”

My spine hit the wall.

He planted a hand on either side of my head, forcing me to meet those burning eyes despite the fear bleating in my lungs. Fear because his shadowed portrait held none of its usual restraint. His nostrils flared, his lips parted, and his eyes darkened bit by bit to the deep, burning gold of O’Sahnazekiel.

“You push too far, Rowan,” Bryn warned in a voice I didn’t recognize, like poured fire over velvet. “Have you considered that Tye knew what you were to me? When he kissed you in the tack room, he knew. When he unbuttoned your soaked jacket, he knew. When he shoved his fingers beneath your shirt, he knew what you were to me.”

How did he know all that?

“Knew I was what to you, Bryn? Your past life’s replacement girlfriend? Some bug-eyed reincarnation? Some silver—”

His growl cut me off. “My mate , Rowan. You are my mate.”

A shudder rolled through me at the emotion thickening his voice, the utter desperation and longing and fear that pumped from him.

“I’m not your mate,” I said, voice shaking. This was so much worse now, so much worse.

His eyes flared. “ You are Nereida, whether you wish to accept it or not. I have always known what and who you are, I do not need the Ledger to know you are mine . So know this, Rowan. There is nothing I would not do for my mate, no lie I would not carry, no consequence I could not bear.”

Pulse fluttering, I flattened my palm against his chest, his solid warmth beating under me. “Including living a lie with me for months?”

“ Yes ,” Bryn hissed out. “And damn the consequences. Do you think this has been easy? To watch Tye with you? To have him call me while I am recovering in Norway and tell me of your mutual involvement?”

I blinked in shock. For the first time, I was completely at a loss. Tye and I? Surely he didn’t mean the kiss at the Gate? “What?”

Bryn leaned closer, so close that every pulsing vibration of his body caressed mine. “While I was learning to walk again, Tye had taken over the task of recruiting you.” A vein flicked at his temple. “But he did not call to tell me you were moving to Naruka, but to tell me how far you two had progressed .”

Progressed? But it was the flash of hurt in Bryn’s eyes that had me understanding. “Tye and I never—”

“Of which I understand now. Yet at that time, he informed me you were in such graphic detail as to leave no doubt. Despite knowing who you were to me, despite understanding the rules of Ruhaven. You I do not hold to the same account, but him? ” Bryn bent, whispered darkly in my ear, “I will not repeat to you what he said. Suffice you understand that it was not decent .”

He pulled back, jaw clenched. Tension echoed in every rigid line of his body, the set of his shoulders, the veins corded in his neck. “So I did not return to L’Ardoise, nor Naruka,” Bryn snapped out the words as if to get them over with, “for many reasons that I have not shared, and yes, because I could not bear to see Tye touch you.”

Because it should be me, Rowan, and only me, he said, and I couldn’t stop my answering shiver.

“But then you came to Norway,” Bryn threw out. “And I foolishly believed it was because you wished to find me. As your mate.”

Because he had, in L’Ardoise. Because somehow before he’d ever seen me in the Gate, he’d recognized Nereida. Not in Willow, but in me. Because I was more than just the Ledger to him.

I clutched Bryn’s trembling forearm, met his searing gaze. “How did you know?”

“Rowan, I would recognize you anywhere. In any form. In any place.”

I closed my eyes, opened them. “Why didn’t you tell me who you were?”

Flecks of candlelight bounced off his clenched jaw. Beautiful, even in the shadows. “Do you not think I have wanted to?” Bryn shifted his hand from the wall to my hair, his fingers shaking like mine. “You came to my office not to find your mate, but for answers to something you did not apparently believe in. Ruhaven was my life , Rowan, a life from which I was exiled from, and you disavowed all that I had come to value, all that I had sacrificed for it. So while every ounce of my Ruhaven soul was screaming at me to touch you, to confess all you had become to me, to share all I knew of Ruhaven, of us, I could not face having you smear it with your disbelief. Because from that , I knew I could not recover.”

His eyes winked closed, taking their burning gold with them for a moment.

“But I could not give you up again either,” he said, opening them again. “So yes, I manipulated you into visiting the Gate, in the hope that you, Nereida, would come to see me. I wished for a chance to know you, my Rowan, without the influence of our past. I decided I would wait. And though I woke from the Gate as torturously aroused as you—many, many times—you still did not see me as O’Sahnazekiel.” My thighs quivered before the liquid gold swimming in his eyes. “So you see, my Rowan,” Bryn said roughly, “it is you who have made a fool out of me .”

The truth of that settled in me, somewhere deep in my gut. I hadn’t seen him, hadn’t seen the truth I so desperately wanted for myself. The one person who could be sure of who I was.

Everything in me tightened as Bryn leaned in.

He brushed his lips lightly, slowly, over the corner of my mouth. And the world seemed to pause.

I whispered his name, turned to meet the mouth I’d fantasized about for months. But he kept moving, skimming my jaw, traveling silkily along my neck until his hot breath at my ear melted my core. All around us, the candles flickered in burned stubs, replaced by moonlight that shimmered through the window and tangled in his blond locks.

“ Rowan ,” he groaned, covering my body with his, closing the vibrating space between us until he was gloriously, perfectly pressed against me. I wanted to melt into him. Melt, as each point of connection shot hot sparks into my veins—his chest against my breasts, his hips pinning me to the brick wall, his teeth grazing my earlobe.

On his next breath, firm hands stroked down my arms and captured my wrists. “Now, I will admit the rest, so you shall be truly righteous in your anger at me,” he murmured, accent as dark and sinful as the lips pressed to my ear. But he could have admitted anything just then for all I cared. “I anchored you not to embarrass you, but to ensure you did not experience something beyond your comfort level. This is why you did not live through O’Sahnazekiel and Nereida’s mating for months. I intentionally woke us before things progressed.”

That was why I’d always woken—

“ But then you returned with Tye in the tack room, ” Bryn accused, and I whimpered when he nipped at my ear. “And so I made a decision. I knew what would happen on the night of Yizomithou in Ruhaven. I wanted it. Badly. I could have pulled you out and waited, but I chose not to.”

The night Sahn and Nereida had danced under the mountains, flown through the churning gears, and landed amongst the hammock. He was with me, that’d been him I’d felt watching me.

God, I was burning up.

He wove fingers in my hair and tugged, exposing my neck to his warm breaths.

“Bryn—why?” I pleaded, panted.

He inhaled against me and my skin buzzed from just the promise of more, the fire in my belly moving lower and lower. “Why did I prevent their mating before? Because you were uncomfortable with Sahn. Why did I not do so on Yizomithou?” The flick of his tongue had me angling my neck for more. Every lick and touch was pure fire on my skin. “Because I wanted you to understand, needed to be with you in any way I could, and Rowan…” His nose skimmed my throat. “I do not think you were very uncomfortable then.”

“But you were anchoring that night,” I managed. “You weren’t there. In the Gate.” With me while Sahn…

“Was I not?” Bryn challenged in a silken warning.

Teeth latched on to my fluttering pulse and bit softly, wringing a moan from my lips.

On Yizomithou? No, he was anchoring when Sahn’s teeth sunk into my neck, pinning me in the tree canopy before he…

I jerked under Bryn’s bite. “ You —you were there. You saw—you saw…”

“Yes, my Rowan.” He released me, licking languidly where his teeth pinched. “I entered Ruhaven after the three of you slipped through the Gate, intending to anchor myself in time to wake you.” When his burning eyes lifted to mine, cold air grazed my dampened skin where he’d tasted. “I enjoyed watching you, Rowan, watching as O’Sahnazekiel took you for the first time. Enjoyed feeling your eyes on me. Because I was that desperate to have any part of you, even if only in a memory.”

Me , not Nereida.

His gaze dipped to my lips like he could hear my pounding heart. “My Rowan,” he breathed, stroking a thumb along my jaw. “Are you very upset with me?”

Gold leaked from his irises, sparkling over his cheekbones, lighting up each and every hidden freckle. “Furious,” I whispered.

His eyes flashed molten, fire whipped by wind, a brilliant, burning eclipse before his eyelashes swept down over them.

He drew my wrists over my head.

And then, with my name a groan on his lips, he crushed his mouth to mine.