Page 50 of The Minor Fall

CHAPTER 50

Turtles All the Way Down

I n the ticking silence of my bedroom, I emptied the dresser at random, oblivious to what I packed as my suitcase went from empty to swollen. When tears burned my eyes, I wiped them quickly away, as disgusted with myself as the Gate must be. I should be happy it was giving me this gift, not upset about the cost.

A rapid knock shook the door.

Before I could answer, Bryn opened it on a loud squeak.

The window’s blue moonlight highlighted the strain around his wide mouth as he thumped into the room, turned, and scraped the bolt into the latch.

How would I ever give him up? But then, maybe it’d be like he first wanted—he’d have Nereida back, just not me.

Bryn’s gaze crawled over my suitcase, the heaps of clothes on my dresser, the socks I hadn’t packed. He peeled off his jacket, laid it across my desk chair, then unwound his scarf and repeated the motion. His eyes—flat, cold, and icy blue—met mine. Held.

“I assume you are in a state of shock,” he said.

Was I? Is that why my legs felt numb, why there was a burning dread eating away at my stomach lining? Why I couldn’t bear to look at Bryn and realize I’d never be able to give him up?

“Because I fail to understand why you would otherwise leave with Tye at such a time,” he said when I remained mute.

I walked mechanically across the room, tugged open my drawer, and dragged out a handful of socks.

“Tye bought me a plane ticket,” I said tonelessly.

“And that is all it takes for you to leave with him? Tye, who very nearly broke your arm.”

Why was I holding socks? “He wouldn’t have.”

Bryn shook his head, then limped with loud footfalls to my window and brushed aside the dangling curtains. The dusky twilight silhouetted him in purple lines, his back warm and lit by the lamp. A leaf he hadn’t noticed from the Gate still clung to the hem of his sweater.

Headlights glared through my window—Tye leaving with the Ford.

“He told me you are considering making the Fall.”

I fumbled with the socks as Bryn turned from the window, the twilight fading to crystalline black. His face was so utterly blank, so completely unreadable, that my gut twisted into a thousand knots.

“Isn’t it—isn’t it what you wanted?” I asked weakly.

He looked at me with disbelief. “Of course not. While I had once believed we would make the Fall together, I no longer feel the same, as I made clear in the lounge. If we did so now, we would not remember each other. We would be reborn again, would spend centuries apart, unaware of who or what we once were. Is that what you truly want? To forget me? To forget us?”

No. Never . But it wasn’t me making this decision.

My voice, when I spoke, wasn’t at all steady. “Seeing Kazie like that, it just—it put things into perspective,” I lied.

Bryn, his face still a mask of stone, walked slowly to the end of my bed, his cane and suede boots burying themselves in the fur rug Kazie had recently replaced. Above, the wicker lampshade swayed from an imaginary breeze.

“Perspective,” Bryn repeated, blinking at me, but his eyes weren’t golden now. “Is that what you call it when you so casually, so effortlessly, decide you will eventually end everything you are to me?”

Now I caught it, the emotion he didn’t want to show—shock, pain, fear.

Bryn gripped the iron railing of the bed and squeezed so hard I worried it’d snap in his fist. “I do not understand you, Rowan. Only a few nights ago, you accused me of wanting to trade your soul. You cried in my arms at the idea of it. Yet now you are prepared to meet that end, should Ruhaven beckon tomorrow?” His voice broke, nearly undid me.

Tell me why, he demanded as if he couldn’t bring himself to speak.

“It’s Willow,” I blurted out. “I think, if our souls are what’s collected from Ruhaven, and she was my twin, then there must be some piece of her that would come through too.” Enough of her in me that I’d been able to witness the memories these last months on her behalf.

The railing groaned beneath Bryn’s hand. “You think it shall return her to Ruhaven.”

“Yes.”

“Because you still believe her to be Nereida.”

“Yes,” I said quietly, though it wasn’t a question.

“Goddamn you, Rowan,” he cursed softly. “What of us? In your world, how long shall we have? Weeks? Months? Is that enough for you? Will you be so satisfied to have a year together before you toss our fates to the arms of Ruhaven again?”

Decades wouldn’t be enough. I wanted a life with Bryn, wanted to see him grow old, wanted to learn every minuscule detail of the life he’d lived before we met, wanted him to point out all the streets of Odda he used to run through. But I couldn’t admit any of that, because then I’d never be able to make this sacrifice.

“Isn’t that what you believe in?” I said to hide how the words ate at me. “Your whole world is Ruhaven. I thought you would be glad to go back.”

“ Glad ?” He spun around, his eyes and nose dotted with bright color that should have shamed me. “Glad that I shall never know you again? That, after spending years searching for you, I shall need to wait centuries once more? Do I mean nothing to you? When I showed you my worst memories, ones I do not wish to recall myself, did my sacrifices mean nothing?”

I wet my lips. God, it wasn’t like that, but every word he threw at me was breaking through my resolve. “You know that’s not true. You know what I felt.”

“Do I?” Bryn choked out. “Rowan, I feel that I bare every piece of my soul, and you do nothing but look at the odd picture it makes.”

My throat tightened. “Bryn, I know what you gave up. I see it every time you look at me. But this—it isn’t about you and me. I can’t let myself think of that.”

“‘ Let yourself think of that ’?” he repeated, very slowly, his hand shaking on his cane. “Of me. Let yourself think of me , you mean. I do not know how much you believe I can withstand. I learn you not only plan to one day make the Fall without discussion, but you are packing to leave with a man whom James has banned from Naruka. Who threatened to break my leg, who routinely seeks to embarrass and denigrate me before you, who stood in that gate lodge and threatened you this morning.”

I opened my mouth. Closed it again. He was right, and I didn’t deserve him, never had—Nereida did. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry , Bryn, but you’ve never lost anyone. You don’t understand what Willow was to me, what I owe her—” I broke off when all color drained from his face.

“I lost you. I lost you!” he shouted . “Fy faen, Rowan, do you not understand what that did to me? To stand over your sister’s grave in L’Ardoise and believe it was—that I was—” He cursed his breaking voice, fought for precious control as I stood there, a second from dissolving into the floor.

Bryn rubbed a hand over his mouth. “To believe that I had been but weeks from knowing you. To believe that my mate was waiting to be found and I had failed in this simple task. That I had let her die alone, that she should never know of Ruhaven.” He took a steadying breath. “I made mistakes, Rowan, with us, from the moment you appeared in my office. I did not seek you out after my attack because I believed the Inquitate were following me, that they would come again, and I did not want you hurt because of that.

“I did it to punish myself, for I was not supposed to fail you, to attempt to end my life in the Gate, and never, ever to take another, as I did. This was the law, and I broke it. And I was punished. You may have found the triplet connection, but I know that whatever the reason, Ruhaven does not forgive, does not forget.”

Was that what all this was about? Guilt because he’d tried to move on? Guilt because he couldn’t stop something he had no control over?

I took a step toward him. “Bryn, it wasn’t your fault .”

His eyes guttered. “It was, yes. I chose to die at the Gate, and would have had James and Tye not dragged me out. I chose to take a coward’s path and resume my relationship with Abby, despite the laws.”

I shook my head, all that I could manage. I could barely think of him with her. Except that was a lie, wasn’t it? I’d thought about her all too much, about just what kind of woman it’d take to have someone like Bryn break Ruhaven’s laws.

He waited. “But you are leaving,” he stated, circling us to the beginning.

Not to L’Ardoise. That wasn’t what he meant now.

I laid a hand on the suitcase Willow had covered in stickers. My chest ached for him, for us, for her. “Willow and I were born together,” I explained softly.

“Rowan, so were we, ” Bryn promised, voice raw.

I felt it in each grinding bone in my body. “You taught me about Ruhaven’s rules,” I reminded him. “ You told me that Ruhaven speaks to us at the Gate. Now she has and she’s asked me to— Bryn! ”

He wrenched the suitcase from me and tossed it against the wall. Lime paint poofed in a cloud of dust. The luggage clunked to the floor and sprung open, socks tumbling out. “That’s Willow’s .”

He grabbed both my arms before I could duck and right the bag.

I braced for the next avalanche of words, the argument I knew I wouldn’t be able to resist, because he was right, I knew that, and he deserved better than this, than me, and always had.

I pressed my hands to his chest, stared up into eyes of bottomless blue. “Bryn, I’m so sorry that I—”

Breath whooshed out of my lungs as he crushed me to him. His arms slid around me, cradled my head, held me against his beating heart that had become my own metronome.

I squeezed my eyes shut, stroked his quivering shoulders, in the dip between them. I wouldn’t be strong enough to choose Willow over him.

But Bryn peeled back, raw emotion swimming beneath his pearl skin. “I am terrified of losing you,” he breathed. “If you choose to make the Fall, I would follow you, but I do not wish to wait centuries ever again.”

He dropped his cane.

Then very slowly, he lowered to the floor, one hand braced on my bed, until he kneeled on the rug at my feet. The bedside lamp divided his face into shadow and light, a fallen angel, and for once, I was looking down at him, at the frozen blue of unguarded eyes.

He grasped my right hand. “Rowan, do you know why Kazie made the Fall?”

I tried to tug him up, but he didn’t rise. “Because she loved Ruhaven,” I said at last.

He licked his bottom lip, nodded. “Yes, she loved the wild freedom, the magic, but mostly she loved who she was. She loved Kazmira. It was who she always wanted to be,” he breathed, his gaze unflinching, even as his hand shook around mine. “But I only wanted you.”

My heart leapt into my throat. “Bryn, if…”

“I did not want to ask before,” he said quickly, a whisper in the quiet room. “I have always believed the Fall was your decision to make, without influence, without the pressure of what had once existed between us. What I believe still does.”

He squeezed my hand. “When I met Nereida, I found my mate, my missing soul, in a woman I believed I would never know but for a memory. Then, against all odds, the Ledger returned you to me. When I saw you for the first time, the connection between us was as alive and vital as it was in Ruhaven.

“Since that night, I have seen you in every woman, felt you in every touch, heard you in every song. My only wish is to be to you what O’Sahnazekiel is to Nereida. I am sorry, Rowan, for the mistakes I have made, for the promise I broke, but I would ask you anyway, would beg you. Please stay with me. Stay so that we will not forget each other—as we certainly will if we return to Ruhaven—and because, Rowan, I cannot bear to lose you again so soon.”

I couldn’t stop my tears. He’d never spoken like this, never. “Bryn, I don’t want to leave. I swear I don’t, but—” I broke off, glanced down when he held out his other hand.

And slowly unfurled his fingers.

My heart stopped—the pulse just gave way entirely to complete, humming silence.

It was not the simple metal band I’d found in his room, but a delicate, thin, gold circlet with an opal stone and twin moons.

“This is yours,” he said, thumbing the ring in his palm. “I had it made after we met. The one Nereida wears.”

Mine. My ring, because…

I sunk heavily onto the bed.

Moonlight glinted off the stone he held, still waiting for an answer. Or was he? Was this a—a proposal? We’d never talked about what mates meant, other than the book James gave me. Or was this some acceptance of what had been in Ruhaven? But both meant the same thing—a reason to stay.

Still on his knees, his lips quirked into a hesitant smile—one I’d always loved. “Rowan?” Bryn wiped away the tears burning my cheeks. I didn’t even know what I was crying for— Him? Me? Willow? The Fall?

I couldn’t answer. Didn’t know what it was he wanted. “I—I—I—” My breath was coming in quick, ugly gasps now. I pressed a hand to my chest, willing my lungs to expand properly again. “Bryn, this is…is… overwhelming .”

His smile fell like a flower wilting in a storm.

I had never felt so small, so utterly inadequate, not even when James stood in his kitchen and admitted he hoped I’d be Essie.

Bryn’s fingers closed back over the ring, set it on the nightstand. “Why?” His voice cracked on the single word.

I wiped my sweaty palms on the old quilt. I didn’t have an answer for him. There was a kind of dead buzzing in my ears, like a part of me was floating a few inches away, as shocked as I was.

“I don’t know what it means,” I said lamely as Bryn rose. He used the nightstand, the bed, for support, until his shadow blanketed me in cool purples.

He reached a hand toward me, stroked the length of my jaw with one knuckle. “What it means, Rowan, is that which we already are.”

I looked up at him, surprised to see the whisper of warmth in his irises.

This bond between us is the same that exists between Nereida and Sahn.

He trailed his hand down my arm, circled my wrist in long fingers, and brought my palm to his heart. He squeezed his eyes shut, breath shuddering between his soft lips. Something warm tingled on my fingertips, but when I tried to pull back, he held firm. “Rowan, trust me.”

Whatever it was heated and spread between my fingers until tiny, golden threads blossomed over my wrist.

I’d seen this when he’d kissed me, had thought it was a hallucination or some piece of his Mark appearing. Yet here it was again, swirling up my arm like fireflies in the dark, light as spiderwebs, pulsing with quiet music.

I jerked my gaze to his, in awe, in surprise. “How are you doing this? What is it?”

He grasped my hand tighter. “Our bond, Rowan, the one that exists even here, that has survived centuries.” Had I seen it with Nereida and Sahn?

My skin tingled under it, nearly burning with an internal heat. Panic leapt into my throat when I tried to tug my arm free, but it stayed glued to Bryn’s chest.

“Something’s wrong,” I said, urgent now as the golden thread crept slowly over my shoulder.

Bryn slid a knee onto the bed as I fell back. “You need to trust me. Trust us ,” he said thickly.

“I don’t… It’s too much. I can’t, not now. Not with Kazie, and Tye, and the ring and…” And your fiancée I was only just accepting.

Then the lamp winked out, and the only light in the room was the glittering thread that matched Bryn’s golden eyes.

“Make it stop,” I insisted, but it came out as more of a gasp.

The silky chain he’d summoned slithered over my collarbone, its heat like prickling sparks as it wound around my neck. I tried to yank at it with my free hand, as the burn turned to blister—because it wasn’t me . Because Bryn was trying to summon a bond that was for him and Nereida, for Willow, not for me. Just like the Gate had warned.

He caught my wrist, pinned it, the bed’s old springs groaning under his weight. “Trust me,” he begged. “I can show you Nereida, Sahn, our life together. Please, Rowan, I—”

“Bryn!” I shouted at him, and this time, he froze, confusion flickering over his face where he kneeled over me.

But the thread slipped under my shirt, settled between my breasts on a throbbing pulse, sticking like moths to a lightbulb, bleating wings burning up in the light.

The headache brewing behind my eyes twisted my thoughts into balloon animals that pop-pop-popped .

Memories flashed in rapid-fire behind my eyelids, not steady visions like Bryn had shown me before. He wanted me to trust him, but there were always more secrets. The ring. Abby. Sahn.

Now he’d try to prevent me from saving Willow. And that I’d never allow.

“Rowan? Rowan ?” Bryn’s normally confident voice became worried, pleading.

The golden thread plucked my heart like it was a fiddle instead of an organ that belonged to me. I blinked away the flashes of seizing memories, patted weakly at my breasts. “It hurts.”

His porcelain face wavered as I struggled to hold on to it, to him. “No, it is not supposed to...” He let go of my hand, but the tangled thread he’d summoned clung to us, bound us.

His voice grew distant, underwater below the deep, murky depths I’d feared. The memories of the last few days spread into a puddle in my mind. Kazie. Willow. The Fall. Abby. Tye. James.

My ears filled with the jumbled conversations of people speaking in…Norwegian.

The growing pain in my skull threw itself against the vision, a crashing wave trying to keep the memory at bay. I cried out, felt rather than heard him call my name, but I was slipping into foreign images that tumbled like rocks down a hill, burying me beneath them.

And in Bryn’s memories, we were not in Ruhaven.

So it was not Nereida who smiled at me in the woods, who made Bryn’s heart burst out of his chest, but Abby, the woman he’d loved enough to propose to. To want to marry. Not Nereida, and not me.

Across the sea of memories, Bryn called to me, but the water drowning my mind gobbled up his words.

Images flashed by like a roll of exposed film.

I was in a cafeteria with burnt cabbage stew and young students sitting around long, wooden tables. Bryn’s college in Trondheim.

Beside me—beside Bryn—sat Abby, with kind eyes not old enough to crinkle, spreading a textbook with sun-dipped fingernails and a matching butterscotch hair clip. The kind of woman who would know all about Picasso.

Was there something else he wanted me to know about them? Something that would show why I should stay? Of all the times to push this on me…

I twisted in the vision, reaching for anything to pull me out of the memory. I caught the twinkle of the thread and leapt for it, grasping the wretched thing in both hands. And tugged. Hard.

Far away, above the murky, dark water, I heard Bryn gasp. The sound rolled in my eardrums a second before new scenes tumbled like marbles on a sheet of glass.

Smash. Smash. Smash.

Coconut-scented hair swung in a scrunchie. I caught the silky strands in my fist, lightly tugging the woman around. Abby’s lips parted in surprise before my mouth— Bryn’s mouth — smacked her cherry-Cola lips.

I recoiled at the memory, at the lust curling in Bryn’s gut.

“Don’t show me this,” I pleaded to nothing but the endless dark water, the gold thread still in my fist. I tried to pull myself out, but the rope slipped from my grip.

The memories came with the flood of a broken dam in a storm. Stale coffee and cardamom buns wafted in a café. Abby grinned over a latte, a dimple ripening one cheek before she laughed in tiny, tinkering bells.

Compared to Abby’s perfection, my smile belonged to a lopsided ogre.

“Bryn. Please.” My voice was rusted steel. Don’t show me her, not her. Wasn’t it enough to know he’d been engaged? Had wanted to spend his life with this perfect woman?

Then colored lights flashed, and Abby’s ponytail whipped fruity shampoo in my face, her toothy smile gleaming as Bryn spun her in tight circles, her feet twirling in a perfect line.

Where he’d learned to dance. In Oslo, with his fiancée, before his injury from the Inquitate.

I was drowning without the benefit of water. Where was that rope? I looked down, found it wrapped around my fist again.

Pinching the glittering rope between my knees and elbows, I struggled to climb out of this hell.

Ping.

A thread snapped loose. Then another. The rope strained under my weight as I swayed, a branch creaking in the storm.

I braced for it to snap.

But then, with a handful of strands left, the rope slackened and I tumbled down. Wind hollowed my ears as the golden vines tangled around my limbs.

Crack.

My stomach slapped into a sticky syrup. God, the pain.

“Bryn,” I called weakly as water began to cover my lips, my eyes. “Bryn?” But he was gone. And I was alone. Like the room between worlds, where nothing existed but the dark and the water.

I sucked in a breath before my body sank beneath the waves.

Deeper.

And deeper.

And deeper.

And then, Bryn was—was—

No, no, no! I thrashed in the teeth of the memory, but couldn’t escape. Couldn’t escape what broke every rule of Ruhaven.

Before, I was drowning.

Now, I was dead. Dead and hollow and empty at last. Drifting in thick, bitter syrup while the sharp talons of the memory shredded into my corpse.

When gold sparks fractured on the surface, I closed my eyes.

And floated to the bottom.