Page 33 of The Unseen Hour (The Unseen Hour Duology #1)

T his time, his lips were demanding as they pressed against mine. This was nothing like our first, tentative kiss. It was wild, and I craved more of Ry.

When his teeth nipped at my bottom lip I gasped, and when his tongue slid across mine I couldn’t repress a low moan from climbing up the back of my throat.

While I’d never thought the trysts that created such a scandal in Emrys should have been the ruination of someone’s reputation, I had never participated in one. I’d never cared enough about anyone to get this close.

With Orion, however, the closer he got, the closer I wanted him to be.

I placed my hands on his chest, running them up his tunic, and then grabbed it and pulled him even closer. A small voice in the back of my head reminded me that he was injured, and I needed to be careful.

It was silenced when he deepened our kiss and I moaned against him.

When he released my lips, I was disappointed for only a moment, and then he slid my hair over my shoulder and began kissing my neck. When he gave another soft bite at the spot where my shoulder and neck met, I felt my knees tremble.

I’d heard the phrase ‘weak at the knees,’ but I’d always thought it was a dramatic and unnecessary exaggeration. I hadn’t realized it could be entirely accurate.

Just like some of the romances I’d read.

In his book with the pirates, Orion had written a couple that I’d initially envied, but I didn’t want any fantasies. I wanted Ry.

He was the adventure I’d longed for.

His mouth found mine again, and one of his arms wrapped around my waist. I reached up with one hand, running it through his hair.

The next time he broke off the kiss, I sat back, creating space before he could find my neck again.

“I …” I paused, at a loss for words and feeling embarrassment I’d never felt before. “I would like to continue, but I have no experience with what comes next.”

Orion held out his arms, and I moved back into them, careful not to touch his injured leg.

“I won’t lie to you, Starlight. I’d love to explore every inch of you.”

“You have mentioned your love of travel,” I teased.

“And by your side is the place I’ve most longed to be. That being said, we’ll move at whatever pace makes you comfortable.”

“As eager as I am to keep going, perhaps I should be insisting you rest instead, given your grievous injury.”

I kept my tone light, but I could see his leg shaking.

“I wouldn’t call it grievous. Besides, this is a welcome distraction. But, I will defer to your judgment.” He winked.

With a combination of concern, regret, and a desire to throw both to the side and throw my lips against his again, I extricated myself .

I got him a glass of water and then helped him lie down on the cot.

Once he was settled, I dragged my own cot across the floor so it was next to his. By the time I had it situated, he was already asleep.

The following morning, Orion was in no state for a visit to the Meadow or anywhere else. I didn’t like the idea of leaving him, and he didn’t like the idea of me wandering the forests or the Meadow alone.

We would need to stay near the cottage until he was more mobile.

As anxious as I was to keep moving, there was something serene about staying in the small space with Orion.

“I think I may take up journaling again,” Orion said as I closed one of the books from his shelf.

When I looked up, he was grinning.

“Trying to win me over with your words?”

“Would it work?”

“It already has.”

Orion adjusted his position, grimacing as his leg moved. I got up to help, but he waved me off.

“I’ll be okay. I just need to be distracted. Tell me, how did you find my journal?”

“When I was first mourning my father, I used to go to the library. Unlike my home, there was no chance of my family stumbling upon me there. I didn’t want my own grief to make things worse for them.

My mother, especially, had a tough time at the beginning.

The library has patrons, of course, but I stuck to the Estates section.

Hardly anyone goes there. My first foray was into a random stack, but after that I continued to return to the section housing ‘H’ papers, because it began to feel safe.

It wasn’t near enough the beginning of the alphabet, or the end, to abut other sections of the library.

That meant it was even more deserted than the other shelves. ”

Once I started, the truth came out in a rush. How, in the fall before the ninety-eighth hour, I’d sunk to the floor crying. How I tried to pull myself up and sent books tumbling. How I discovered the diary, and then my own father’s writing in the margins.

“He was working for the queen? To find Emrys’s king?”

“Yes. I’ve kept an eye out for him as well but haven’t seen him down here. He was lost at sea, so it’s possible that he wasn’t a victim of the hour. Maybe he was a victim of the storms that plagued the Talwin Sea that year. The ship sank. Bits of wreckage were found later, but no survivors.”

Orion frowned, and rubbed the splint on his leg.

“I wouldn’t recognize the current king of Emrys, but I haven’t seen anyone with a crown. Nothing like that. Maybe he drowned?”

“It’s definitely possible. But from what I could tell, my father was less motivated by the thought of finding the king and more excited about making it to the Ether.

Not that he knew that was his destination.

He just wanted to uncover the secrets of the hour.

The queen wanted to send an army down here. ”

Orion laughed.

“Ah yes, overthrow a deity with brute force. Charon would at least have been surprised, but I doubt it would have been successful.”

“My father wasn’t certain, either, but he was driven to protect his family.

If he could have the queen’s backing to look into the hour, all the better.

He scoured all sorts of books and bits of history.

I’m guessing that’s how he found your journal.

He might have been one of the few individuals actually interested in the Estates section.

He wrote his notes, and I found them. That’s when I decided I really could do something about my situation.

Of course, I didn’t put the pieces together to realize that you’d made it here alive.

But I knew Father was trying to work out the Thipp’s dosing and had his own ideas. ”

Orion’s hands clenched his blankets.

“I tracked the doses my brothers and I were being given before our demise. It was sheer luck that I survived and my brothers did not. Good luck, or bad luck, is hard to say. I would have said the latter, up until recently. Now that you’re here, though …

if I had to wait all this time for someone like you, then it was well worth it. ”

I blushed.

“Your journal mentioned that you’d all been ill and taking Thipp’s to help you with insomnia. Did all three of you realize something was amiss?”

“We all knew something was wrong, but I was the one to suggest it was intentional poisoning. The first to become convinced that someone was sabotaging the three of us, although I never managed to figure out who, or why. But it made no sense. No one else on the estate was ill. Just us three.”

“Maybe someone wanted the estate? Wanted your money?”

“Always possible, but doubtful. The cousin who would have inherited was cordial with us and in no need of funds himself. And he was abroad during that time. He enjoyed Tang immensely, for all its winter weather. I doubt he’d have wanted to return, although he could have at any time.”

The more I thought about it, the odder it seemed.

Three prominent noblemen were targeted just before the hour began.

But they couldn’t be connected. No one knew the hour was coming. No one except Charon, and he’d already proven that his methods were less subtle than slow poisoning.

“Why were you out that New Year’s Eve?”

Orion sighed.

“It was my idea to go out that night, following the trail of the person who delivered the Thipp’s root.

We were told by our butler that someone from town brought it directly from the apothecary.

We trusted our staff implicitly and, as we lived on the same grounds, we had no reason to suspect any of them.

We thought that maybe the person bringing it was swapping it for something dangerous, or being paid to do so.

Now, of course, I realize the Thipp’s itself was dangerous enough. But that theory still stands.”

“So you waited for a delivery, and you followed him?”

“Yes. We were so ill by then, though. My youngest brother, Remi, stumbled and fell before we’d even made it off the estate.

I asked Reg to take him home, and I kept going.

I should have stayed and helped them. If I had, we might all three have made it back into the house.

Then none of this would have happened. Instead, I insisted on going on alone. I’m the reason my brothers are dead.”

His expression was anguished, his eyes watering.

I moved over to him and sat down carefully, on the side of his uninjured leg. I put a hand on the side of his head, and he leaned against my shoulder.

“Oh, Ry. That’s not true. You were trying to save them.”

“I was the eldest, and the only parental figure my brothers had left. I should have suspected something sooner. Noises and clamorings on the estate and throughout the manor that no one could find the source of? The sudden onset of symptoms that plagued all three of us? Someone goaded us into seeking out a cure. ”

I wanted to promise that we would find the person responsible, but whoever it was would be long dead themselves.

It would almost be better if they’d ended up in Death’s realm, instead of the Ether. I couldn’t imagine Ry having to see his brothers’ killer for nearly a century, even if he wasn’t sure who it was.

I ran my fingers through his hair, my hand pausing.

“Have you talked to them? Your brothers?”

He’d mentioned seeing them and trying to get them out, but he’d never told me whether they’d been at all responsive.

“I tried. But they’re typical Shades. Wandering in the Meadow.

When I first saw them here, I was overjoyed.

I didn’t realize what had happened to us, you see.

Then, I saw what they’d become. I didn’t have a name for this place, or the hour, or anything.

For weeks I lived outside, on the edge of the Meadow, barely surviving.

I approached them every day, pleading with them to engage with me.

After a while, it became clear they wouldn’t.

They couldn’t. That’s when I began avoiding them.

It became easier as more souls joined the Ether.

I didn’t see them as often. I’ve spoken to almost every soul here, but I can’t bring myself to return to them.

I wish they knew how badly I wanted to save them.

I have no words adequate to apologize for what was done to them. ”

His voice was rough, and my heart ached for him.

“Ry, this was not your fault.”

He wiped at his face.

“I’ve had time to grow used to it. That’s part of why I made my deal with Death. When we stop this hour and she frees the souls, my brothers will finally be where they belong. That’s how I make things right.”

“What about Charon?”

He harumphed, adjusting his leg again.

“What about him? I don’t care a single jot for what happens to that cursed god once his hour is gone. So long as we’re away from here and Death feels like she can face him without his Shades. I’m fine if he rots in the Ether.”

“But, when you arrived … he always greets the new souls. While you were here with your brothers …”

“Yes. He saw me first thing. A bumbling, grieving half-Shade. He was so triumphant, walking around that initial crowd of souls. Then, he came to me. Looking for my brothers, panicked, half-convinced that I was still in Emrys and the poison running through my veins had caused me to hallucinate. I was not at all how he’d pictured that celebratory first hour, and he was less than pleased. ”

“What did he do?” I was afraid to find out, and he was well within his rights not to tell me.

“Lashed out. Those wings he has are for more than just flying. He swatted me with one and I careened into one of the Meadow’s trees.

I was more banged up then than I am now, if you can believe it.

Had to borrow what I could from some of the Shades’ pockets to fix myself up.

I was ashamed of it, too—a grave robber as well as a careless brother. ”

“You only did what you had to do!”

“Still, I try to avoid taking from the Shades, when I can. On occasions where it can’t be avoided, I always ask.

Not that they’ll always respond. The cloak I took for you was likely the closest I’ve come to true thievery in a while.

To be fair, you did look much better in it than the man who originally wore it. ”

He gave a weak smile, attempting to add some humor to the moment.

I gave my best attempt at a smile back, but inside I was seething at Charon. And whoever had harmed the Holmes brothers.

Only one of them was still within reach, and I intended to make him pay for every single soul.