Page 23

Gavin

I spurred my horse faster, its hooves eating up the ground as we raced along the coastal road.

Purchasing Marin’s manor by the sea had been an act of desperation. I wished I could say I’d thought of it from the start. That I’d had this master plan to preserve her dream. But in reality, I’d woken up in a haze after a night spent wandering the kingdom’s back alleys looking for trouble.

Old habits. The kind I thought I'd buried. But without her, I slipped fast—drink, fights, nights where I didn't care if I came back in one piece. I wasn’t aware of the month, let alone the day of the week, until Bowen dumped a bucket of water over my head and mentioned the expiration of her father’s land agreement.

That was the day I realized I had to face the pain. That I’d never forgive myself if I let the last piece of her go.

And so, my soul-destroying apathy ended that morning when I raced into the royal record hall wearing unlaced boots and an inside-out tunic, and spent a fortune on a crumbling pile of stone and broken glass.

Years of saving from treasure hunts, salvaged shipwrecks, and a couple of risky relic runs had finally paid off. I had more than enough to buy the place, fix it up, and still have coin to burn.

Not that it mattered much. What good was a fortune if you had no one to spend it on? And there were only so many crystal chandeliers you could buy before you were just showing off. Not to mention, drawing the covetous eyes of thieves like myself.

A few signatures later, I was the proud owner of my very first home. An orphan who’d finally planted roots of his own. Only to find that home filled with the ghost of her smile, the echo of the life I’d wanted, and an unhealthy amount of spiders.

Ugh. So many spiders.

And it didn't fix anything. But it gave me something to rebuild. Something to look forward to. I stopped blurring the days with drink and poured myself into those crumbling halls like it was sweat equity for the soul. Board by board. Tile by tile. Trying to carve meaning out of the ruin.

It didn't bring her back, and I never thought it would. But her home saved the life of a man who'd never had one.

I dismounted my horse, tied him to the gatepost, and took the craggy stone steps leading to the manor, two at a time. Dust motes hung in the air, caught by the light as I threw open the door. But there was only silence on the other side.

She was gone. I knew it without checking the rooms. There was something about an empty house that you could feel in your bones. A hollowness, rooms waiting to be filled with sound and light.

At least, that’s what I imagined it should feel like. Bowen’s house was in constant chaos now, but it hadn’t always been. There was a time when the drapes were drawn and the windows barred. I remembered that silence. I’d even preferred it for a while .

I sighed and dragged a hand through my disheveled hair. I used to call Bowen sappy. Turns out, I was sappy’s melodramatic cousin.

My footsteps echoed through the great hall and past the curved staircase leading to the second floor.

Annie had said she’d caught the woman snooping in the hallway, and seeing how the front door had been locked, she’d likely slipped in through the back terrace.

That door never seemed to shut properly.

Fixing it was on my list. Then again, with a house like this, what wasn’t on my list?

I slowed in front of a pair of arched double doors and swallowed thickly. She wouldn’t have gone in there, would she? The doors were kept locked at all times. Not that a lock had ever stopped Marin, or anyone of us, for that matter. For a crew like ours, locks were merely a delay.

But it probably wasn’t Marin. After three years? It was a foolish hope.

It could have been a vagrant, which meant fixing the terrace door jumped to the top of my list. Or, with my luck, it was a traveling merchant, forcing her way inside to sell a stack of kingdom almanacs.

Yeah, the joke was on me. Those almanac merchants were always so pushy, going door to door with their dusty volumes full of facts.

I was lucky Annie hadn’t committed me to a full set.

Those tomes were horrifically overpriced.

And the sea glass was probably a ruse to lure Annie closer so the merchant could pitch her wares.

I blew out an irritated breath, convinced I’d fallen for the oldest trick in the book, and checked to see if the arched doors were still secure.

My hand froze on the handle.

Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted something lodged into the wood paneling: a dagger, and pinned beneath it, a note.

Even almanac merchants didn’t leave daggered calling cards.

Ah, damn. Hope is a wretched thing. I scraped my damp palms down my thighs and stared at the blade as if the possibility of what it meant hadn’t already sliced me open.

The first man to be felled by the wrong end of a dagger.

I leaned in, and with the breath bottled up in my chest, I dislodged the blade from the wall. Trapping the note beneath my hand, I flipped it over to reveal familiar, elegant handwriting. Except the message wasn’t nearly as refined:

You diabolical thief! You stole my house. I will reclaim it. Watch your back. -M

I pressed my fist against the wall, letting it hold the weight my legs refused to carry. I read the note again. And again. Until I could have formed the words with my eyes closed.

Marin was back, and she was pissed.

But I’d take her any way I could get her. This time was going to be different. It had to be. I didn’t know what happened or where she’d been. But I’d find out.

I studied the dagger. The hilt was ornamented with raised metalwork, vines twisting over the surface and ending near the cross guard in an elaborate C. I recognized it immediately.

“A little sloppy, Mare. Unless you want to be found,” I murmured, tucking the dagger under my belt.

My lips curled into a smile, the first real one in three years.

The hunt was on.

** *

When the conservatory door opened, I thrust a potted plant into Cass’s hands and charged past her.

“I got you a housewarming gift, three years late. Mine must’ve gotten lost in the post. Where is she, Cass?”

“Where is who?” Cass bent to sniff the blooms and shut the door behind me.

“Don’t play games you can’t win. I’m not in the mood.”

“Nor am I, considering I haven’t seen your face in years.” She mimed rubbing her chin. “A little scruffy, aren’t you? What happened? You used to be so charming. ”

“You know very well what happened. I’m here because Marin left me a note, along with this.” I unsheathed Cass’s dagger, twirled it over my thumb, and then sank it into the soil of a nearby plant. “I believe this is yours. Now, where are you hiding her?”

Cass scoffed. “I see how it is. We don’t talk for three years after that last fight between the four of us, and suddenly, the hint of Marin is in the air, and you’re on my doorstep. What am I? Chopped onions?”

I glared at her. “You’re right. You are chopped onions.”

She scowled and eyed her dagger planted in the soil. The glint in her eye made me think she wanted to use it, not on onions, but on me.

“But…” I hedged, scraping a hand through my hair. “After everything that was said… I didn’t know how to fix it. Silence felt easier. Kept the wounds scarred.”

“Yeah. Me too, I guess.” Cass looked away.

“It still hurt, though.” She sighed. “But look, I’m not hiding Marin.

She showed up on my doorstep, out of the blue.

When I saw her, I thought I must’ve smacked my head on a garden statue and joined her on the other side.

But she was real. I’m as shocked as you. ”

Cass waved me away as I continued my search, pushing aside ferns and checking behind the fountain.

“You’re wasting your time. Marin’s not here. Truthfully. She came back this morning, ranting about how she spoke to your niece and that you stole her house. Then she left.” Cass crossed her arms. “Mind explaining either of those things?”

“Annie is Bowen’s kid. He got married last year. And the little hellion likes to call me her uncle. There’s no stopping it,” I grumbled.

“I didn’t know. I guess I should send flowers.” Cass chewed the corner of her lip and slumped into a chair. “And the house?”

“Someone was going to buy it, and I had the funds.” I paced over the vines creeping across the tile. “I thought it should stay with us. That Marin would’ve wanted it that way. It seemed like the charming thing to do.”

Cass winced and muttered under her breath, “Oh, Marin. How did everything get so messed up?”

I scraped a chair across the floor, batting away a giant vine as I straddled the seat. This morning’s headache pounded like a hammer behind my eyes. I needed answers.

I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Look, none of this makes sense. Just start by telling me— is she all right? ”

Cass glanced away, concern softening her features. While I waited, I looked around the room. None of us was where we were supposed to be. Except for Bowen, but he’d risked everything to get there. Cass and I were still sitting in the shadows.

“No,” Cass answered softly. “Marin’s in trouble. And I’m scared, Gav. She’s not the same. I mean… she’s Marin. But she’s hurting.”

I breathed a curse and dropped my head into my hands.

She’s hurting?

The thought shredded me from the inside out.

“Where has she been?”

“It doesn’t matter. Marin doesn’t want to see you. You need to leave.”

My hands clenched around the back of the chair. “Like hell I’m leaving without answers. If she didn’t want me to come find her, she wouldn’t have left a note.”

“Ha! Trust me, that note was a threat. ”

“Yeah. I know. But I’m still here. So give me something, Cass. Please.”

Cass curled her lip and jabbed a finger in my face. “Fine. But hear this, if I learn what I’m about to tell you is true, I vow on my life I will bury half of your body under my rose bushes, and use the other half as fertilizer for my daffodils.”

“Geez, Cass. Understood.” I scraped a hand over my jaw. “You don’t need to be so morbid.”

She sniffed. “There’s nothing morbid about fertilizer. It’s a perfectly natural process. And it needed to be said. You better prove, to both of us, that you don’t deserve to spend eternity as plant food.”

“Prove what?”

Cass filled me in on the details, and my mind struggled to keep up.

Mermaids? Sea witches? It all sounded straight out of a twisted fairy tale, except this wasn't a story.

And truthfully, it wasn't even far-fetched.

I'd spent my life chasing legends and dodging creatures most would claim to be myths. Magic and curses? That made sense.

But what didn't was what she said next.

“Marin believes you conspired with the witch who painted our map, that you were rewarded for giving her the cursed comb from the treasure chamber. Now, she has three weeks to serve as the sea queen’s treasure hunter… or die.”

“I never did that,” I rasped. “The witch is lying.”

Cass let out a sharp curse of her own. “I don’t know what to believe anymore. Someone betrayed Marin.”

“So why are you trusting me with this?” I demanded. “It’s true, I was there when Marin found the comb. Hell, I told her to take it.”

Cass stared at me, her features unreadable, until they crumbled. She exhaled, her voice low.

“Yeah. You were there. But I was there during those dark days after we lost her. I saw you, Gavin. And I don’t think anyone can fake that. It wasn’t exactly a secret how you felt about her. At least not to me.”

I rubbed the back of my neck. “You knew?”

“Suspected. Even hoped. You were both my friends. I was rooting for you.”

She glanced down, picking at the edge of her nail.

“But besides that, I don’t think it was one of us. The witch manipulated Marin for years, inflicted pain, and twisted facts. Accusing you was just another weapon. I think it was one of the marauders. They were on our heels the whole time. The witch could’ve paid one of them to plant the comb.”

She hesitated, then looked up and met my gaze.

“But more importantly, Marin’s back. And she needs us now. More than she realizes.”

“You said she needed to find a treasure?”

My gaze slid to the papers scattered across the table. An invitation to a masked ball. Notes on some kind of seeds. A detailed plan on how to steal them.

Worse, not just any seeds. Magic seeds.

My mind raced. A few years ago, I’d whispered that story aloud while Marin slept against my shoulder. The story itself was the least memorable part of that night, but the details had stuck with me.

A magic shard taken from the sea and hidden in the realm of the sky.

Cass pushed out of her chair and walked toward the door. I stood slowly, trying to fit the pieces together, then followed her.

“Are you going to tell her I was here?”

Cass looked at me, her gaze delving deep. “You know what I miss most about before?”

“What?”

“All of us together. We were a mismatched family, the five of us. But we had something great. And we didn’t just lose Marin or the treasure. We lost everything.” She swallowed. “I want my family back, Gavin. Fix this. The witch doesn’t get to win.”

An unspoken agreement passed between us.

Cass shook her head. “No. I won’t tell. She’d shut us out. Marin only has three weeks to break her curse. She needs the best, she needs you. ”

She stepped back, one hand on the doorframe.

“Consider this your head start.”