CHAPTER 24
The vision from the spring returned to me at the sight of our names burning amongst those who’d already drowned. One fatal premonition was disconcerting but plausibly avoidable. Two was pushing our luck.
I felt powerless. My instincts screamed at me to run, get in Lunaris, drive as far as I could, and take Kessian with me, but it wouldn’t help. Running hadn’t saved Grandad. It probably wouldn’t save us, either. Fleeing to Coill Darragh hadn’t gotten us any farther from this mess.
Going from my grandfather’s autopsy to a dress fitting felt foolish. Would we fit Amelia’s funeral in before or after Fae’s wedding?
I was in terrible spirits when I reached the dressmaker’s shop.
It was sandwiched between a popular pizza chain and a betting shop.
The weathered sign read Witches and Stitches in a curly, barely legible font.
The two sisters who owned it, Ella and Rhia, had probably dressed every bride, groom, and celebrant in Shearwater. Fae was no exception.
Ella’s familiar, a turtle dove, cooed a few notes of greeting as I came in.
Everyone else had arrived early, chiming in with hellos and waves.
I scanned the faces. Fae, Camilla, my mum, and Kessian’s were the familiar ones.
The empty spot on the sofa was better suited to Amelia, but she wasn’t here.
I sat there anyway. “I thought of something while you were out.”
“Can we save that chat for later?” Mum interrupted. “Just until after the fitting.”
“Right. Of course.” I fumbled for something less awkward to talk about and asked Kessian, “Which wedding party are you with? You never said.”
He smirked, though still with that reserved calm that put me on edge. “Camilla and Fae fought for me. Fae won.”
“Champion of rock paper scissors,” Fae said, holding up their fingers. “And I won with scissors. Camilla should have known me better.”
The attempt at levity didn’t quite catch on, so Rhia took over. “Now everyone’s here, would you like to try on your dress?”
As Fae disappeared behind the curtain with Rhia, Ella came and tapped Kessian fondly on the shoulder. When she did, her gaze passed quickly over me, like someone trying not to draw the attention of a feral dog, lest it be provoked.
So news of what had happened to Amelia had spread.
“How are things, Kessian? I heard that damned Westley Warwick wants to put up a hotel where you’re living.”
Kessian’s smile tightened. “Afraid so.”
“Ah, and we’ll go the same way as Waxy’s Candles and Olde Gary’s Café, if things keep going as they are.”
“He owns this as well?”
“Not him, but another man competing with him. Rent keeps going up. We’ll have been here fifty years in January, but Rhia and I aren’t as quick as we once were. It’s hard, competing with the big chain shops from Pentawynn. Even if all their clothes are tatty garbage.”
Their conversation was interrupted as Fae swept back the curtain and spun to show us their dress.
It had been styled to mix feminine and masculine aesthetics. Sheer lace covered their decolletage and arms, with a cream waistcoat and billowing skirt.
Everyone gasped, oohed, and ahhed, except me, who had little practice at making those noises. I also had little experience seeing anyone I loved in a wedding dress, and seeing Fae now, I was struck by just how many things I’d missed out on.
The last time I’d been in Shearwater, they’d been worrying about passing their A levels while begging Mum and Dad for a cat. (They’d been jealous of Lunaris, back before she became a camper van.)
Now, they were getting married.
Fae launched into an explanation about how they wanted to style their hair when someone jostled my shoulder with theirs.
Kessian said under his breath, “Getting a bit emotional seeing your sibling dressed for their wedding?”
“Just a little.”
“Hey, hey,” Fae said, pointing at us both. “No canoodling in public!”
One of the women I didn’t know said, “You should have known better than to invite Kessian, then.”
Kessian said, “Don’t be jealous, Mel. You had your chance.”
In spite of the direction of his jab, it was me getting my hackles up. I had no claim to Kessian. I didn’t know where we stood after we’d slept together and he’d been so cool with me afterward, but I still wanted to drape my arm around his shoulders.
“That was before I developed taste,” Mel said, kissing the girl next to her on the cheek.
Kessian laughed, unbothered by the slight. “I prefer to think that everybody has a taste for me, I’m just so rich that one bite is enough to satisfy.”
I kept my expression neutral, but I caught the implication. Once had been enough, twice too much. I didn’t do subtlety or reading between the lines. If I’d overstepped, if he didn’t want to take this any further …
Actually, I didn’t want to think about that right now.
While Rhia pinned Fae’s outfit so she could take it in, the rest of us were handed identical suits and dresses to be pinned.
I didn’t know how one could already have been prepared for me, until Fae patted my arm and said, “I trusted things would work out, and Lunaris let me steal your clothes on that first visit so I’d have your measurements. ”
I wanted to feel grateful, but Amelia’s absence made it difficult to feel as if the trade had been worthwhile.
The changing room was a cramped cupboard. Within, I couldn’t spread my arms or even cock my elbows without hitting a wall. The heating was on full blast, turning the claustrophobic space into an oven. As I put the suit jacket on, I prayed I didn’t sweat through my shirt.
I hated trying on new clothes, and particularly hated anything with starchy fabrics and layers. Too warm, too textured. They made me feel like bugs were crawling under my skin.
I couldn’t stop thinking about that death glow over Grandad. Kessian’s name and mine imprinted in the antler of the creature bound to kill us both. What was it all for? A place I hadn’t been able to call home for nine years? A family who seemed better off without me?
I could feel myself working up to an overstimulated shutdown. I wanted to flee the place and lie down on Lunaris’s cold floor.
When I got to the tie, frustration hit me fully. I hadn’t much occasion to wear one and had forgone it at Grandad’s funeral. With the length looped around my neck, I thought I’d probably be more successful hanging myself with it than tying it correctly.
A rap of knuckles on the door made me jump, my elbow slamming into the hanger rack installed on the back wall. “Ow.”
“Just checking you’re all right in there.” Kessian’s voice.
“Fine.” I was not.
“Are you sure?” Kessian lowered his voice. “If you need extra deodorant, I brought some. They always keep it the temperature of hell in here.”
“I’ve forgotten how to tie a tie,” I blurted. “And yes, I’m sweating.”
“Like a nun in a brothel, yeah. Same. I can help you with the tie.”
I opened the door. Instead of letting me out, he let himself in.
“There’s not much room.”
“Mm-hm, listen.” He pitched his voice low so no one could hear. “Fae’s putting on a brave face out there, but obviously what happened to Amelia has everyone a bit down. You look like you’d rather be anywhere else.”
“Shall I smile and pretend everything’s okay?”
“Sometimes people need to pretend. And things will be okay. We’ll figure it out.”
“After what we saw today, you believe that?”
“I need to pretend sometimes, too.”
I felt thoroughly chastised. For the first time, I noticed his hands were shaking. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be. I know I haven’t helped.”
It called up memories of his cool cheek, presented in place of a goodnight kiss. “Did I do something wrong?”
“No. Nothing.”
“There’s something. There’s been something since last night. You’ve been off with me.”
“I’m not off with you.”
“Right. You clam up whenever the topic of sleeping in the same bed comes up, and you swerved my kiss a few hours after we fucked, but it’s nothing to do with me.
” While I tried to hide my hurt, a single exhaled breath caught in my throat, betraying me.
“If it was just sex, just say so. I usually only get one night, so I’ll just be grateful I got two, yeah? ”
Kessian looked as though I’d slapped him, tears springing to his eyes. “Tal, that is not how it is.”
“Then tell me! I’m not good at reading people. You know this. You know … me.” Now it was my turn to stare at the lights to keep the tears back.
“I think the wraith taking Amelia was my fault,” he blurted.
Stunned, it took me a second to reply. “Unless you played that flute nine years ago, that’s bollocks.”
“No, listen. When I first came to Shearwater, the spring gave me a vision. I … I was the one taken by the wraith in that vision. But there was also a second vision of me living happily ever after in a house where I had a garden and a cat and just … just some fucking stability, you know? It seemed worth it to see things through for a chance at that. Then the wraith took Amelia. It was after me, and when I’d escaped it, it took her instead.
In pursuit of my happy ending, I destroyed hers and made you complicit.
And I didn’t want to tell you because everyone’s been blaming you for this since you were too young to bear the weight of that responsibility, but saving me was a mistake. ”
Before he could babble any longer, I said, “Do you think the same of me because I survived and no one else has?”
“Of course not, but—”
“None of this is your fault. The way you defended me in front of my mum is how I’m going to defend you now against yourself.
You didn’t do any of this. The wraith did.
Warwick did. If not him, then someone else.
” I swallowed thickly. “Look, I understand survivor’s guilt, but what does any of that have to do with … us?”
He slipped his hands from mine. “We’ve been in here a while.”
“Are you ever going to tell me?”
He glanced up at the light, his eyes misty. Whatever he held back from saying, he didn’t want to risk emerging from the changing room red-eyed.
I backed down. “All right, not here.”
He looked grateful. “Tonight at yours over a stiff drink?”
“Okay.”
He let out a breath and checked the mirror. “Do I look like I’ve been crying?”
“You haven’t been.”
“I came close.”
I suddenly felt like an arse. Had Kessian’s chilliness been a front for more vulnerable feelings this whole time?
“We’ve been in here so long, they’ll just think we’ve been shagging.”
He let out a surprised laugh. “A better cover story than the truth, and I’m sure they’ll appreciate making us the butt of their jokes. Help distract them, you know?”
“In that case, here.” I reached out a hand and waited to see if he’d accept. When he didn’t move, I aggressively mussed his hair, then rubbed a thumb over his lower lip to redden it.
His eyes went suddenly dark, and while I was far from comforted, it brought me a tiny measure of consolation that the fire hadn’t gone out, no matter how well he concealed it.
He reached out and popped a few buttons on my shirt, doing them up askew. “For verisimilitude,” he said, then reentered the room with a loud “Presenting, Taliesin Ashborne!”
A peal of Camilla’s laughter followed, alongside Fae shouting, “Kessian Alore, tell me you did not just fuck him in the changing cupboard!”
When I emerged, everyone laughed and shouted all at once, I only caught one comment in every ten.
“You hussy, that’s my brother.”
“How was there any room to move in there?”
“You weren’t gone, what, five minutes?”
“Aw, let the gays be happy.”
Kessian offered an indolent shrug. “It’s not my fault he can’t resist me.”
Our ploy had worked. The mood lightened as darts were placed and garments adjusted. It wasn’t as merry an occasion as it should have been, but Kessian had been right that sometimes people needed to pretend.
We left together, the two of us, walking without touching or pretending. At least for the first five minutes.
Then, tentatively, Kessian reached out with a pinky and linked it with mine.