Aaron #3
“Watch over my mother, my sisters, and Seth.” I have to stop and steady myself before I can finish. “And House of Zorah, hell, all of Wintermoon while you’re at it.”
I study him, ready to needle him. “Here’s what I can’t figure, Jo. You haven’t hit me with a single line out of that Healthy Habits book all night, not one chapter and verse. All the time I’ve known you, I never figured you had it in you to go this quiet on it.”
He adjusts his tie and looks away from me.
When he answers, the quote comes after all, quiet.
“‘No man is born belonging. He belongs the first hour someone refuses to leave him standing outside the door.’ Chapter twenty-two.” He clears his throat.
“You have no idea what it means to me, Aaron, to be your brother, after everything I am.”
“Whatever, man.” I shrug. “You’ve always been family. We just never said it out loud.”
He gives in all at once and pulls me in hard. I hold him back.
“There’s one more,” I say against him. “It’s a long shot, and I’ve got no right to ask it. Watch over Mara for me.”
“You’re really not coming back?”
“I can’t, Jo. If I don’t hold the Glen, Amir burns it, every soul in it.” My mouth twists. “Isn’t that what you wanted, though? Somebody to give a damn about the ones nobody else will?”
“I would be honored to keep her safe.” He holds steady for that much, then a rough sob breaks loose. “I’ll guard your lioness with everything I have, Blackwood. You have my word.”
“Good.” I press my forehead to his shoulder. “Because you’re the only supernatural in all of Wintermoon I’d trust to do it.”
He pulls back and swipes at his cheek. “May I visit you sometime?” he asks. “In the Glen?”
I turn toward the cottage before he can see me. “Sure, Jo. The Glen welcomes you.”
I lift my hand and turn the knob with a thought, and the door swings open.
“See you soon, brother,” Josiah says behind me.
I look back at him. “See you soon, brother.”
Josiah tips his face up, and I laugh for the first time since I left her. “Glad I’m not the only grown man crying out here tonight,” I tell him. Then I step through.
I’m one step into the cottage when I stop. I don’t walk through doors anymore, not unless I want to.
I shut my eyes and picture where I’m headed. When I open them, the cottage is gone. The dead realm spreads out around me under a sky the color of an old bruise.
It’s still a wreck. The ground’s cracked into plates, nothing alive in the seams. Bare trees stand with their branches snapped off, never grown back. Cabins lean into one another, roofs caved and doors hung crooked—a whole realm that’s forgotten how to be alive.
But it’s not as bad as the night I left it, and the difference is all in the small things.
A fallen fence has been righted and lashed back together.
A lane’s been cleared of the dead brush that choked it.
There’s a bed of green tucked up against the nearest porch, a stubborn little patch somebody coaxed up from poisoned ground and has been keeping alive by hand—green only Samara could call up out of dirt this far gone.
I know that work, and whose hands did it.
My mother and my sisters have been coming here week after week, pouring everything they’ve got into a realm that needs a hundred times more than four witches can spare.
They mend it a fence at a time, a flower bed at a time. It’s all the power they have to give.
I look down at my own hands. Blue-gold light turns under my skin, more than the four of them hold together. This whole dead realm couldn’t drink it all down if it tried.
They don’t have the power for this. I do, and I’m going to bring it back.
When I turn my head, Ellie’s standing a few feet off, like she knew exactly where I’d land. She reaches up and pulls back her hood.
“Welcome home, my lord.”
I hold up a hand. “I’m taking the job, that’s settled. But drop the ‘my lord.’ It’s Aaron.”
“Let me show you to your home.” She inclines her head toward the far horizon, where the tower climbs up into the clouds and out of sight. “The high tower has been kept ready for—“
“I’m not sleeping in that big ugly tower. I already know where I’m bedding down. Eric’s old place. There’s something I need to take care of there anyway.”
I slide my hands into my pockets and start walking. After a few steps I look back, and she hasn’t moved, just standing there watching me go. So I stop.
“You coming or not?” I ask her. “You’re supposed to be my right hand, aren’t you? Helping me drag this place back from the dead. I can’t do that with you hanging back.”
She smiles and gathers her cloak, hurrying to fall in beside me. We walk a while, our footsteps the only sound in all that ruin.
“I just left my whole life behind to be here,” I tell her. I don’t know why I say it to her of all people.
“And we will spend the rest of ours being worthy of it, my lord,” she says.
I look over at her. Then I face front and keep walking, out toward Eric’s house.
“Tell me everything I need to know about this Glen,” I say. “Don’t leave anything out.”
Ellie starts to talk.