31. Intro to Tides and Currents
Kamryn may have tried to kill me, but I still didn’t like the way Una was licking her lips where she curled at the entrance of our cave.
Wherever she’d dragged his body and what exactly she’d done with it, I was happy not knowing the details of, but the scrap of red uniform fabric stuck in her canines made my stomach churn.
As much as my stomach churned, however, it didn’t burn with the sting of open ulcers. My ribs didn’t ache with fractures and bruises.
I was finally whole.
Or mostly.
Ciarán’s blood had been enough to save me, but between the two of us, we didn’t have enough blood left to travel.
I was far from being at one hundred percent.
He was weaker than usual too, exhausted after his fight with Caitria, drained after giving every lost drop of magick to my Nightmare, and also down a fair bit of blood after giving me what he could.
“Chin down,” he murmured in my ear, brushing bits of hair from my shoulders.
“Right. Sorry.” I tore my eyes away from Una to look at my lap, better exposing the nape of my neck to Ciarán and his knife.
“Don’t apologize.” His laugh was warm on my neck, and the gentle scrape of his blade against the base of my head sent a shiver down my spine.
He’d helped me shave down my undercut once before in Keldori.
I’d been embarrassed at the time, showing the choppy mess of hair to Liam.
The state of it was even worse now. Not only was it overgrown, but I’d been pulling at it more, making it all the more spotty and my hair plucking compulsion all the more obvious.
But I wasn’t embarrassed anymore. Maybe it was his blood pumping through my veins, the kiss we’d shared, or the way our mental tether seemed to run deeper and stronger than before, but I didn’t mind Ciarán seeing the messiest part of me.
He hummed as he worked, occasionally rasping snatches of song in a low voice and foreign tongue. I focused on the sound, trying to distract myself from the smacking of Una’s lips. When Ciarán brushed the final strands of hair from my shoulders, I reached up to inspect his work with my hand.
The haircut was even enough, despite the patches my trichotillomania had left completely bare. They’d grow back soon, and Ciarán could even it out again then.
“Thank you.”
“Of course.” He let a tress of my longer hair slip through his fingers as he stood.
I’d always imagined my first kiss, should I ever have one, would signal a universe shift. Colors would change, the world would look different, and I’d be endowed with some secret of the cosmos only available to those who had at some point pressed their lips against those of someone else.
Everything would change. I would change.
But in the most wonderful way, nothing did.
I was still me, and Ciarán was still Ciarán. His thoughts continued to buzz in my head, and I was sure mine did the same on his end. If there was anything different, it was that he made a little more sense now, and I appreciated him all the more for it.
Unfortunately, what I understood better than anything was that there would not be another kiss.
I didn’t regret the one we’d shared the day before when I’d woken up.
Ciarán didn’t either—I could feel that much through our bond.
But he was a Grimguard and I was a Saergrim, and while I didn’t care about arbitrary rules, there was no pretending we didn’t have bigger problems at hand than our forbidden feelings for each other.
Maybe when this was all over, we could revisit the issue. For now, the fact that Ciarán wanted to kiss me at all was enough. And I knew without a doubt that he did.
“Rabbit?” He held a bit of jerky out to me. I grimaced at it, and he frowned. “Meat is good for blood loss.”
“You lost blood too.” I took the meat begrudgingly.
“I’ll be fine.” He stood and stretched. “I’m more worried about your mother.”
I choked on my rabbit. “What? Why?”
“She’s been trying to contact me.”
“Why?” I demanded again and rose too quickly to my feet. The cave spun, and I leaned against the wall for support.
“Don’t know.” Ciarán took my arm and sat us both back down. “I’m out of Skal, so I can’t summon her. Or even hear her. It’s more like a knock at a door, but I know it’s her.”
“She knows,” I hissed.
“Knows what?”
“She knows.”
“You mean the kiss?” Ciarán smirked and tried to take a bite of his own rabbit jerky, but struggled to get through the tough meat. “She can’t know.”
“Why else would she want to talk?”
“Probably to make sure you made it out of the citadel alive? Last she saw you, you were running from a battle.”
“Oh. Right.” I relaxed into his shoulder and attacked my own piece of jerky. “Then how do we get Skal for you to summon her?”
Ciarán’s shoulders heaved with a labored sigh. “That depends on our next move.”
I picked at my jerky to keep from picking at my eyelashes instead. “You’re sure we can’t catch up to the others? We’ve caught up with them before. We have Una, and I’m pretty sure she just ate an entire man, so she’s got to be ready to go.”
Una yawned in reply.
“The nearest city is at least two days away,” Ciarán said. “They’re nearly—if not already—there, and they’ll be catching a steamcart to the southwestern coast.”
“Then we can take the steamtrails too.”
“There’s no way the Barony lets either of us get on a steamcart. Word will have spread about the Saergrim and her Grimguard. And again, they have a two day head start.”
That was that then. I really wasn’t going home.
Which meant our options were to return to the Rift where we risked death by volcano or to search out Sorcha and the rest of Darragh’s Watch, wherever they’d fled to.
“Sorcha is going to be so angry that I’m a better healer than her now.” I tried to force a laugh, then hid in my knees.
My home, my dreams, my mother…
Ciarán wrapped an arm around me. “I promise, Darragh’s Watch will be more than happy to become your new home.”
Darragh’s Watch revered me as something more than human, and the one person I cared about was sworn to be my protector and never anything more. I wasn’t even allowed to know his full name.
I pushed myself out from my knees and took a steadying breath.
“There’s no rush getting back to them,” I said. “We’ll rest here a few days. Maybe you can sneak back into Willow’s Grave to get us some actual food, and I’d bet there’s a Skal bottle or two hiding in what’s left of Caitria’s camp.”
“If the Barony Guards haven’t poked through it already,” Ciarán pointed out, but rose to his feet. “I’ll leave Una with you. I should be back within a few hours. Try and rest, but—”
He paused where he was fastening his tattered cloak around his shoulders. He looked at me with that same expression he’d born when I’d woken up, like I might disappear into nothing.
“I won’t sleep,” I promised him. “No one is stabbing me this time. Besides, Una is here, and I think she’s developed a taste for Barony Guard.”
Una licked her lips, and my stomach lurched, but I kept an assured smile in place.
Ciarán stopped to pet Una on his way out, pulling the scrap of red fabric from her teeth. “If you need me, just call and you know I’ll come running.”
“Yeah.”
“And Wren? It’s going to be okay. I’ll make sure you’re happy here.”
“I know you will.”
He stepped out into the daylight of the opal forest, and I lay back in my makeshift bed in the dirt, suddenly missing my bed back in Gams’s home. The uneven floorboards, the smell of ocean air wafting through the windows, the knowledge that Gams was nearby…
And every dream and aspiration I’d ever had.
I’d traded all of it for Willow’s Grave.
Ciarán would know I was crying, but he kept quiet in my head as he traveled through the stone forest, and the illusion of privacy was nice as I grieved the home I’d never return to.
I didn’t keep my promise, but in my defense, crying always made me tired. Una watched over the cave as I slept curled against her wiry flank. I woke up when she stood to meet Ciarán upon his arrival at the narrow cave entrance.
His eyes had their old glow back, and he leered at me through the orange haze they cast.
“No sleeping, then?” he asked.
“Not a wink,” I lied, rubbing the fatigue from my eyes. “You found Skal?”
“And meat.” He procured buns like those we’d eaten on our first night in Willow’s Grave. “Eat. I need you looking more alive when your mother gets here.”
My appetite fled as my nerves mounted. “Right. When’s that happening?”
“As soon as you are ready. She’s still knocking, and it’s getting annoying.”
“Family trait. Sorry,” I quipped and took a bite of steamed bun. The meat curry inside was still warm.
Ciarán waited for me to finish my meal before swirling the dust at the bottom of our cave. It glowed orange, and an arm swathed in the sleeve of a plush robe pulled itself from the dirt.
My apprehension twisted like the dust as Mom took shape in her favorite robe and slippers.
She would be relieved I wasn’t going forward with my plans to take the secret door into Keldori, but I still didn’t want to see the look on her face when I told her we’d never exist on the same plane of existence together again.
“My Lady.” Ciarán bent on one knee, and Mom swatted at his head, taking care to only catch the knot he kept his hair tied in, but letting her frustration be clear.
“Stand up! What took you so long? Where’s my daughter?”
Ciarán raised his face to look at me, and Mom followed his gaze to where I sat in my corner.
“Wren!” Mom fell to her knees to fling her arms around me. She nestled my head under her chin, then pulled away to hold me at arm’s length. She scoured my face, searching for injury with a knit brow. “Are you okay? You look okay. Did you get away then?”
“Yes, thanks to you.” I pulled her back into a hug.
“Don’t thank me yet, because I’m going to kill you!” She pushed off me to stand again. “You were supposed to stay with Sorcha! You! You let her come!”
She whirled back towards Ciarán and shoved an accusatory finger into his chest.