Chapter 33
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
brEN
“Fuck the gods.”
I stared at the woman who’d fallen asleep mid-sentence. I’d dragged Selene straight into something she had no framework for, and she deserved none of it.
I stood and set her mug on the side table. One moment she’d been sitting upright on the sofa, demanding to see my wound. The next, her words simply stopped, and her shoulders sagged forward.
The fear in her eyes when she realized sleep was coming had hit me harder than the creature’s strike in the grove. She should not have seen what she had, and there was nothing I could do to undo that.
I crouched in front of her and drew a stray strand of hair from her face.
She didn’t stir.
The adrenaline that had carried her through the grove had exhausted itself completely, as it always did when someone drew on power they didn’t know they had. The body understood the cost even when the mind didn’t. She’d used something tonight she had no name for, and it had taken its toll.
I remained where I was for a moment and watched her breathe.
She looked entirely ordinary.
That was the thing about her. She always looked ordinary.
Sitting in my house, on my couch, with the throw tucked around her arms and her hair loosened from whatever arrangement she’d put it in for dinner.
She looked like someone who’d simply fallen asleep after a long evening.
Nothing about her surface suggested what I’d watched her do in the grove.
Whether she would admit it, the oak had moved because she told it to.
That was the only explanation, and the result may have saved my life. I’d like to think I wouldn’t have been bested by an average thorn wraith. But worry for Selene’s safety had distracted me, and I’d been losing that fight.
She had resolved it in the space of a single, instinctive gesture.
Sure, it was ward magic. I no longer had a doubt. Deep and structural, and entirely untrained. The strength of it must have been sleeping in her, like power sleeps in old foundations and ancient portals.
I had suspected it since the castle. But now I knew.
Still, what to do with that knowledge was another matter. Her life had changed, and she hadn’t a clue.
She would need to learn now.
I eased her back against the pillows, trying not to disturb her. She made a soft sound but didn’t wake. Her breathing deepened almost immediately into something slow and even. I drew the blanket higher, wishing that was all it took to protect her.
The room was quiet around us. Moonlight came through the curtains in thin, pale lines, and I drew from it. The window was cracked, and the air that moved through it carried the faint smell of rain and, underneath that, the lake.
I groaned as I stood, feeling weary in my bones too. First, I’d tend to my own injury, and then I needed to return to the grove. The rupture there was likely properly sealed, but I had to be certain, and then I would fortify it so that would never happen again in that spot. Then came the cleanup.
That’s where my thoughts should have remained, but old memories crowded in as I tended to my wound.
My mother had spoken of a woman once. In a moment that she judged safe enough for honesty. She may have even been referring to Selene. Though I couldn’t bring myself to believe that part.
I’d been young still. She’d chosen her moment carefully, waiting until we were alone and she was certain of not being overheard. She’d told me that love, when it was real and chosen, would not diminish what I was.
That the one who could stand beside me without flinching under the weight of my nature would arrive when the Veil itself needed her to.
Gods be damned.
I dropped my head into my palms, wishing she’d never planted that seed. Sure, she’d meant it to give me hope. But I had spent the better part of three centuries building walls against that possibility. It was easier.
Walls didn’t hope. They didn’t leave you standing in a quiet room at midnight watching someone sleep and feeling the careful architecture of your restraint show its age.
Now, for the first time in my long life, I wondered if my mother’s words might come true. I didn’t love Selene. I didn’t know her well enough to do so, and I wasn’t certain I could.
Sure, I was attracted to her. More than was advisable.
And she was strong enough to seal a tear in the Veil. Though I wasn’t certain she was entirely capable of protecting it on her own.
But those things were enough to make me wonder.
I straightened and looked at her for another second, then gathered the throw carefully around her and lifted her from the couch. She was warm and entirely limp in the way of deep sleep, and she didn’t stir when I shifted her weight.
I carried her to the car and settled her into the passenger seat, reclined it slightly, the throw still wrapped around her. She turned her face toward the window without waking.
The drive to Cillian’s house took only minutes. The roads were empty and dark, and I kept my speed measured to avoid waking her.
She woke slightly when I lifted her from the car, blinking without focus. “Bren?”
“I have you,” I said. “Go back to sleep.”
She did.
Nora had left the front door unlatched, not that I needed her to.
I carried Selene upstairs and found her room by the essence of things she’d left there. I laid her down, blanket and all, and carefully removed her boots. Then I pulled the duvet over her and studied her peaceful face for a second longer. “Your life is about to change, A stór.”
The whisper of my words hung in the air as I strode from the room.
I opened the door to the outside world, and the night air hit cold and sharp. I paused on the threshold long enough to whisper words of protection. I suspected Nora would sense them. If she told Cillian, he’d be angry to know a demigod had warded his house.
He would have to deal with it.
I buttoned my coat and pulled the door closed behind me. I sensed the lake, dark and still beyond the tree line, and the moon hung full and powerful above it. I absorbed what I could as I strode to my car.
There was work to do.
There was always work to do.
That had been true for three hundred years, and it would be true tomorrow, and the night after that, and every night stretching out ahead of me in a long, unbroken line until whatever end the Veil had in mind for me arrived.