Chapter 18 #4
And her head was turned, looking over her shoulder in pure terror.
“Nadine,” he said.
She whirled around with a startled shriek and then said, hesitantly, “Cal?”
“I’ve been waiting for you.”
Nadine backed from him. “I—I was shot.”
“I know. Poor darling.” He closed the distance, but slowly. The sound of the leaves beneath his boots seemed to put her on edge. “Want me to kiss it better?”
She slipped into shadow, instinctively moving closer towards one of the pines. Her bare heel caught on the root, though, and she fell back against the trunk, crying out in fright when the rough trunk slammed up against her spine.
There was blood on her clothes, dark and matted. Smeared against her pale inner arm.
He would kill Ben for every scratch, he swore to himself. His brother would pay.
Before she could run away again, he caged her in, gripping one of the branches hanging over her head. “Come to me,” he said. “You don’t need to cower. You’re my sparrow, remember?”
“But they tried to kill me anyway,” she wailed.
“Yes, and I’ll take care of that later. Now come here.”
She wanted to obey, to trust him. She even started to, before freezing. “Please—d-don’t—”
“Oh, Nadine. You know I can’t resist you when you beg.” He traced a path from her neck to her shoulder, before pressing her closer, from her good side. “Even if it is for your life.”
“You drugged me—”
“No.” His mouth crushed against hers before he bent to kiss the mark at her throat. “I just made you a little sick so my brother and sister wouldn’t take you out before I was ready for you.” He ran his hand down her side, cradling her closer still. “And I am ready for you.”
“But the tea—”
“Wasn’t from me. It seems to have worn off, though. I can feel your pulse racing.”
Nadine tilted up her head to look at him, eyes bright and watery. “Ben tried to touch me.” Tears spilled down her cheeks like quicksilver in the moonlight. “He was going to—with his gun—” Her voice rose in fear and disgust, her grip on him tightening.
“Was he?”
The anger in his voice terrified her. She tried again to move away.
Cal tugged again, and she fell against his bare chest, warm and alive.
So alive. He grabbed her hand, placing it over his straining fly, even as his other hand wrapped around her to keep her in his protective embrace.
“This is what you do to me,” he said. “You’re mine, little sparrow. Not his. Mine.”
“I thought you were going to kill me,” she wept. “I thought you lied.”
“But you’re my sweet little sparrow-bride.” Gently, he flattened her fingers until her trembling hand cradled the full length of him through the denim. He ground his hips, adding with a growl, “Why would I kill you, Nadine? Why would I destroy this?”
“That’s what your family does,” she said brokenly. “They kill all their sparrows.”
“Not you.” Never you. Never, ever you.
Remembering his shirt, he stepped back and untied the sleeves from his waist and carefully fitted her hands into them.
She looked a sorry sight in that blood-stained dress, with leaves in her hair, wearing his shirt like a shroud.
A pagan sacrifice ripped from the altar by a violent, selectively merciful god. Guilt ripped at him with its talons.
“Not you,” he said again, gently. “No—I’m going to make you soar.
” Taking her face in his hands, he brushed the smears of mud and tears away from her dirtied cheeks, leaning forward until his forehead was resting against hers and they were nearly nose-to-nose.
“Those birds at the wedding were a sign, Nadine. Ravens mate for life.”
“She—is—not—a—fucking—raven!”
Nadine gasped in fright. Cal shoved her behind him and felt her hands gripping his bare shoulders, fingers biting in hard enough to leave bruises as Ben appeared through the trees.
His brother looked terrible. Cal felt a savage rush of pride when he saw what his sparrow had done to defend herself before taking off into the night. One of his eyes was red and leaking blood as if she’d clawed at him or gouged him with something sharp.
“Oh,” he said mockingly, “did she try to scratch your eyes out? What did you do to provoke her, I wonder?”
“Get out of the way, Caledon. You can’t protect her any longer. Father has looked the other way but this ends now. She dies tonight. And if you won’t kill her, I will.”
And you will follow, hovered unspoken in the air.
“I don’t think my sparrow wants to go with you. She belongs to me, Ben. I know it must be hard for you, seeing her come to me so tamely; especially when your sparrow was so eager to be rid of you, she died screaming your sins.”
A low growl came from Ben’s muscled throat. “Father agrees with me.”
“Of course he does. He wants us all to be as cold and miserable as he is. Haven’t you noticed how he thrills to our fights? Who do you think left that book out for Noelle to find in the first place?”
Ben’s mouth fell open like a gasping barracuda’s.
“You’re lying,” he said at last, uncertainly, wan and sickly in the moonlight, with smudged shadows under his eyes.
Cal didn’t know what his father had told Ben after his wife’s death, and had never thought to ask, but it was clear that he was thinking on it now and that it offered no relief.
“Father lost his faith in sparrows years ago. You’ve seen how he treats our mother.
All he’d like to do is hunt and fuck. It doesn’t really matter if Noelle had accepted you or not, Ben.
Father would have found a way to split you apart eventually, just as he never really would have let you have Nadine. ”
He felt her flinch, small and silent behind him. It wounded his heart.
“You’re fucking lying,” Ben screamed, startling an owl from the trees.
“Ask Father. He’s been grooming you for this your whole life, Benjamin. Every speck of brick. Every drop of blood. All leading to this—ask him what he intends for you.”
“I told you to get out of the way.”
Ben rushed him. To Cal’s surprise, he didn’t fire his gun, despite his earlier threat.
When he lunged, it was with the butt of his rifle, which he obviously intended to use to pry them apart.
Cal would never know if this was a vestigial mercy or if Ben merely wanted to extend the effects of his cruelties by making him watching the death of another woman in the woods.
He would never know because he swung up his own rifle and instinctively fired before it even occurred to him to ask. His reflexes had always been better than his brother’s or his father’s, and the hunter never expected to be the quarry.
Ben’s head exploded.
Blood formed a black mist in the moonlight, freckling Cal’s face and chest. He was a crack shot and at this distance, there was very little to correct when it came to aim.
Cal stood there, swaying on his feet with exhaustion and shock, watching Ben’s brain slide out from the hole in the back of his head before the rest of him followed with a wet thud.
“Fuck.” Cal’s gun slipped out of his sweaty hands and hung uselessly in front of him as he stared at his brother’s corpse.
He heard his sparrow gag behind him. Which reminded him—
It isn’t over yet.
Shaking himself, he bent to grip Nadine behind her knees, swinging her into his arms with a grunt to avoid putting pressure on her wound. She fell back in his arms, limp and unresisting despite what she’d just see him do. She was in shock. So was he.
They passed Odessa on the way back to the house. She was still in the same spot but now the bottle of Champagne was nearly half-empty and she was dancing in place to keep warm. She lifted her eyes as they passed, lingering on the blood on his chest.
“Did you kill a deer?”
“I killed a raven.”
“Baby Cal.” Her voice lost its slurred archness. “You didn’t—”
“I left my gun. The safety isn’t on.” He turned away. “Please get it for me.”
“It’s not supposed to work like that!” she shouted after him. “You’re not supposed to turn on each other. It’s only supposed to be about the deer!”
What had she thought would happen, when she sent Nadine to him? When she had chosen him over Ben? Surely, on some level, she must have understood the fate she was condemning their brother to when she acknowledged Nadine was, and always would be, his sparrow.
You’re not the only one who’s been living in a fairytale.
His sparrow gripped at him, fingers slipping at his sweat-slicked neck. Reminding him what was at stake.
“You killed your brother,” she said shakily.
“I know.”
“What’s your father going to do? Wasn’t he the heir? What happens when you kill the wrong person? What happens, Cal?” she demanded, voice rising when she received no answer.
He couldn’t give her one, because he didn’t know. The covenants that existed between his father and his siblings were a mystery; he only knew what his father had promised him.
His father was waiting for them at the top of the staircase as they walked over the threshold of Ravensgate.
Backlit by the upstairs lights, he looked down at them in shadow like a gargoyle carved from black stone, holding an antique pistol which he tapped against the banister in an uneven, staccato cadence.
“So you couldn’t do it,” he said, as if he were passing judgement right out of the old testament, where Brother killed Brother, and innocent blood was slain. “Just like the last one.”
Cal held Nadine tighter. “She’s my sparrow,” he said. “I’m keeping her.”
His father laughed nastily. “Is that true?” he asked Nadine. “Do you think you’re a sparrow now, my deer? Do you want to fly with the ravens?”
He rotated the chamber of his gun with a click that echoed like a gunshot in the hall.
“Then let him shield you with his wings.”