Chapter 22 #2
I answer her the way I always do when I’m trying to protect us both. He still lied. He kept the truth of this party from us.
She bares her teeth at that, unwilling to concede.
“That explains why I’m feeling pretty okay, then,” I murmur. “He stayed close enough all night to keep the ache at bay.”
Seren hums and lifts the mug to her lips. When she speaks, it’s half into the tea, as if the ceramic will soften her truth. “Zora and I also had to work a little healer magic on you.”
I go still. The back of my mind has been tugging at me since I woke, asking me to notice the shift inside my body. “What does that mean, Ser?”
She rolls her shoulder like it’s nothing and still takes a step back.
“It means we did what we had to do so you could get out of this bed today,” she answers, light and offhand in a way that scrapes against my nerves.
“So you could make it through the day without bleeding out of places you shouldn’t or face-planting in the mud. Again.”
The veneer cracks on that last word. Fear leaks through.
I see it, and I feel the echo of it in my own chest. A memory surfaces—the warm tickle at my upper lip, the way blood traced over my mouth when everything inside me was spiraling.
I hadn’t coughed it up this time. It had poured out of me instead.
I can only imagine how I looked when Rennick brought me home and she found us.
No wonder she is shaking under the calm she keeps trying to wear.
The sight of me looking that broken probably would have had her willing to do anything to help, including…
Oh, shit.
“Seren,” I exhale her name. “Did you use your gift on me?”
She winces before she can stop herself. It’s small, but it’s answer enough.
“Like I said,” she swallows, guilt catching in her throat, “we did what we had to do to help you, Noa.”
“Seren,” I repeat, my voice breaking. “I never—” The words crumble before they leave me.
I hate that she did it, not because she crossed a boundary, but because I know what it costs her to.
Seren’s empath gift doesn’t touch joy, peace, or anything bright.
She can only draw out the darkness that festers, and she has to take it on herself to burn it away.
My grief. My fear. The jagged shards left by betrayal and rejection—she’ll carry them for me until she can burn them to ash within her.
Her red-rimmed eyes and drained face make sudden, awful sense.
“I’m okay, babe. I can take it.” She lifts her chin, squaring her shoulders, trying to look unshakeable.
I don’t need the performance. I already know how strong she is.
I also know she carries her own hurt every day, which is why I’ve always told her no when she’s offered to take mine.
Even after my mother died, I refused. I couldn’t pile my emotional baggage on top of hers.
“But you, my sweet, stubborn friend, needed a reprieve.” She looks me over, not unkind, but the keen way a healer does.
“Your body couldn’t handle the strain of it all any longer.
Especially not after your little power display yesterday.
If I hadn’t stepped in, you’d still be passed out in bed. That’s how fragile you are right now.”
The truth lands heavy and cold. I flinch.
“I still don’t like that you felt…” I trail off because there isn’t a word big enough to encompass it all.
Not for the wreckage that’s been festering from the scar tissue left by Rennick’s rejection, not for all the different degrees of torment that’ve followed.
It’s all too much for one person to hold.
“I would’ve done it sooner if I thought you’d let me,” Seren answers, waving off my worry with a nonchalance that does not fit the vastness of the situation.
“And it’s temporary. I wish I could offer a permanent fix, but my gift isn’t built like that.
I just took the edge off for a bit, but it’ll all come swarming back before you’re ready.
” She reaches up, tugs a strand of my hair, and my eyes flick down to the clumped mud still stuck there.
“All right, shower time. I’ll meet you in the kitchen.
Siggy’s making French toast as we speak, and I should go supervise before she goes rogue with the recipe and makes something resembling a candy bar instead of breakfast. Love the girl, but her sugar intake is alarming. ”
A quiet laugh escapes before I can stop it because I’ve seen Siggy’s “baking”. The muffins we made the other day were more chocolate chips than batter. The memory tugs another loose—Rennick’s expression when he tried one, the small, pained wince when the sweetness smacked him in the face.
The thought punctures the thin high and calm I’ve been floating in since I woke because it’s today. The party. Whatever’s waiting for me has already started moving. For all I know, I’ve already lost the game I didn’t know I still had to play.
Seren notices the shift in me and bumps my shoulder.
When I look up, her expression is gentle in a way that makes my throat sting.
“He cares about you, Noa. So much.” Her words are a balm she applies with a gentle touch.
“And he’s trying to make it right. As hard as it is, please give him a chance to prove it. ”
I open my mouth, not sure if I’m about to agree or argue and remind her that belief is hard to hand back when it’s already been dropped. Twice. But I don’t get the chance to say a damn thing.
“I wish—” She stops, her voice even but carrying the kind of sorrow that comes from grief that demands to be felt and remembered.
“For myself, for my daughter, that I had this opportunity. That I had a reason to fight for a broken bond instead of having to mourn a dead one. A mate who stayed, who fucking tried, who refused to give up. Rennick’s trying for you, babe.
He knows he failed you, and he’s out there trying to fix it right now.
Do me a favor and don’t bury him before he’s finished fighting for you. ”
My brows pull together. “When did you join the Rennick Fallamhain fan club?”
She backs toward the door, one hand already on the knob.
“Probably when he rushed in here yesterday with both of you covered in mud and blood and looked at you like the world would end if you left him.” Her gaze flicks to the empty chair, then to me.
“Don’t forget, I feel people’s emotions like they’re my own.
And that man…he’d follow you into the afterlife if you left this one, Noa. ”
It’s been over an hour since breakfast, a meal that was nearly derailed thanks to Siggy’s ongoing love affair with sugar.
Seren stepped in and performed culinarily triage, but not before a few slices of French toast were sacrificed to the maple syrup gods.
Still, the three of us ended up in a neat line at Rennick’s kitchen island, pretending the giant purple elephant in the room hadn’t also pulled up a seat and lit a cigarette while he was at it.
Like seasoned professionals in avoidance, we didn’t acknowledge the heaviness that sat between us.
None of us dared mention who was due to arrive in Fallamhain territory today, or what that arrival meant.
The McNamaras. Talis. Cathal.
It wasn’t until Siggy stood to clear her plate and then lingered there, shifting her weight from foot to foot, that reality began to creep back in at the edges.
After some coaxing, she confessed she’d promised her mother she’d make an appearance at the party.
The confession escaped in one hard exhale, like she’d been holding it in too long and finally had to let it go just so she could breathe properly again.
Her skin had gone pale as she said it. I still don’t know what unsettled her more.
Admitting it to me—as if attending would be a betrayal against me—or the idea of being surrounded by that many people for the first time since she was rescued and found her way to me.
Swallowing everything I was feeling, because ignoring myself in favor of someone else is basically my superpower, I pushed past the knot in my stomach and offered to walk her to the lodge.
She smiled, all tremor and bravery, and told me she’d be fine.
I hated how much selfish relief I felt at that.
Before she left, I caught her and pulled her in for a hug, tighter than I meant to.
My throat burned as I whispered the apology I still owed her, the one for snapping at her yesterday at the healer’s cabin when she’d only been trying to help.
Siggy forgave me before I even finished the sentence.
But the house is now too quiet.
The kind of quiet that lets dark thoughts crawl out from corners and start pecking at you like carrion birds feasting on something already half dead and rotten.
Seren stepped out a few minutes after Siggy to bring Ivey to the crones from Amara’s coven. She didn’t have to say why. I know she’s only doing it so she can give me her full attention today and hover. I’d call it sweet if it didn’t also taste like pity on the way down.
You’re dying, Noa. Let people fuss over you. Especially today. The voice in my head needs to work on its bedside manner. I shake it off.
With the Fallamhain Pack tied up with the spectacle at the lodge and the Craddock she-wolves running patrols to cover for them, Seren shipped Elio and Hattie to the coven early this morning, too.
Which leaves just me now, alone in Rennick’s too still, too large house, standing at the sink and pretending that washing dishes might be enough to quiet the noise in my head.