CHAPTER 7
Bristol pressed into the broad darkness of Tyghan’s chest, like it could block out the world. All she wanted to do was hide.
He whispered words gently against her hair, his voice soothing. It wasn’t the words that mattered, but him, something solid and true in a life that was slipping from her grasp.
“Bri.” Tyghan gently lifted her chin so he could look into her eyes. “I’m sorry.”
“What?” she said, uncertain what he was apologizing for. “I told you, it’s only a flesh wound. And I was the one who did it. Not you. I pressed into your knife. There was no other choice.”
“Not the wound,” he said. “That we used you as a hostage.”
Hostage.
The thought circled back, one of many shattered moments of the day that had assaulted her since she had stared into her mother’s eyes and heard the words kill her.
She shivered, seeing her mother’s cold jade eyes again.
Go ahead, kill the creature. Bristol had no value as a hostage, not even for her own mother.
Her knees wobbled. The room swayed.
Tyghan scooped her up, holding her tight like he would never let her out of his arms, his lips resting against her forehead.
He carried her to the sofa and laid her down, then swept a blanket over her shoulders and turned his attention to the hearth.
It was already set with logs, and with a gentle motion of his hand and a whispered word, the logs ignited.
When he looked back at her, his face was pure misery.
She shook her head. “I don’t blame you, Tyghan. We saved Hollis and the others. That’s what matters. It was an impossible situation, and a hard choice had to be made.”
“I didn’t want to do it—”
“You think I didn’t know? That was obvious.
It was a chaotic moment—there wasn’t time to think, much less explain.
I would have done the same thing.” Splintered images shot through her mind: Quin’s troubled whispers, Tyghan drawing his knife and turning toward her—the unknown.
A plan she hadn’t trained for. “When you grabbed me, I was shocked . . . but that shock paled—”
She shook her head. Tyghan sat down beside her. “Tell me.”
She stared at the crackling fire. “The way she looked at me . . . I was nothing to her. A stranger. I can’t shake it from my mind. She pushed you to kill me. More than once. She didn’t care.”
“That’s how she looks at us all, Bri. That’s who your mother is. I’m sorry.”
“It’s not who she used to be.”
Tyghan had no response. This Maire was the only one he had ever known.
“My father warned me that she might not know me. I’m not sure that she did. How can a mother forget her own child?”
“She must have remembered something. She let us go.”
Bristol tried to make sense of it, reliving the moment when the knife sliced into her neck and her mother’s eyes widened.
A second later, she sent them on their way.
“Maybe it was the blood that saved us. My mother always hated the sight of blood. When we were small, my father was in charge of our skinned elbows and bloody noses.” Bristol reached up and traced the faint line on her forehead where a scar disappeared into her hairline.
Her mother had fainted at that one. She’d been unloading her loom from the top of the van when it suddenly jerked free and hit Bristol in the head.
Heads bleed magnificently, and her mother collapsed in a heap when she saw the gash.
“Forgive me,” Tyghan said, “but I have a hard time believing Maire is bothered by blood. Buckets of it have been shed by her hand, and she bragged about shooting Cully. I don’t think it was just the sight of blood that made her stop.”
Bristol couldn’t argue with that. Still, her mother had reacted when Bristol’s neck started bleeding.
Maybe the sight of the blood made her mother stop thinking Bristol was only a clever deception.
Or maybe it jolted a sliver of memory free .
. . a memory that she’d had a daughter once.
Three daughters. Did some lost part of her remember, or was Leanna Keats gone forever?
Tyghan wished he could erase Bristol’s pain, make it disappear with the right words, but there was no magic that could undo what she heard and saw that day. He was grateful for the knock at the door and jumped from the sofa to answer it.
“It’s supper,” he said, taking the tray from the servant so Bristol wouldn’t have to endure any more sideways glances. “After all the blood you lost, you need extra nourishment.” He also hoped some routine and normalcy would give her a break from the thoughts that were overwhelming her.
He set the tray on the low table, spreading out plates and silver, but at the first rattle of dishes, the fox she’d been feeding emerged from the burrow woven into her carpet—art come to life at every meal.
He sniffed at the table, investigating. “Back to your burrow, freeloader,” Tyghan said, trying to shoo him away, but Bristol intervened.
“No. Give him something.”
Tyghan sighed and handed over a red pear from the fruit bowl, and the fox happily scampered back into his hole.
He was probably her fox for life now. Tyghan filled their goblets, and they both ate—and drank.
He had ordered her favorites. A mellow red wine from the north country, braised boar shanks, warm buttered rolls, stuffed figs, raspberry cream tarts.
Like the fire, it seemed to be a welcome distraction for her.
He kept her goblet full and watched her shoulders loosen and warmth return to her cheeks.
Sometimes everyone needed a break from their thoughts, but when she set her last shank bone on her plate and sat back, staring at the hearth and crackling logs, he knew her mind had circled back to the same thought: Her mother had ordered him to kill her.
Even he was shocked and still reeling from that moment, and the risk he had taken.
He was a fool to have put any hope in Maire caring for her daughter.
“She’s gone,” Bristol said. “The mother I knew is gone, just like my father warned.” The emptiness of her tone gripped Tyghan, and he wished he had a remedy for her anguish.
“For me, it’s like she’s died all over again,” she went on.
“The first time I was angry, but this time . . . This is different. It feels like I’ve stopped existing too.
She gave birth to me. On a dark and stormy night.
She always laughed about that, like I had to make an overly dramatic entrance.
After thirty-two hours, she’d remind me, like she was as proud of my endurance as her own.
And now, in her mind, I’m no one. That story, that life—it’s gone.
When there are no memories left of you, do you even exist?
” She turned to him, her eyes bright again.
“Kiss me, Tyghan. Kiss me like you will never forget me. Please don’t ever forget me. ”
Tyghan gently tucked her hair behind her ear, and with a single finger, he slowly lifted her chin.
His lips grazed hers, so lightly they barely touched, and yet it was a sunrise, a sunset, the lifetime he wanted with her.
He pulled her closer, and her head rested on his shoulder, sinking into him like she was anchored again.
He calmed the blaze in the hearth and summoned the shadows around them like a blanket, and she fell asleep in his arms.
Forget her? Never. She was sewn into his soul.