Chapter 3
Chapter Three
Kit
MY MOTHER’S VOICE SANG A LULLABY sweet and soft as I curled up against her side, her gentle fingers combing through my hair. Baby Teddy hiccupped loudly, cradled in her other arm, and she stopped to laugh and kiss his forehead. We were warm and safe and loved. I knew it like my own heartbeat.
It was a story she told every night, about sacrifice and choices and love. A human whose pure heart saved one of the fae from her cold existence. Her voice faded in and out as my eyes drooped. I fought the pull of sleep. If I closed my eyes, terrible things would come true. It was easy here.
My eyelids fell.
Don’t sleep.
Disoriented, I blinked up at the ceiling, heart aching, a haunting melody echoing in my ears that I hadn’t thought about since Ted was old enough to fall asleep without me singing it to him.
Grey light filtered weakly through the window.
Through August North’s bedroom window. One heartbreak gave way to another.
I wasn’t four, Teddy wasn’t a baby, and my mother wasn’t alive.
Neither was I seventeen, tucked up in this bed with Gus wrapped around me, his legs tangled with mine and his arm snug across my belly.
I shouldn’t want him to be, but wanting Gus was the angry scar of an old wound never fully healed.
Ted was the only one I had left, and I would not lose him too.
My legs had cramped from sleeping with my knees up higher than was comfortable so my feet didn’t dangle off the end. Stretching with a yawn, I glanced at the heavy clouds outside. It was probably still raining, and I didn’t relish getting soaked again, but at least it was daylight.
Slipping from the sheets, I pulled on borrowed trousers along with the same white shirt from the night before. The right cuff was stained with ink. What had Gus been doing when it happened? Was it me he’d been writing?
It didn’t matter.
The scent of frying pancakes and fresh coffee lured me downstairs.
Tillie was in the kitchen, dressed in loose trousers, a flowing white blouse tucked into them.
She peered over her shoulder at me, her long dark brown and silver curls bouncing.
Crinkles formed at the corners of her chestnut eyes as she smiled.
“Morning, Kit. Grab a plate and help yourself. Maple syrup’s on the table along with a mug of coffee for you. There’s sugar in the dish. Do you need milk?”
She was using too many of her rations on me, a pile of pancakes far too high for the two of us stacked beside the stove where she was pouring the last of the batter into the pan.
Milk and sugar were in high demand. “Plain coffee is perfect, Tillie. Thanks for breakfast. Hopefully I’ll be out of your hair soon. ”
She gave me an exasperated look as I reached into the cupboard and retrieved a plate for each of us. “I haven’t seen you in years, Kit Lovely. I don’t want you gone.” She tugged a lock of my overgrown hair. “You know you’re always welcome here. We’ve missed you and your endless stories.”
“I missed you too,” I said, then swallowed down a pang of wistfulness.
Pancakes. I needed to put some on my plate.
“How’s Henry?” I asked. Of Gus’ three siblings, he was the only one still living.
Injured in the war, at least he’d made it home, unlike poor John who hadn’t been so lucky.
John had only made it to twenty before a Nazi shell had brutally cut his life short.
A dozen more years than little Elsie got.
Shame and regret ate at me, and I fought the urge to withdraw into myself.
It felt like yesterday and a lifetime ago that we’d all chased each other through Point Pleasant Park, hiding among the tall trees.
“Henry’s doing well. Working as a milkman now, and he’s got beautiful twin daughters he dotes on. They turned one last month. You should’ve seen Gus when they started walking all wobbly like, I thought he’d have a heart attack the way he hovered in case they fell.”
The image of Gus fussing over his tiny nieces brought a smile to my face and a tender pain to my heart. He’d have made a wonderful father. “He was always good with the little ones.”
“Sure was. I don’t know what I’d have done without him.” Seeming to sense the melancholy in my mood, Tillie changed the subject. “I washed all your clothes when you went up to bed and used a little…” She wiggled her fingers. “To dry them fast. They’re all folded up good as new in your bag.”
She’d stayed up late to do it, then cooked me breakfast the next morning. “You didn’t have to. I’d have—”
“Hush. When’s the last time you let anyone take care of you? It’s only washing, Kit.” Her warm smile as she bumped her shoulder against mine made it feel like no time had passed since I practically lived in her home. She was always too kind.
“I… Thank you.”
Pleased, she turned off the burner and dished up her own food, then led me to the table. “Sit.” I did as directed, and Tillie followed suit across the table. “And tell me—”
Sudden successive raps on the front door startled me.
My pulse raced as an involuntary flash of magic crackled down my arms like electricity laced with ice, not enough to give me frostbite, but enough to make my bones ache with cold.
How my magic manifested was as random as how much I drew.
Command of either was beyond my reach, and this was exactly why I needed to maintain a better hold on it.
Tillie frowned at me, but then another series of knocks tapped out.
“Wonder who it is?” she asked as she stood and passed through to the entryway.
Grateful she was no longer watching, I struggled to calm my nerves. My pounding heart bled into machine-gun fire, crumbling stone buildings, the scent and sight of decaying bodies half-buried beneath rubble. Blood and magic and cordite burned my nostrils.
No. I needed to take slow deep breaths. I was in Halifax.
Embarrassment slithered up my throat and threatened to strangle me.
Listening intently as the door creaked open, I took a careful sip of coffee, hoping the bitter taste would anchor me in the present—then choked as a familiar low voice responded to Tillie.
Not him. Not now. My eyes darted to the kitchen door. Or could I wiggle out through the window? Scale the fence? Perhaps there was a trap door somewhere in the kitchen.
Wait.
This was what I’d become? Really?
Setting my elbows on the table, I rested my forehead on my palms and took another slow breath, disgusted.
I’d faced exploding shells as they drilled holes into the earth around me, magic pulsing and blasting as machine guns rattled, their bullets tearing through soldiers.
I’d kept calm as I watched the carnage unfold, narrating the details of the battle to audiences at home.
And then I’d walked through the aftermath of lost and ruined lives to tell their tales. Now I couldn’t face one man?
Cowardice, thy name is Kit Daring.
Steeling myself as their voices moved closer, I stuffed my trembling hands into my lap beneath the table where Gus wouldn’t see them and doubled my effort to regulate my pulse.
I wouldn’t be humiliated, not in front of someone who’d seen me at my most uncontrolled.
Not when I’d lost everything because of it.
Tillie walked in first, a twinkle in her eyes like she was overjoyed Gus and I were about to be face to face for the first time since I left for McGill a month ahead of schedule. She probably was.
Entering the kitchen, Gus stopped dead, his jaw clenching as his dark gaze landed on me.
I couldn’t read a thing in his eyes. A couple inches taller now, he stood a full head and shoulders over Tillie.
He was more muscular too, and of all the unfair things in the world, his suit was too tight, showing it off in a way I didn’t want to admire.
Long enough to curl slightly beneath his ears, his nearly black, slicked back hair made the freckles dusting his nose and cheeks appear faded by contrast. But those heavy serious brows were exactly the same, giving him a permanent glower.
What did he see when he looked at me? The purple smudges beneath my pale green eyes and the new scar on my right temple? Was he, too, cataloguing the differences between me and the boy I’d been?
“Lovely,” he finally greeted, voice even, neutral. He used to sound teasing when he called me by my last name. Not this time, and that stung, viciously. As if I’d never meant anything to him. As if he’d never been the sole person privy to all of my secrets, who’d told me he loved me anyway.
As if he hadn’t once held my vulnerable heart in the palm of his hand and squeezed it to a bloody ruined pulp.
“August,” I returned, fighting the itch in my throat. I looked away as though I was returning to my breakfast. If he could pretend seeing me didn’t bother him, I could manage twice as well. “How have you been?”
“Fine. What are you doing here?”
Some manners. He couldn’t have broadcast any louder that he didn’t care about me anymore. “I’m having breakfast with your mother.”
“Speaking of breakfast,” Tillie interrupted, voice overly bright. “You look like you haven’t eaten since you left, August. Take a seat and eat some pancakes. Coffee?”
Gus looked like he’d rather continue interrogating me, but he could never be rude to his mother. He wasn’t built that way. “I’ve eaten,” he defended himself. “But those do look awful good, Mum. Maybe just a couple. No coffee though, thank you.”
Forcing my hands steady, I drizzled a bit of syrup on my pancakes and cut them into bite-size pieces, so utterly aware of Gus’ presence as he moved quietly around the kitchen that I could pinpoint exactly where he was at any second.
A strained silence settled over us as Gus and Tillie took their seats. The scrape of knives and forks on dishes grated against my nerves as we ate. Under normal circumstances I loved maple syrup. Today, the sweetness was cloying, and each bite of fluffy pancake stuck on the way down.
“Is that my shirt?” Gus finally asked, sounding disconcerted.
“And your trousers,” I agreed before stuffing my mouth again so I didn’t have to elaborate.
“Kit got in late last night during that dreadful downpour.” Tillie paused with her coffee cup in front of her mouth.
“Ted and Mary-Alice weren’t home, so he came over to get out of the rain.
You haven’t worn anything in that closet for ages.
Didn’t you say just last month for me to give it away to someone who needed it? ”
Gus grunted a reluctant affirmative.
“Well, Kit can give them away once he gets settled, then, and everyone will be happy.”
I didn’t protest, but it was close. She wanted me to give these clothes away? Return them, sure. But if they were going to be given away anyway... maybe I would just hold onto them. Even if it irked me how uneasy the idea of parting with Gus’ castoffs made me.
“I could do that,” I said. Could was the operative word. Could, but wouldn’t and no one had to be the wiser.
“Why are you here, though? Back in Halifax?” Gus clarified. His attempt to prevent another evasive reply. If he thought I was so easy to pin down, he didn’t remember me well enough.
“I wasn’t aware I needed your permission to visit.” Another bite. I needed to finish what was on my plate, and then I could escape.
He gave me an odd look, fiddling with his fork. “You don’t. I’m curious is all. I didn’t think you’d be back again until it was all over. Maybe not even then.”
“I suppose you were wrong.”
“Suppose I was,” he replied, stiffly. “How long are you staying?”
I shoved the last couple pieces of pancake in my mouth and chewed deliberately, then swallowed. “It’s up in the air. I haven’t got solid plans to leave yet, but I’ll be missed if I don’t get back soon.”
“I’m sure you already are.”
What was that supposed to mean? Once upon a time, I’d known what Gus was thinking without a single word coming out of his pouty mouth. Now I didn’t have a clue if that was a simple comment or an attack.
Tillie sighed as she watched me attempt to consume my coffee in one long swallow. Self-preservation was more important than the survival of my taste buds. “I do wish you boys would make up and move on. You were such good friends.”
Ignoring the twist of my heart, I offered a wry grin.
“I have moved on,” I lied, looking directly at Gus, who remained expressionless.
Why was he so much better at this than I was?
Patting the hand Tillie had rested beside her plate, I smiled more genuinely at her.
“Thank you for everything, I’m grateful, truly. But I need to go see Ted.”
With that, I retrieved my things and Tillie followed me to the front door. She reached into a glass dish on a table in the hall and held out a key to me. “If they’re not back yet, this is the spare they gave me for emergencies. I’m sure Ted wouldn’t mind if you let yourself in to wait.”
That might’ve been useful last night. I could’ve avoided Gus this morning. Nor would I be standing around in his clothes. “Thanks for everything, Tillie. It’s good to see you again.”
“Take care, Kit. And don’t be a stranger, okay?”
I nodded and headed out. If I had any luck, this would be the last time I saw August North. When he broke my heart seventeen years ago, every drop of colour and light had been sucked from the world. Some days, I wondered if they hadn’t ever come back.
The overcast sky along with the damp fog clinging to me, and the still-missing car plummeted my mood further as I tramped toward my brother’s house.
To be safe, I knocked and waited a few moments, listening for movement.
The last thing I wanted was to scare Mary-Alice if she’d returned last night after all.
No sound emerged, so I inserted the key and twisted.
The magic reinforcing the lock disengaged with a tickly whoosh.
The sight of the foyer froze me in my tracks.
“What the hell did you get yourself into, Ted?”