CHAPTER 43 The Night We Met
CHAPTER 43
The Night We Met
“ J ames should stay out of the Gate for now,” Tye argued, heaving the saw to his side of the vociferous tree.
“What?”
Tye rolled his eyes. “Girl, if you go anymore doe-eyed thinkin’ of Stornoway, you’re gonna get caught in hunting season out here.”
I schooled my face. “I’m fine.” Sweaty, hot, sleepless, but fine. “You think James should…?”
Tye huffed a foggy breath. “Stay out of the Gate,” he repeated, grinding the blade against the wet, sap-laden trunk. Behind the pine tree, green needles littered his checkered jacket. “With the Inquitate tracking us now, who knows what’s gonna happen?”
I was quiet for a moment. “Ruhaven is the only thing James has of Essie. He needs to return.”
“Ya think, huh? Just like how you’re going back?” Tye taunted, calling out my dry spell. “Way I see it? That Gate just causes trouble for everyone. And you still ain’t got any answers from it about Willow.”
He wasn’t wrong. “What do you think about the letters Bryn found from Carmen? About her thinking the Drachaut become Inquitate?”
He kicked the tree. Once. Twice. The sliced trunk clung on, its glistening leaves shuddering under the attack. “Darlin’, I don’t know nothin’ ‘bout that woman’s theories. Maybe she’s right, maybe she ain’t. It’s all over my head.”
“Did you know her in the Gate?”
He pulled off his toque and hair the color of good Irish dirt flowed free. “Nope.”
Hm. “Well, how did she come up with the theory?”
“Dunno.”
Tye sunk to the frozen ground again and picked up the saw to claw through the last remaining strand of the tree. How was it winter already? Though it certainly didn’t look like it. Here, the forest stayed as vividly beautiful as the summer, unaware it was supposed to cower in the face of the frozen season or that it was supposed to change at all.
“James says it’s all about balance. Mates, Tethers, and yet we came over in a threesome.”
A dimple winked in his cheek. “If Stornoway wasn’t a part of it, you’d be gettin’ me excited.” Then he ripped the saw back so hard, I ended up with a mouthful of pine needles.
I spat them out. “Right, well. What if it’s mates that come over in threes?”
Sweat beaded on Tye’s reddened neck. “What, and you’re the first to figure it out? Don’t ya think we’d have noticed when all the triplets started tearin’ up the sheets ‘round here?”
If only. “Maybe the Inquitate killed them before they found each other.”
“Why? ‘Cause they got some vendetta against true love?”
Broken at last, the timber teetered on its axis and smashed into the earth. Crows clucked indignantly, their wings thrumming like fairies into the sky, becoming a black triangle against the heavy clouds as Tye shrugged on his gloves.
“I don’t know,” I said as he hoisted the tree. “But they almost killed Bryn before we met.”
“Ya did meet, hun. And guess what? Ya didn’t even remember.”
Yeah, that shot landed. “So it’s not about dividing up true love.” I pushed on. “Maybe it’s about the balance. Something about the lack of balance in the triplets. And they’re trying to fix the scale. Or…”
I was forced to grab the other end when Tye started walking with the tree. “Let’s get this back before Stornoway starts sweatin’.”
I rolled my eyes. “Or maybe it’s not about the scale. Maybe it’s about what caused us to come over in the first place. Bryn and I are mates. What if we grabbed each other? Then you got caught up in it?”
“But I haven’t even met you guys. As far as I can understand, I’m in the city of Esmeralda , nowhere near ya.”
“But we must meet eventually if we’re making the Fall together. What happens when we do? When we make the Fall, I mean?”
His shoulders straightened. “What? You already know what happens.”
“No, I mean us. You. Bryn. If one of us makes the Fall, does it affect the others?”
“Don’t see why it would.”
“Well, if we came over at the same time, maybe we’ve got to go back at the same time too. Have any other triplets returned?”
Another shrug. “Ain’t none I know of.”
That was odd, though, wasn’t it? “You mean, no triplet has ever made the Fall?”
I could tell he was getting annoyed. “Roe, ya want a history of which Ruhaven did what, ya gotta ask James.”
How had I missed this? The one thing I’d put out of my mind—the Fall—might have some correlation as well. If no triplet ever made it, was it because they’d been killed before they heard the call? But then, there was always one survivor of each triplet at least, so why hadn’t the remaining one made the Fall?
I needed to ask James, see if he—
But no, not now, not while he was recovering from Essie.
I let out a weary breath. “I hope James wants a Christmas tree.”
“Just don’t tell him ya cut it down. Or else he’ll— Stornoway ,” Tye uttered on a low curse.
My heart all but jumped in my throat. Unfortunately, that was all it could do right now. With James mourning Essie, Bryn and I could hardly pick things up again—on the piano or otherwise.
In the shadows of Naruka, Bryn leaned against a thick oak, cane in his pale hand, the sky’s gray light surrounding him in a halo. He wore a thick sweater the color of sweet Irish cream, with three burgundy buttons on the collar and the dark jeans I’d begun to enjoy on him. He looked like a mouthwatering pint of Guinness.
And his smile had the same effect.
Hello, Rowan, his voice caressed my mind.
“I brought her back alive,” Tye said sourly. “You can breathe again now.”
Bryn limped toward us, inspecting me as if he expected to find a part missing. When he didn’t, he ran a hand along my braid, pulling lightly, playfully. “Indeed.”
I’d never get used to him looking at me like that, but I’d better learn soon because my pulse would beat itself into an early heart attack.
Tye grunted and started moving with the tree again, forcing me to shuffle my feet and follow.
“How was the Gate this morning?” I asked Bryn, deciding to shoot the elephant in the room first. I still hadn’t been back, not since—
“I still remain in Drachaut, though I did not see you,” Bryn said, referring to Nereida. “I saw Jamellian.” The way his lips tightened told me all I needed to know.
“You haven’t seen the Inquiate again?”
He shook his head.
There was a moment where the only sounds were the pine needles swishing the ground and Tye’s grunting sighs, then Bryn said, “O’Sahnazekiel has been spending more time with Kazmira.”
Bryn slid his hand into mine, interlacing our fingers in that simple gesture, still so new that heat zinged up my arm.
As we walked, he asked me about the holiday traditions in L’Ardoise, of how Willow and I celebrated. By rolling hot maple syrup in snow with a popsicle stick , I told him, which resulted in many more questions.
What did he miss? Reindeer meat.
Would there be snow in L’Ardoise now? At least five feet.
Did it snow more in Norway or Canada? Definitely Canada.
He and Tye ignored each other until we stepped into the castle’s peaty warmth and dropped the tree, then Tye veered straight to the kitchen.
I hesitated in the lounge, unwilling to let go of Bryn so soon.
He squeezed my hand. “Will we go upstairs?” My heart flipped. “James wished to speak to you when you returned.” Oh.
“You didn’t tell him I was chopping down one of his precious trees, did you?”
Bryn huffed a laugh. “I certainly did not.”
He brushed his thumb over the back of my hand, a short smile on his lips.
Where did we go from here? With James bedridden, and the Inquitate threatening us both in and out of the Gate? It felt wrong to be with him when James had just lost Essie.
As I angled toward James’s door, Bryn squeezed my hand. “Rowan, may we talk?” My pulse flickered once, like a candle after a puff of breath, as I faced him. “I admit, I have been uncertain of how to proceed after James’s loss.”
Though I felt the same, it hadn’t stopped me from fantasizing about him, from replaying every minute in the music room, from wishing and wondering what would have happened. From imagining what it’d be like to be Bryn’s.
I lifted my hand to cup his face, like he had once with me at the Gate. Can I touch you?
His eyes danced underneath heavy lashes. “Of course, Rowan.”
My breathing was barely audible as I slowly traced a line over his Nordic-cut nose and the playful, sinful lips, mapping their preference to lift to the left side. When he parted them, I rubbed my thumb along the bottom, a shade fuller than the top. His mouth was just a bit too wide, endearingly so, the anomaly giving him an impossibly rare and bright smile.
When I dropped my hand, his own settled on my shoulders—warm, firm, strong—and he lowered his head so our noses touched. My skin all but hummed beneath his fingers.
“Do you know what it is to be mated?” Bryn asked quietly.
My gaze flicked to the closed door beside us. James explained what it was for him and Essie.
“It is different for each mated couple,” Bryn said, voice barely above a whisper, his breath tingling my lips. “But should we progress …”
“Progress?” I swallowed. “You mean those irregular expressions?”
His quick grin was a thing of beauty. “Yes, my Rowan.” He trailed his thumb over my bottom lip, back and forth, back and forth until my thighs weakened, until an ache built between them. “Then things here would be as they are for us in Ruhaven. That is why James wished to find Essie in the Ledger.”
How could things be the same here? Sahn and Nereida had been with each other for years, decades.
Bryn drew away slightly. “We have not spoken of this enough, of what it—it would…” I wet my lips, my tongue flicking his thumb, tasting him. “…would mean,” he finished, and his rough voice sparked something low in my belly. “Rowan, would you be amenable to returning to the Gate together? Until—until James is more recovered.”
Was that what he’d prefer? Nereida? “I…”
You are not in competition. You are one and the same.
Maybe Bryn thought so, but I hadn’t lived her life, hadn’t lived in the Gate for years like him.
He ran his hands over my shoulders. “Would you prefer I remain here? To not visit the Gate while you adjust?”
Would he? Would he really give that up? Could I ask it with us so close to the Inquitate?
As I worried, I could feel his gaze like a baby feather dragged over my skin, tickling my cheeks and running down my nose. Then it rolled over my mouth, teasingly, sensuously.
“How are you doing that?” I murmured.
Magic. His wide mouth quirked up. Or, perhaps, I am simply your mate.
I flattened a hand on his chest . Is it simple?
He tilted my head back, a low exhale parting his lips. “If you wish it to be, Rowan.”
God, when he switched like that—silky voice inside me to low and rough outside… Legs weak, I pressed a hand to the wall, bumped some portrait or knickknack, sending it swinging wildly on its tiny nail.
Bryn caught the frame, steadying it with an amused look at me.
And then I spotted him.
Not in the picture I’d nearly ripped off the wall, but the one next to it—in the wallet-sized photo with a glass covering and an anorexic frame.
The portrait I hadn’t noticed once the clocks stopped that night.
Bryn followed my fixed gaze curiously, but stiffened slightly when he saw whom I stared at.
Levi’s skin and hair matched mine, but he was Mexican, not First Nations. His mouth was a dot, a pucker of the lips that neither rested nor smiled. His nose was a fraction too large, his eyes too small and looking away from the camera.
But that wasn’t what caused my skin to prickle, and for once, it wasn’t Bryn either.
I could imagine how Levi’s tiny lips would pop open on a laugh, knew his smile was long and thin like a sliced green bean.
Because I’d met him.