The Minor Fall

CHAPTER 47 It Would Break Your Heart

CHAPTER 47

It Would Break Your Heart

T he gold that had briefly surrounded us fell away.

Bryn reversed our positions, his tall shadow blocking me from the man barging into the hotel. Desperate, embarrassed, I clasped at my gaping blouse.

What was I thinking, undressing in the lounge? Standing here with my shirt half open when anyone could come in. We should have been in his room, and now James or Kazie or—

Footsteps cracked on the wood floor louder than the thunder bellowing outside.

Of all the people right now.

Bryn backed us up. Indeed.

Tye’s leather jacket sparkled black from the rain, his hair a muddy brown and curled into shaggy ringlets. Drops of the storm clung to his beard.

He stopped in the hallway with a thunk-thunk and shook like an Irish wolfhound, splattering the crimson walls with the poor weather. Salty, Atlantic air filled the room before the door banged shut behind him. Where had Tye been celebrating?

Bryn pressed me into the wall, shielding me from view.

Tye cocked an eyebrow. Looked Bryn up and down before letting out a low whistle. “Finally learn how to use your dick, Stornoway?”

Christ, Tye. I tried to make myself smaller as he peered around Bryn, earning him a low growl. But when Tye saw my face, his eyes went to slits. “Or maybe not. You ain’t supposed to make ‘em cry.”

I hastily wiped at my cheeks as Bryn went still. “Tye, don’t start something, not tonight,” I warned.

Humming some Western song, he strode past us into the kitchen, hands in his pockets. “If ya wanted privacy, don’t see why ya get undressed in a hotel lounge. Some might think you’d have more class than that, Stornoway. But not me.”

Ignoring Tye, Bryn turned and buttoned my blouse for me, his hands surprisingly steady. Everything inside me ached for him to a painful degree.

And despite Tye, the tears, my accusations, his eyes still burned gold.

Crack.

I flinched at the sudden noise from the kitchen.

“Least he won’t be able to use one of his sticks now,” Tye chortled as he moved out the door, drunkenly grim. “What a sentimental choice of wood too. You’re welcome darlin’.”

I frowned down at my blouse. What stick? What wood? If Tye was going to drink this much, he should have come out for Kazie’s send-off.

Bryn’s fingers stilled on the final button, hesitated, then slipped it through. Tye is not himself. We should leave him be. He picked up my hands, gathered them in his. I think we should talk, Rowan, upstairs.

I nodded, glancing around the lounge. “Your cane…?” Oh, in the kitchen. I felt the blush coming at the mess Tye must be staring at right now. “I’ll get it.”

Bryn tightened his grip. “No, let us go upstairs. I can manage with the railing and your help.”

I gave a quick tug. “I’ll be quick.”

“No.”

“Bryn, I’m getting your cane.”

“He broke it, Rowan. Now let us go upstairs.”

I stopped struggling. What?

It is quite fine. I shall obtain another one easily, but not now.

That’s it. I shoved up my sleeves.

Bryn caught me around the waist, gave me a firm tug to the stairs.

“This is too far,” I insisted.

“Then speak to him tomorrow if you like, but not tonight.” He took my hand, gentler now. “Come with me?”

I glanced between the kitchen and Bryn, at the marks just fading from my hands on his pale, porcelain skin. Swallowed. “Okay. Upstairs.”

Without his cane, I had to tuck an arm around him to navigate to the staircase, but he managed by hopping and using the backs of lounge chairs for support.

The clocks, a cuckoo and a grandfather, ticked a protective rhythm as we climbed to the first level. A window spanned the entire wall with soft, white curtains that were blue in the moonlight. Rain splattered the frosted glass in out-of-sync rolls.

On the floor below, Tye’s tell-tale boots thumped into the lounge. I glanced down the stairs as Bryn murmured to keep walking. Tye scowled at me around a cigarette that stuck out of his mouth like a chunk of hay he’d forgotten.

What had gotten into him? I’d seen Tye drunk before, but there was an unguarded meanness in his eyes tonight.

“Gonna try to pick up where ya left off, Stornoway?” Tye called up the stairs.

“I can still use my pliers,” I warned.

His eyes flashed hot before cooling to liquid green. “Fine, hun. You wanna let him lie to ya, get ya to make that Fall, and still sleep with him? Guess that’s your business.” He ground the cigarette out on the wallpaper, took a step up as he flicked it over his shoulder. “But Stornoway? I’m keeping an eye on you.”

“Be sure that is all you keep your eye on,” Bryn said crisply, leading me up to the second floor.

“Still mad about how I showed Roe the Gate?” Tye grinned toothily. “Knew that would piss ya off, you possessive freak. Or maybe you’re still feelin’ that time in the tack room.”

“ Stop ,” I warned as Bryn stumbled.

“Bet it’s a lot easier when it’s a memory you’re fuckin’, huh Stornoway?” Tye’s lips puckered around the cigarette as I gaped at him. “Probably can’t even get it up without picturin’ Nereida.”

“Don’t talk to him like that.”

Bryn’s face remained admirably blank. “Tye, if you wish to know precisely how my Mark is activated, you are not very subtle.” His Mark? What did his Mark have to do with it?

“Ya know, subtle never really looked that good on me.” As if just remembering he had a new cigarette in his mouth, Tye cupped his hand around the end and clicked the lighter. “Darlin’, don’t ya ever wonder why Bryn left the Blue Nose that night he met ya?”

Bryn pressed a hand on my back, leading me up as Tye climbed.

“He was supposed to be bringin’ ya back to Naruka, but he just leaves that night? If it were my long lost mate and I believed in that kinda thing, I’d be busy nailin’ the hell out of her. But not Stornoway here. Nope, he just…” Tye fluttered his hand like a bird, “goes on home. Strange, ain’t it? But maybe he got a little stage fright, huh? So does he come back the next day? Or the next?”

No, he hadn’t. After that night I remembered meeting him, Bryn had gone home.

“ Tye .” Bryn’s low growl was both a warning and a plea.

I stopped, resisted the tug Bryn gave me, and faced Tye. “You expected Bryn to see me while he was in the hospital?”

Tye wagged his finger in tempo with the grandfather clock’s pendulum. “The Inquitate attacked a month after he met ya. But for a whole month, he said nothin’, did nothin’, went about his merry business in town never approachin’ you—his mate. When he should have barely been able to stay away.”

Was that true?

Bryn’s face was carefully blank. “Let us speak privately. I will answer your questions then. Not like this, Rowan, not with Tye.”

There was always something else.

The corridor stretched behind me. Candles flickered on the walls, wax swimming in their saucers.

Bryn steadied himself on the railing, but his eyes were tight, pained, and light-years away from their earlier gold.

Tye crested the steps and leaned a shoulder against the wallpaper, swaying a frame out of place. The sticky, cherry reek of his cigarette turned my already-weak stomach.

“What was Bryn doing in L’Ardoise for a month?” I asked him directly.

Tye’s eyes tightened a fraction. “It ain’t what he was doin’, but what he wasn’t doin’.” Snapping his fingers, Tye summoned the answer. “Ya see, what Stornoway didn’t tell ya is that he had a big, beautiful, expensive problem back in Norway he had to deal with first.”

Bryn cursed Tye vehemently.

Tye puffed out a smoke ring. “Sticks and stones, Stornoway, and don’t ya forget who’s got both.”

My heart swam in my chest, the answer so obvious I should have asked Bryn months ago. Because of course I knew—the answer had been behind a door in Oslo—but I’d been so distracted by Ruhaven that I’d—

“Darlin’, what our little Romeo didn’t tell ya was that he was engaged.”

I stared blankly at Tye.

Engaged to what ? I wanted to shout, even as it registered along a tiny circuit in my brain. Sticky shame filled the void left by arousal. It shouldn’t matter. I hadn’t known Bryn then, and yet my face burned with rejection, with embarrassment, with the image of him with an unnamed woman. Perfect and blonde and white as snow. Except I knew her, didn’t I?

Turning slowly, I blinked at Bryn, at the truth scratching hot color into his cheekbones.

“You’re engaged ?” I didn’t realize I’d shouted until my voice echoed back at me in the hallway.

Bryn stared at a painting like it’d open a portal to Ruhaven and take him through. “ Was. I was engaged.” Then he narrowed his eyes at Tye. “Are you quite satisfied now?”

Bryn had been planning to marry another woman. Had loved another woman. Had wanted another woman.

Tye wagged his finger. “You’re the one who sets store by Ruhaven’s rules, Stornoway. And as I understand it, you ain’t ever supposed to be with someone here. Ain’t that right, oh mated one?”

Wasn’t I worth waiting for?

Rowan, please.

I walked in a daze toward my room, dragging my fingers along the peeling wallpaper, brushing over frames, candleholders, a thin cabinet covered in dust, while Bryn called my name.

Scenting blood, Tye continued in a low, taunting, relentless rhythm. “Stornoway, it was me who had to go to L’Ardoise because you were too busy fuckin’ your fiancée.”

I was going to be sick. Right here on the embroidered rug.

Bryn’s growl snapped through the hallway, and for a moment, I could have sworn it was Sahn behind me.

Tye continued, unrepentant. “I brought Roe back while you were havin’ a damn pity party over your leg, over your fiancé, over James exilin’ you. Couldn’t even pick up the damn phone. So I had to show her the Gate. Maybe you don’t care for how I did it, but at least I was here, lookin’ after your goddamn Gate girlfriend.”

I wrestled with my doorknob. Was that how Bryn had gone back to normal? With a fiancée? It should have been me with him, me helping him walk again, me protecting him.

I shoved open the door, pushing Bryn away when he tried to follow.

“Rowan, let me explain,” he insisted, catching the door as I slammed it behind me, eyes stark behind a loop of curling blond hair.

How could I admit I was upset that he hadn’t waited for a memory? After I’d mocked James? How stupid I must have sounded to both of them.

Tye stalked toward us, exhaling a low tendril of smoke across Bryn’s neck.

I backed into my room while Bryn stood at the threshold, palming my door. His chest, still naked, rose and fell on sharp breaths. His milk-white hair framed a face that looked nearer to his breaking point than I’d ever seen him.

Over Bryn’s shoulder, Tye’s eyes flickered to me for a heartbeat, almost in apology, I thought. Then he whispered, inches from Bryn’s ear, so I could barely hear, “Now, Stornoway, do ya need me to…for ya too?”

Cold fury blanketed Bryn’s face a second before he whipped around with a snarl.

Tye caught him by the throat, shoved him into my doorjamb, rattling paintings and photos as Bryn fought for balance, his crippled leg useless without the cane.

He dodged Tye’s first punch, blocked the second, but as Bryn tried to pivot, his leg buckled and he smacked into the wall. A portrait shattered at his feet, then Tye was on him.

“Thought that would do it,” Tye grunted, digging his elbow into Bryn’s windpipe. “Ain’t gonna burst into O’Sahnazekiel, though, are ya?”

Bryn’s lips pulled back from his teeth. “You are lucky I cannot.”

The hallway candles flickered over his face, casting it golden against Tye’s shadows. Then Tye drew his fist back.

“No, Tye! Stop!”

Bryn gasped out a breath, slid a foot down the wall from the blow, unable to defend himself without O’Sahnazekiel.

“You and your goddamn lies all the time,” Tye cursed. “Guess you’re gonna keep relyin’ on Ruhaven to—”

Blood spurted from Tye’s nose.

Where the hell had that come from? Bryn? How?

Fat crimson drops spilled over Tye’s lip and blended with the plaid jacket. He swore, pinching the bridge of his nose as Kazie’s voice yelled up the stairs.

Then James stepped into view, his face full of contained outrage, his eyes flat and cold. “Don’t ye ever talk to me sister like that,” he panted, massaging his shaking fist. “Tye, I want ye out of here. As soon as ye can get yer things, I want ye gone. I’m so feckin’ angry with ye.”

Tye’s smile was a bloody grimace. “I’ve been kicked by horses harder than that, James.”

“Then yer bloody lucky I don’t let Simona have a go at ye. I knew ye had it in for Bryn, but punching a cripple is a new feckin’ low, even for yerself.”

“He deserved it,” Tye spat. “Lyin’ to Roe, pretendin’, hidin’ his whole life. I come in tonight, see her cryin’ for god’s sake. What am I supposed to think?”

“It wasn’t like that,” I said quickly, “and you—you shouldn’t have said any of that, Tye.”

“Aye, I heard him, and so he’ll start packing tonight,” James said firmly. “I want ye gone in a week. That’ll be enough time. And ye two stay away from each other,” he added, nodding at Bryn.

Tye wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “If that’s how you want it.” He waited, looked at me, but I steeled my face. “Seems you do. So I’ll go, and anyway, I don’t need to watch you two let Kazie, let Roe, throw their lives away just so Stornoway can get a woman back in a fuckin’ dream.” He cast me one long, bloody glance before shoving past James.

Bryn stared after him, eyes burning.

James turned, speaking quietly to Bryn before looking at me. “Are ye alright, Roe?”

Not at all.

I gripped the door. “Fine, I—thanks, James.” Please go. I needed to be alone before I collapsed in a heap.

He nodded and patted Bryn’s bare shoulder. “He’s sure got a way with timing,” James said mildly. “I’ll get him out and leave ye to it so.” He threw one sympathetic look over his shoulder before striding out of view, his feet echoing down the stairs.

Bryn stared at me, the hallway candles flickering at his back as he filled my doorway, his hair nearly grazing the top. A welt rose on his left cheek from a blow I hadn’t seen Tye land, and a bruise was already purpling on his ribs.

His nostrils flared once before he spoke, low and with seemingly little patience left. “Rowan, I am sorry I did not tell you about Abby. Now, may I come in?”

Abby . Not a roommate, as I’d thought when James and I knocked on her door in Oslo, but his fiancée, his future wife. She had been as perfect and serene as I had pictured for him—a coifed blonde premade and packaged in a Norwegian sweatshop.

I couldn’t even be mad. “No, not tonight,” I said on a long sigh, and just closed the door.

M y body ached, from brain to heart to wobbly knees. And because all my clothes were somehow both stiflingly hot and damp with sweat, I dragged off my blouse, the jeans, the wire bra I reserved for special occasions—which apparently included nights when I learned I’d been both Gate fodder and a backup to a fiancée—and tossed them in a heap on the floor.

With the moonlight to guide me, I strode naked to my dresser and pulled on old sweats and a scratchy wool sweater, inhaling the chill air, almost welcoming it when it settled my pulse.

I needed to do something. Fix something. Punch something—maybe Tye. Anything to prevent my mind from drawing up elaborate scenarios of Bryn and Abby to torture me with.

I slumped into my desk chair, clicked on the lamp.

Amber warmth flooded a room I’d spent little time in. My desk was the same raw wood as the dresser, with ivory knobs on its two drawers and a pink rose just beginning to wilt.

I rebraided my hair with quick strokes, like putting it back together could undo the night I’d had.

It really shouldn’t have mattered that he’d had a fiancée.

Because it was about the lie.

That was why my gut was a block of ice. Not because I was thinking about Bryn proposing, of how it would look to have those eyes on me and hear whatever wonderful words his silk voice would promise.

As I’d done countless times before, I opened my journal and stared at the notes like the reason for Willow’s death would magically reveal itself between the lines.

Would James force me to leave when the memories ended? Would Bryn even be interested anymore? It likely wouldn’t take long for the memories of Nereida to fade, for Bryn to turn to me and wonder why he’d been interested in a repair worker.

I tensed as the hallway creaked, then relaxed again—just someone going to bed. There were no long-term plans with Bryn. Eventually, he’d grow bored watching a woman toil her life away in other people’s houses.

Scribbling in the journal, I sketched the gate lodge kitchen I’d nearly finished. Made a list of materials I’d need. This, I could do, had always done when my life slipped from under me—the straightforward work of turning something broken into something fixed.

Crack.

I jumped when my doorknob clattered to the floor.

In its place, light flooded into the two-inch hole before a finger stabbed back the latch. I swiveled in my chair as the door swung open.

Bryn stepped through, a screwdriver in his left hand, a makeshift cane of driftwood in the other. A bruise swelled below his eye.

“Back to your old repairs?”

He bent, picked up the knob listing on the floor, his reflection glittering in its faded bronze. “It is good to know I can at least still dismantle a door.” He set the doorknob in front of me. “I am sorry,” Bryn began, keeping his voice low, “that I am unable to prevent Tye from saying what he did.”

I’d deal with Tye, with how he’d spoken to Bryn.

“Don’t be sorry that Tye told me the truth.”

Bryn exhaled a weary breath, a rare sound, and glanced around the room. When his eyes landed on the spare chair by the dresser, he limped to fetch it.

I ignored the feel of him passing, stared intensely at the journal as if the lines weren’t blurring. Why hadn’t I been able to figure this out? The one thing I owed Willow was hiding amongst my notes—a secret for why the Inquitate attacked us both—but after months, I was no closer.

What did I really expect? I hadn’t even figured out that Bryn was Sahn, couldn’t put together the simple conclusion that the woman I’d met in his apartment was so obviously not a roommate. I just hadn’t thought about it.

Then months later, when I’d discovered Bryn was Sahn—well, of course she couldn’t have been anything more because he wasn’t allowed .

But he had. And he did.

The chair legs scraped across the old wooden floor until Bryn stopped beside me, sat. He rested his hands on his knees. “Rowan, I told you once that you may lie to others, but not to me. You are upset about Abby, not that I kept her from you.”

I flipped back a page, circled the notes I’d made yesterday about mates, about the theory of them crossing together.

Why wouldn’t I be upset to know what he’d want if he had any choice? If he wasn’t bound to this mate connection?

“She suits you,” I said shortly.

When I started to get up, he grabbed my wrist.

I forced myself to meet his eyes, open, honest, a vivid blue under concerned brows.

“She did, once. We knew each other in college, in Trondheim, before I had ever met James or knew of Ruhaven or Nereida.”

Worse—that was somehow worse. Now I was an eight-hundred-year-old duty that had stolen him from his childhood sweetheart. “I don’t want to hear this.”

“I suspect I would feel the same if I had learned you loved another,” Bryn admitted.

Loved. I swallowed the bile in my throat. “And did you love her?”

“Yes.” No hesitation.

Well then, he was right after all. “I guess the words don’t mean anything.”

Against my protests, Bryn grabbed both my hands and leaned forward until the lamp’s amber glowed over his shoulders. “I said that because they cost nothing. They are cheap and free to give as I have given them before. But what I have sacrificed for you, Rowan, was not easy, and it did not come without a cost.”

And I knew that cost.

I blinked down at our joined hands. I wouldn’t have expected him to give up his fiancée, never wanted him to walk to the Gate and sacrifice himself—that wasn’t love. That was duty, devotion, a commitment of the soul.

He angled his right hand. “When you sat on my bed and asked about the ring I keep stored in my bookcase, there were answers I should have likely given you then. But I was embarrassed about many, many things. When James exiled me from Naruka, I left the ring here. I did not want reminders of Nereida if I were to try to move on.”

I stared at the empty ring finger where he’d once worn a symbol for Nereida. On the right hand, because only Drachaut wore it on the left. “So you did. Move on.”

“No, but I tried,” he admitted. “Let me tell you from the beginning, Rowan. Please.”

He waited, breath barely audible.

There was always something else with Bryn—some secret, some lie, some half-truth that sucker punched me when I least expected it. Tonight wasn’t supposed to end like this. We should have been falling asleep with each other by now. I should have known stupid, insignificant things like what his sheets felt like, whether they smelled like him, and if he slept on the right or left.

It shouldn’t be this hard to be together. Wasn’t that why there were mates? Two creatures destined across time, across worlds, like James and Essie. They never fought, never lied to each other, and…

I looked at Bryn.

James had never been unfaithful, even when there’d been no hope of finding Essie in the Ledger . No—even when she was dead , he’d remained faithful.

Bryn squeezed my hand. “Please, Rowan,” he said quietly.

Like dragging a hammer up by a thread, I pulled the rational part of my thoughts forward. The ones that said he didn’t owe me an explanation for why he’d needed to find something—anyone—after James exiled him, who knew what Ruhaven was to him, and knew what leaving it had cost him. That loving someone wasn’t a crime. That it was healthy, a sign of moving on, even if a much larger part of me hurt to think it. No—broke and shattered and ached to think it.

So I tried to shove all of it down, down, down. The image of Abby in the doorway of their pretty townhouse, of her glossy lips that would know exactly how it felt to be kissed by Bryn, her short platinum hair that I had to stop myself from wondering if he preferred.

“You don’t need to explain,” I said hollowly. “Tye told me how he—how James, Kazie, and him—found you at the Gate that day.” The next words were like shards of glass in my throat. “I understand that you needed someone. After.”

He closed his eyes. “I was ashamed of what I did,” Bryn bit out. “Can you imagine how foolish I felt? For six months, I assumed you had died in L’Ardoise as Willow when I was but weeks away from finding you, that I had been too late. And so I gave up, thinking Nereida was lost, and all the while, you were there, alive. I might have passed you in L’Ardoise and never known. James was right to exile me. I know this even if I do not fully forgive him for it. I must have known it then, as well, for that is why I left the ring, why I so quickly fell into a life again with Abby.”

Her name made my pulse leap.

“I was twenty-one when James visited me in Norway and convinced me to travel to Naruka. I was dating Abby at the time and we agreed to remain in a long-distance relationship while I completed my commission for James. Then I met Nereida on my third trip to the Gate, very briefly, as I could only remain for short periods. I did not understand their relationship in the beginning.”

His lips curled, and for a moment, he looked impossibly young. “The first time we were intimate was quite a surprise. I felt like an inexperienced boy again. I did not have someone to pull me out before things escalated, as I did for you. Nereida and I would speak in one memory, and mate in the next. But it changed me. Not just the act of it, but the connection. Mates. James explained it to me.”

Our knees bumped.

“He explained how things were for Essie,” I clarified. It had to help having someone there who knew exactly what you were going through. And now James was alone on a New Year’s he should have spent in the Gate.

“Yes, among other things. The ring, for instance, what it meant. As I continued to enter the Gate, I saw Nereida frequently and learned to speak Ruhaven so that I may understand what she said to O’Sahnazekiel. Eventually, I fell in love with the memory of her, with Ruhaven, with the unending vastness of the dream, with the longing that made my nose burn and my heart hurt.”

His winter’s breath fluttered my eyelashes. “I ended my relationship with Abby. After living with Nereida, I understood what Abby and I had was what children do—fleeting infatuation. I no longer felt I was being faithful while lying with Nereida in the Gate.”

I’d never thought of the life Bryn had given up before Ruhaven—relationships, careers, friends. Pity stirred in me for Abby, who’d been discarded for a dream Bryn would never see.

Releasing my hands, he slipped my braid over my shoulder, then eased off the elastic and began unraveling the twisted strands with forced slowness.

“When James exiled me, the woman I had spoken with for years was suddenly dead too. A woman I had made love to, protected, cared for, shared secrets with, sworn an oath to. It was all taken from me. I did not know who I was anymore without O’Sahnazekiel, without Nereida. Without Ruhaven.

“I returned to my mother’s house in Odda and began sorting through old photographs and paintings and memories, as if they could tell me who I was, who I had been before Ruhaven. I needed these as much as you had once needed a degree.”

I squeezed our joined hands.

“Being alone became difficult, so I moved to Oslo, where I could be around many, and found a position as a teaching assistant.”

He paused, and I knew what was coming.

“I discovered Abby had gained work in the city as well. We met for coffee. She had always been a good friend and we had not spoken in years.”

I thumbed the bruise Tye had left on his cheek. “You fell in love again.”

“No. No, I wish that were the case, but rather, I was simply embarrassingly desperate. She was a lifeline to a world I once knew. There was no magic here, no gears in the sky, no Nereida. I had lived in the memories for so long that without them, I became depressed, lonely, and desperate. Abby provided a salvation. So I used her to help me forget and I hoped, with our old romance, I may eventually forget Nereida too.”

Our noses were almost touching. “And did you?” I breathed.

With the braid undone, he threaded long fingers through my hair. “Never. But Abby and I began dating again, and because she was older now, she rightly did not wish to waste her time with me.”

I could be an adult about this. “You proposed,” I said, as though the word hadn’t burrowed into my heart like a worm in a rotted apple.

His eyes softened. “Not quite. It was rather rushed and informal. She had a ring on order for me to propose with, but then James called…” He paused and thumbed his right ring finger. “He was upset when he heard. Those who have mates in Ruhaven do not marry here, ever—that is why we wear the ring. I think he has always acted the protective brother, even before he knew you.”

I should be doing more to help him with Essie.

When I straightened, the oval mirror above my desk reflected a woman I didn’t recognize. One with long, midnight hair framing irises that glowed silver instead of brown, my face paler than I’d ever remembered, my freckles dark pinpricks. A world away from Abby, but perhaps, in some ways, not so far from Nereida.

Bryn pushed off the chair and stepped around me until his reflection joined mine in the mirror. He rested his hands on my shoulders, watched me carefully through all-seeing eyes. “I am sorry, Rowan.”

He had nothing to apologize for. “It’s done. It’s in the past.”

“It may console humans to think of things as in the past, but for Ruhavens, it does not matter when. I was never supposed to take another.”

I let my eyes flutter closed when his fingers massaged my shoulders, softening all the tension and aches of the evening, as Sahn had done before.

“I should have told you all of this,” he said softly.

I opened one eye. “Why didn’t you?”

“Because I was ashamed,” he admitted, and I could tell, even without the connection between us, that the words cost him. “But I do not wish to hide it from you any longer.”

You deserve to know who I am, and should we have grown up in Ruhaven together, you would have.

His hands traced up my neck, over my cheeks until they covered my eyes. “If you wish for the truth,” he said hoarsely, “I can show you, though my memories are unpleasant.”