CHAPTER 51 To the Bone
CHAPTER 51
To the Bone
A t the bottom of the pool, the visions stopped.
The noose of golden thread disappeared, and my lungs no longer strained for air. The truck on my chest had driven off to run over someone else. I didn’t breathe at all. It was quite nice, peaceful even, to feel nothing.
Far above me, light sprinkled along the water’s surface, but I was safe down here, lying on the sandy floor of my mind where the liquid was a perfect turquoise blue. I curled my hands into warm flour, the powder slipping between the cracks in my fingers. Maybe I had made the Fall after all and now I would sleep and wait for Willow.
Rowan.
I shied away from the painful voice. No, I wanted just Willow. Willow, who would lay down and make flour angels with me like we had when we were children.
But in the perfect, still water, I remembered she was dead, missing from my life forever, a memory better than Ruhaven, a door closed, an ache that had crept between my ribs and never left.
In the cool darkness, firm hands lifted me from the soft bed, cradling my limp body against a scent I recognized. I didn’t want to go. Didn’t want these hands touching me.
I pushed him away, but he ignored my protest and carried me from the warm seabed.
I always find you , Bryn repeated, over and over against my temple, waves inside a seashell.
I wanted to crawl into the toilet and flush myself down with the vomit. Yet that still wouldn’t be enough to forget everything I’d seen.
Bryn held my hair back with shaking hands—the same hands that had stroked Abby’s perfect, pale skin.
I gripped the freezing toilet bowl and heaved.
There couldn’t be anything left inside me.
This round didn’t burn as much, had subsided to low-acid water that stained my cheeks with only more humiliation.
“Go away,” I croaked when he pressed a cold cloth to my forehead. As if it could wash away what he’d forced me to watch.
I didn’t want him touching me. Didn’t want him anywhere near me ever again. I flushed the toilet to drown out his answer, watched the last of my stomach contents swirl down a rusted hole, and tried to shove him away again.
Kneeling beside me, Bryn’s voice was barely audible. “Rowan, I—I am so sorry.”
Sorry. The apology settled over me, a blanket on my bed of sick exhaustion. Sorry for what? That he’d forced me to watch what would become my never-ending nightmare?
I didn’t want to look at him. I didn’t want his apologies. I wanted to curl into a ball until I became a stain the tiles eventually absorbed. Or vomit all over the ironed sweater of a man who fit perfectly with Abby—two china angels my mother would have stored in her cabinet and polished each Sunday.
“Rowan, please forgive me. I—”
“Will you fucking go , or do you want to leave me with absolutely no dignity at all?”
I wiped my stinging eyes as I remembered his words, kneeling before me, looking at me like Kazie looked at Ruhaven, asking me to stay with him, showing me the ring.
Then he’d pulled the golden thread from his body and…
I floundered for the toilet again, dry heaving over it until my stomach was empty of even water now.
I couldn’t look at him, so I spoke to the porcelain toilet lid, voice flat. “I said get out, Bryn.”
But he sank to the floor in front of me, a candle melting to wax. His eyes were two circles of red-rimmed pain in a face the color of washed bone. The water I’d spilled slid over his knees, turning his slacks a dark brown against the white tiles. He fluttered his hands to my face, then back to his lap when I flinched.
“I heard you.” His voice broke. “I heard you pleading with me, begging me. ‘I’ll stay,’ you said, as if I were not fighting to reach you, as if I would ever wish you to see what is my shame.” He brushed a sticky strand of hair off my forehead before I could shove him away. “It was my fault. I meant to show you our bond only.” He grabbed my clammy hands. “I tried to hold the thread, but when you pulled, it would have broken if I had not let go.” His eyes burned with tears that didn’t fall. “I am terribly sorry.”
No. No, I wouldn’t accept his apology, not this time.
I struggled to my feet, brushing aside his offer of help as I twisted the rusted tap and dunked my head into arctic water that was only one degree warmer than the ice in my belly. But it steadied me. After rinsing my mouth, I wiped my face and exhaled slow, uneven breaths in the mirror.
Bruises tugged at my eyes, my pale lips all but matched my skin, and still, all I could think about was Abby. I would never be her, but was that what he’d preferred?
I stared down at my chest.
Then balled my hand into a fist and punched the mirror with all the blistering accuracy Nereida had taught me.
The shards cracked under my knuckles, which ripped open at the seams and turned the bowl of water into a pink lake.
Bryn grabbed my hand before I’d even pulled it back, spinning me around and pinning my back to the sink. I slapped at his chest, cursed him as he fought to hold me steady.
When he yanked the towel off the rack and tried to wrap my fist in it, I swiped it away, hurtled it into the next room. “Stop it. Stop it! ” I screamed at him.
Face stricken, the breath rattled out of his chest. “Rowan, I do not know what to do.”
I shoved at his chest. “I didn’t want you . Want this .” I’d never be enough. Never. Not for the Gate, and not for him.
He caught me as I crumpled. “Rowan, I am sorry, so sorry.”
I didn’t want him, didn’t want to hear the soft murmurs in my ear in the same voice that had whispered to Abby.
I shoved out of his hold, tripping over the bathroom doorway as my stomach heaved. But I had to get out of there, had to breathe after being drowned.
The suitcase I’d packed lay open against the wall. The lamp, glowing on my nightstand, scattered light over my mess of a quilt.
How had I gotten to the bathroom? And when had I woken up?
“I carried you,” Bryn said, his eyes stark on the bed. “It appears that O’Sahnazekiel’s Mark extends to protecting you from me as well.”
I looked him dead in the eye and hissed, “ Good.”
I started moving around my room mechanically, grabbing Willow’s jacket, punching my fist through its sleeve, wrapping Kazie’s scarf around my neck. And if I imagined punching Abby’s perfect, serene face, that was only natural. Healthy even.
Concern clouded Bryn’s face as he followed my progression. “Are you cold, Rowan?” He knelt and lifted my sweater off the rug. “You were sweating in—in the memory. I took your jumper off. And your hand is still bleeding.”
I wiped it deliberately on my jeans, then zipped my coat into my scarf, snagging the wool. “I’m taking a walk,” I said shortly, and pivoted.
“I will come with you,” Bryn called, but I was out the door, taking the creaking stairs two at a time as I rushed to fresh air like a fish flip-flopping on the boat, hoping to launch itself overboard. The frames shook as I rounded the staircase, Bryn on my heels, the clocks humming louder than a night full of crickets.
I landed with a thud on the bottom floor, shoved my way into the kitchen.
James glanced up from the table, bafflement flickering in his swollen eyes. “Roe?” He asked hesitantly, voice tired and drawn.
I shot past him, stabbed my feet into impossibly small, double-knotted boots. The stove-cooked air was stifling, but not as bad as that room.
“Where ye going like?” he asked, face tear-stained from Kazie—whom I should have been mourning, but instead, I was fixated on a woman miles and miles away.
“A walk,” I retorted, managing at last to get my heel into the boot.
“What do ye mean like? It’s bloody midnight and the Inquitate are about.” He rose carefully, shoulders hunched under an oversized sweater. The act seemed to drain the last of his energy. “Roe?”
“Ask Bryn,” I said crisply.
As I wrenched open the door, I heard James yell, “What the bleedin’ hell have ye done to me sister now?”
Then I bolted.
It was a mild night, warm from the recent rain, but my body didn’t know what temperature it wanted to be. I was freezing, boiling, sweating, shaking as I walked briskly along the path through stubs of raspberry bushes that wouldn’t bud for months yet. My boots sunk into the sodden earth, and it only took a few steps for the Irish gloom to drench my feet.
I gulped the air that tasted of soil. Needed it to settle me.
The surrounding fields and navy sky were as simple as they were ordinary, uncomplicated by Ruhaven and a mate who’d wanted to spend his life with another woman. I needed to breathe without him for a little while. Until something cracked the memories that wouldn’t stop playing.
Because all I could see was Abby—sweet, angelic Abby. And all I could feel was Bryn touching her, tasting her awful cherry lipstick.
I stumbled, gripped the rotted fence post before I fell, and stared at my hand clutching the post. It was far darker than Abby’s, with a scar on my pinky from when I’d caught it in a car jack. Lines crisscrossed my knuckles from solvents and years of scrubbing off hard grease, and unlike the manicured fingers that had dug into Bryn’s bicep, my nails were short and unpainted.
Had he wanted that? Had he seen me and regretted?
It wasn’t her fault. She’d only loved a man I was unhealthily attracted to, not a criminal act, even if I wanted to try and convict her for it.
I tore my hand away and started forward. I wasn’t Abby, wasn’t anything like her, and if Bryn didn’t like that, then he could—
Something snagged me around my waist. No, not something—the gold thread he’d summoned before. Gritting my teeth, I shoved forward against it and—
My legs were knocked out from under me.
I splattered into the mud, cold soil flinging up my thighs and squishing my palms. So I would be left with no dignity at all tonight.
As I struggled, the rope slithered under my ribs, wound around my arms and tightened on my wrists. I yanked against it, tried to crawl, to get away.
Then it flipped me, wrenching a strangled cry from my lips.
A terrifying, golden thread floated above. What had Bryn said ? A bond —no, it was an abomination. One that bound my wrists and pinned me in Naruka’s field. I wouldn’t watch those memories again, couldn’t endure another second of Bryn and that perfect woman.
As my breath tripped in my throat, I followed the comet tail of the thread that led back to Naruka, winding its way to the tack room where—
Bryn.
My breath died in my lungs. The golden thread pulsed from his heart to his outstretched hand, coiling around his long fingers like a pet snake.
Bryn’s stark eyes met mine. Then slowly, he curled his index finger.
You wouldn’t dare —
The loop on my ribs moved, tugged, demanded.
I gasped against the intrusion, slapping myself like I was beating out a fire. He’d put me through this again? I swiped at the floating thread, but my fingers passed through it.
I would dare, yes, because despite what I have done, you are still my mate and I will never let the Inquitate have you.
“Stop this,” I warned as Bryn limped toward me, his breath frosting into dark clouds. He wore only a long-sleeve collared shirt as it began to rain. Thick drops pinged my cheeks like bugs on a windshield.
In the glow of the thread, his sallow face shone with the light of an avenging angel. “You can control it as well,” he said softly. “As it is our mating bond, not mine.” He planted his feet, glanced down at me, eyes twin jewels in the dark.
He’d actually use this Ruhaven monstrosity to keep me here? To stand over me and talk about a bond that he’d betrayed.
I glared at his angelic face with all the nauseous fury I felt. “I remember now when I felt this pull before,” I said, straining against the bond. “The day the Inquitate attacked, it tugged me away. I thought it was the Inquitate. Not a bond you’ve lied about, manipulated.”
Bryn released his cane, letting it whoosh into the rosemary bush, and slowly crouched to eye level with me. His voice was unrepentant. “Rowan, if I were not injured then, I would have dragged you back to Naruka by this thread. I do not regret it. I do not regret trying to protect you as I am now.”
The rope skirted under my breasts like his hands, as seductive as it was threatening, which meant I was losing my mind. “Is that what you call showing me you and Abby? Protecting me?”
His eyes hollowed. “No. What I did was unforgivable.”
That might be the first true thing he’d said. “Then let me go.”
Do you plan to run off into the night to the Inquitate?
“No,” I gritted out, and by the flash in his eyes, we probably both knew I was lying. But Bryn nodded and the bond disappeared.
As if driven by its own outrage, my hand pulled back and slapped him hard across the cheek. “ That’s for the memory.”
The blow left a harsh imprint of red color behind, but Bryn hardly flinched, hardly registered it at all, like he’d known it was coming. Just like he’d known when Abby hit him in the hospital.
“You may strike me,” he said with no inflection, “as I deserved that and more, but I will not let you run to the Inquitate.”
What I did was none of his business, including if I needed to take three laps of the forest to burn off what he’d done.
Scrambling up, I leapt into a sprint.
He snagged my ankle.
My jaw met the soaked grass, bounced. He had no right to do this. I kicked out and crunched something solid. Good— he should know some puny fraction of how I felt right then. His hand closed around my arm, and we struggled like we had in Norway all those months ago. But I was better now, better from all those days spent in the Gate learning how to fight as Nereida.
Cursing, he flipped me over. Burning eyes met mine, his hair a drenched mess as the wind picked up. He sucked in cheekbones sharper than the cliff jutting against the sky. “Rowan,” he repeated my name as I pounded on his thighs.
I didn’t want to look at him. To look and wonder if he regretted it was me and not someone like Abby. I was like a decision he’d been forced into. Tears blurred my vision. I didn’t want to feel this tearing rip through my chest again. I wanted Willow, who’d have understood exactly how I felt before she punched Bryn.
But the fantasy disappeared as quickly as it came. There was no Willow; there was only me and Bryn, and the problem between us was as ugly as I’d ever been thrown into.
“Rowan, I am sorry .”
I bucked under him, but he held on, his hunched form blocking the heavy rain.
“I made a mistake, with her, with the thread tonight. Can you not forgive me?”
Forgive? How could I when what hurt me was so fundamental and raw, it burned my throat to have to admit it.
“You enjoyed her.” I snarled the accusation, even as some part of me knew it was unfair. But that voice was distant and weak and stupid. And my fingers itched to give him the pain I felt. “You enjoyed—”
When I reared back to slap him again, he pinned both my wrists with one hand, temper replacing the sympathy on his face.
“Goddamn you, Rowan. I thought you were dead ,” he heaved, rain lashing his back as he trembled, a mountain before the avalanche. He laid a hand on his heart. “I was your mate, and I was supposed to protect you. Yet I wondered, loathed, that it may have been me who brought the Inquitate to your doorstep. Then, when I could no longer deal with the possibility of your death, it nearly took my life too.”
As the truth of it twisted in my gut, Bryn released one of my wrists.
“Do you wish to get even with me?” He flattened his free hand between my breasts. “Would you like me to pull such a memory from you? To hurt me as I have you? Because nothing would be worse than believing you dead.”
We stared at each other, shaking, vibrating, with the rain flooding the ground, soaking our clothes.
Do it, I wanted to shout, do it so a tiny fragment of what I feel will stab you too. But I said nothing as my chest rose and fell beneath the pressure of Bryn’s palm.
He blinked away the raindrops gathering on the tips of his lashes. “As you wish, then,” he said quietly.
In the dark, a faint glow rose between my breasts and seeped through his fingers. He’d do it then, watch something that would become a nightmare for years.
The tiny thread pulled gently from between my ribs, a soft tugging, not painful yet, but as it grew stronger, my memories shifted and rearranged themselves.
I was eleven and running from Simon, both of us young and awkward, playing hide and seek in the woods in L’Ardoise. The memory was more vital than my own, as if Bryn had brought it to life by pulling it from me. I could smell the thick sap of the pine and the wild freedom that ran like a river in my blood. Every twig was a sword, every snake a dragon.
I’d forgotten how silly I was then.
A swinging bridge came into view, leading to the waterfront where the forest melted into sand and docks. My little feet jumped across, barefoot and leaping over the planks with a wild exhilaration to escape the boy chasing me. I wanted to scream at myself to be careful. Didn’t I see the slippery old wood? The bridge was rotted, unsafe, slimy with mold and rain, the ropes frayed. I should have plummeted through it.
But I didn’t, and at the end of the bridge, the boy jumped into my path.
I screamed a young girl’s scream—like a balloon losing air—and leapt away from Simon’s hand, but he snagged my backpack.
Got you , Simon teased, spinning me around. Then my heart leapt from something else entirely. Not fear, but a girl’s silly romance for the prince in her kingdom.
The kiss was sloppy and quick.
I’d forgotten about that. Forgotten how it felt to have my first kiss, still too young to know why I should want it. The foolish grin on Simon’s face dissolved, and another image switched in on a memory conveyor belt.
This one was more recent with the hard, unforgiving edges of adult life. There were no soft smiles and sloppy kisses, no tender innocence and make believe. No romance, no imagination, no magic. The memory wavered—or maybe Bryn did, as one drunk night in college slowly materialized.
Do it , I wanted to shout at him. But I felt Bryn then, his fear, his shame, and I couldn’t.
When I pried Bryn’s shaking hand off me, the memory winked out. I could live with Abby, but I wouldn’t make him live with this.
A storm raged behind Bryn’s unyielding blue eyes. His breath came in ragged, harsh pants that fanned my face. “What do you want from me, Rowan?” he demanded. “What do you want! ”
I twisted in his grip, but he held firm. What did I want? I’d followed Willow around for years trying to figure that out, hoping that something she did or loved or wanted would eventually rub off on me, like a hot piece of flint sparking off a rock. Then, eventually, I’d realized I just wanted to be her.
But mostly, I thought now, with a chest-caving realization, I wanted to do it over again.
I wanted to be someone better. To be the little girl in the woods with her life ahead of her, with a thousand chances to do something different. I wanted to choose to finish college, to try harder on every exam, to try out for the volleyball team—or any team—and to have, just for once , have reached for something, anything. To do something worth recording.
“I want to do it over again.”
Bryn’s grip loosened on my wrists. “What?”
I balled my now-free hands into fists, drilled them into his chest. “You don’t understand. You looked at the Ledger for the first time and you saw what you expected.”
He searched my face. “Which is what, Rowan?”
“Who you were, the truth, some destiny that belonged to you,” I said. “But when I moved here with Tye, it was the first decision I’d ever made because I—I wanted something. A chance to start fresh, to be something other than Willow’s sister, maybe to find something I loved. I’d never even left L’Ardoise before.” I wiped my nose, feeling as pathetic as my words. “Then, when James showed me the Gate, when he explained who he thought I was, when he pointed to the Ledger , to say it was my birth written there, I…”
Tears flowed down my cheeks, thick and humiliating, but I pushed on. “I believed him. Until I saw—until I saw it was Willow’s birth. Not even here in Ireland, not even in Ruhaven, could I escape all that she’d been. It was as if the Ledger had known, before I’d ever had a chance to fail at anything, that I wasn’t worth recording, and never worth bringing home.
“And then, to find out you’d gone to Willow—? To think that it might have been her here with you, instead of me? That when it comes right down to it, even you would choose her, Bryn.” I knuckled the tears away. “If I’d ever been more than just a shadow of Willow, then you wouldn’t have been with Abby, and the Ledger would have chosen me. But it didn’t. Like it knew, even before we were born, that there was nothing of me worth remembering.”
His face went white as he clasped my cheeks. “God, Rowan, if you knew what it did to me to find you here? If you knew how I felt every time I look upon you. You were always someone to me.”
I inhaled a shaky breath. “But I want to be someone to myself,” I whispered.
Very slowly, Bryn laid his forehead against mine, the heat of him smothering the bite of cold, despite the rain dripping off the tips of his ears. When he laid his lips at my temple, I didn’t resist. I couldn’t anymore. There was nothing left.
I swallowed the rain sliding over my lips.
“Bryn, it was—you and Abby, it was vile,” I choked out.
“I know.” He closed his eyes. “I could not endure it should you have shown me the same.”
Rain slid into my ear, muffling his unsteady breaths, but I had to say the rest, had to tell him what I’d known in the marrow of my bones, what had gnawed at me in the awful pit of that memory.
“It was vile, because whatever was written in the Ledger , you’re supposed to be mine .” I swallowed the burning in my throat and turned to face his ravaged eyes. “I know that. More than I know anything, more than I know myself. I don’t care which birth time is listed on line 1274, I don’t care that it was Willow’s. I don’t care if it’s not me in the Ledger , because there is nothing that will ever convince me I don’t love you, Bryn. Because I do recognize you, and I’ve been waiting for you too. I won’t share you, not even with a memory. I know I’m not allowed to feel like that but I do, because you’re my dream—and I’ll swear on everything I have left that you’re mine .”
His breathing hitched, his lips parted.
The world swam above, the one we couldn’t undo, with all the permanency of planets and gravity.
“Yes, Rowan, I am.”
It was a prayer, a promise, an oath.
And suddenly, there were no barriers between us, because what simmered in his eyes was love stripped raw, whittled down to its bones, flayed to an inch of its life. The thread flashed in the night, wrapping us together. A connection between worlds.
“Rowan,” he growled, a warning as much as anything else, “you are also mine.” Hands tightened on my wrists.
And with four words, I threw everything we were into the space between us. “Then make me yours.”
Bryn’s irises fired to the burning stars of O’Sahnazekiel. Brighter and richer than the moon, blazing like Sahn’s on the night of Yizomithou. I drew in his breath like it was mine. Because it was, he was, and damn the Ledger .
My pulse leapt as Bryn grabbed my jacket in his fist. Buttons snapped, cotton ripped. Freezing rain soaked through my thin shirt, tightening my nipples, but even as I shivered, the rapid pummel of it brought me alive.
I wriggled a hand free—or Bryn let me—and ripped at his collar, hungry to feel his muscles under my fingers, to see the tattoos spiraling their way to cut hips. When I pulled his shirt apart, pale skin glittered with the moon’s silver and the thread’s golden light. I ran my free hand over each rain-slicked inch as I watched him, watched his eyes on me as they had always been, even in the Gate.
“Rowan, with every breath I took, I betrayed my promise to her.” He was panting, growling, his eyes so brilliantly gold they burned like the sun, like the thread that weaved between our bodies. “I dreamed of Nereida then.” My shirt tore straight down the middle, and I blinked in shock at the claws on his fingertips, claws he couldn’t possibly have. Another slice, and my bra sprung open. “And now, now I dream of you.”
Cold rain raked my breasts before his scalding touch covered them. I moaned, fisting his hair, melting his mouth to mine, tasting frosted mornings and Irish rain, a thousand memories at once. He shoved my arms over my head, ran claws down my bare torso, teasing the band of my jeans, the thread circling my waist.
“Let me touch you,” I begged as he locked my wrists in one hand.
But he only smothered my words, claiming my mouth with his as his free hand glided over my jeans, between my legs. Cupped me.
I arched into him as his tongue stroked me in time with his fingers, gentle, coaxing. God, how I wanted these clothes off, to feel him against me, in me.
“I promise I am yours,” Bryn rasped, pressing his lips to my throat. He dragged my neck to the side, sunk his teeth lightly into my pulse before devouring. I closed my eyes, holding on to those words like a buoy in the sea.
Rain soothed wherever his scalding mouth touched, and it was everywhere. He lapped at me with a hungry frenzy, teeth nipping, scraping, biting, growling against my breast. I cried out when his tongue lashed my nipple. Bucked when his hand stroked through my jeans. And still, I couldn’t get enough.
Wings blocked out the stars. I was losing my mind, hallucinating, drowning in him. I tunneled my fingers into his soaked hair, wanting to drag his perfect mouth back to mine, but he lapped at my breasts until I couldn’t feel the rain anymore.
Lust. Need. Desire. I swallowed it all—a direct injection into my heart that threw it into a frenzied creature as Bryn’s lips murmured against my belly, sliding lower, lower. I couldn’t hear him over the blood roaring in my ears, the lick of the thread weaving through my body, the fire erupting from my center.
“I can feel you, Rowan.” His voice was a rough murmur below my belly button. He lifted his darkened gaze, held mine between the swell of my breasts. I wanted to melt in those burning rings. “Through the thread.”
Then he must know I was a breath away from combusting under him.
Rain slicking his hair to his cheeks, he ducked his head. When I felt his tongue slide under the band of my jeans, I thought I was melting into the soil. Then his hand slid up from between my legs and gripped the button separating me from him.
Bryn knelt, bowed over me, shoulders quivering. And just looking at him like that, soaked and shaking, with his own desire straining against the pants I hadn’t slipped off him, stretched my arousal to the point of pain.
But he didn’t move further, and the waiting was like being sliced in two. The thread snagged my wrists, tugged them above my head. But still, he didn’t move.
I was crying now. The rain mixed with my tears and the desire that flayed me raw with everything that had happened today—the Fall, Kazie leaving, Abby, the memories. I wanted to forget it all, for him to take it away.
“Rowan,” he murmured in the night. He pinned my hips with a shaking hand, drew a ragged breath that flexed the stiff muscles of his back. Burning eyes lifted, peeked up at me over my stomach. Just the sight of him undid me—the thick lashes beaded with rain, the desire heating his cheeks, the lick of moonlight that turned his hair silver. I wanted a thousand nights like this, in the rain and mud and cold, when there was nothing between us.
“We should not,” he ground out. “Not now. Not after...”
Don’t even say it.
He dropped his forehead to my belly, his breath warming my skin. “I want you, Rowan.” Bryn’s low groan stroked the burn inside me. “You can feel how much I do, through the thread.”
It swamped me, a sweet, golden emotion so intense I barely recognized it. More than desire, more than love—devotion.
“Bryn, please. Please .” I don’t care about the thread, about what happened.
He let out a low oath. Rowan…
I whimpered when his fingers curled in my jeans. If he stopped again, I’d explode like a shooting star and join the others in the sky.
But he didn’t.