The Minor Fall

CHAPTER 58 The Wild Swans on the Lake

CHAPTER 58

The Wild Swans on the Lake

I gasped for air.

Ripping the covers off my burning body, I kicked at the sweaty sheet, then shivered as the rotating fan flung a dry breeze over me.

The attic was empty.

I pressed a hand to my forehead and tried to ignore the throbbing ache between my legs. No, no, it hadn’t been a dream. Couldn’t have been.

I rolled over in bed, tried to get my bearings. Washed gray light spilled through the window, leaching the trodden rug and walls of color. The coffee Tye had brought me earlier sat on the card table, the bread beside it.

What had Bryn said? If he was nearby, could the Inquitate sense him?

I cursed inwardly. Instead of warning him, of telling Bryn everything I’d learned, I’d tried to—

Rowan?

I froze on the edge of the bed. He was here, it was him, and we’d—we’d almost, but not, and I was probably going to die if he wasn’t inside me right this second and—

I truly feel the same.

I slapped a hand over my sweaty brow. Bryn! You’ve got to stop doing that.

Oh? I thought you were asking me to very much continuing doing that.

I smiled in the freezing, filthy attic. My thoughts—stop listening to how obsessed I am with you.

I felt him grin. No, I felt him beam .

When I have you under me again, I shall show you the meaning of the word. But for now, let me try to bring our world back. His voice slid like silk in my mind, a wolf prowling at the edges. Can you lie on the bed again? It is easier to create the bridge when you are relaxed.

I grinned to myself, and for a brief moment, all my earlier worries seemed far away. Maybe you should have given us clothes, then.

I am not altogether certain I regret the decision not to, although I do believe this is the first time I have been so aroused in a treehouse.

I huffed a laugh into the darkness. You really are funny.

If you witnessed the state I awoke in, you would not think so.

My toes curled in the rug, but, feeling giddy at the idea of seeing him again, I quickly laid on the bed, patted the damp sheets, and tried to force myself to relax.

When a light pulsed under my shirt, I gazed in wonder at the glow between my breasts, where golden heat drenched my skin in color and pushed at the window’s empty light.

This was us, what Bryn had wanted me to understand before. Now I did.

Minutes drifted by.

I clasped my hands over my belly, my elbows splayed, and waited for the world to return as Bryn whispered on the cusp of my mind.

Close your eyes. It will help.

Another ten minutes passed.

I heard the waves before I saw them.

Then the ivory lake swam into view, vanilla-scented roses swayed on the shore, warm lavender melted between my toes, and the lattice mountains loomed in the color of worn, faded jeans.

Sahn—Bryn—clasped my wrist, his thumb squeezing my pulse. Down wings tickled the soft curve of my back as he sat beside me.

I lifted a brow. “I’m naked again?”

A fang worried his bottom lip. “I could not resist.”

“ You’re not,” I pointed out. A swath of material draped across his hips.

“I compromised.” Then he tugged me into his lap.

“But you’re so pretty naked.”

“So O’Sahnazekiel is no longer the terrifying beast man you regaled us with during your first encounter? Prepared to eat and devour you and ‘fly you to his nest,’ I believe it was.”

I laughed, the sound like music, like my throat was some wind instrument.

Bryn stroked my arm. “I believe I did warn you I would not be able to maintain this world,” he reminded me with a lifted brow.

“I had to try.”

“Certainly.”

But we stared at each other, everything unspoken between us, the air zapping with enough energy I wondered if we shouldn’t attempt it again.

Then I swallowed a laugh when his wings tossed lavender sand over us. We could wait. Soon, we would have years.

“Now, tell me what I cannot understand through the thread. Are they feeding you? You feel hungry, and I keep sensing cold ham. And eggs.”

He looked so perplexed that I laughed. “I still can’t eat meat. But I’m fine.”

“And this?” He stroked my left cheek, unmarred in this world. “Does it still hurt from Levi?”

I cupped his hand. “No, it’s fine. I’m fine. Are you sure James is safe? The Drachaut won’t come for him, will they, if he’s not a triplet?”

Bryn looked at me for a long minute, as if deciding something.

Then his fingers stroked lazily over my body—familiar, comfortable, because this was Nereida’s body, and he’d lived with her for years. “No, he is safe and currently scouring his mother’s history.”

“They didn’t think he knew about the Inquitate.”

“It is true that Maggie did not always share her knowledge of Ruhaven. And now we learn that it was Carmen who killed her. I did not tell James, as he would be distraught. That will be for later, when you are safe, and we shall tell him together.”

Together . Because that’s what we’d have.

His cool breath whispered over my neck before teeth grazed my pulse. Distracting. Exhilarating. I forgot my next question as Bryn inched his way to my mouth.

“If they are keeping you from making the Fall because of Tye, then who am I Tethered to?” he asked.

“Your Tether is an Inquitate now. They think we fell together, that in Drachaut, you entered the Gate first and triggered a chain reaction.”

“Because we are mated.”

I nodded.

He studied the lapping shoreline for a moment. Winged goldfish plop-plopped in continuous loops. Wherever they landed, fist-sized bubbles floated up.

He stroked my hair, but it was an absent gesture now, automatic as his gaze grew unfocused. “We are the same, my Rowan. Souls are what are sent through the Gate, not people. Not beings. The soul, like energy, is conserved, even in death.”

It was why Ruhaven had called me to make the Fall, because twins must share enough of a soul that I had a chance to bring her home with me.

Bryn remained silent, stroking my hair as he continued to watch the leaping fish and bubbles. Could I touch one of his wings now? I eyed their dappled perfection. Nereida never did, only fleetingly a few times. They were the most beautiful things I’d ever seen, something from a storybook.

“Do you think I could—”

A sudden pain ripped through my heart.

I clutched my ribs when they shuddered like cracking ice. The thread.

When I looked at Bryn, pain tightened the rippling cords at his neck, flared his nostrils.

“What’s wrong? Are you…?”

Then his face went carefully blank, his eyes cooling to unreadable opaque. The sharp pinch in my chest disappeared.

“What was that?” I repeated. “I felt you, didn’t I?”

His chest expanded on a slow inhale. “Nothing. I was only thinking of my Tether. Of their death.”

Are you sure?

Yes, I apologize.

I rubbed at the memory of the ache—stronger than what I’d felt in his room before I left. “I guess it’s strange to think they could be an Inquitate now and—”

I yelped when Bryn suddenly scooped me up, wings flaring.

“Come, Rowan,” he said, his voice back to careful exuberance. “Let us swim.”

“Swim? Now? Are you sure you’re alright?”

He carried me into the milk lake where bubbles floated and burst into a shower of raindrops. Vanilla waves rippled away from his massive wings. “Yes. I cannot force Tye to give you up until the Fall has passed. When it does, I do not know whether I shall be able to maintain these illusions.”

My toes dipped into the cold silk. “You mean the thread between us?” I patted the space on his chest where he’d pulled it from before. “We’ll lose this?”

He covered my hand. “I hope not.”

But I was only just understanding this, and him, and now that would be gone too?

I looped my arms around his neck as he lowered us into the lake. Above, the gears rotated in grinding slowness under skies ripped to life by stars. “When will I see you again?”

A flicker of sadness touched his lips, then they relaxed. “When will you no longer be able to make the Fall? Days, I expect.”

Days then, until Willow would never be saved. Would remain like Ruhaven—a memory. No, don’t think of that.

I focused on the angel blocking out the gears. On Bryn, who would remain, even when Ruhaven disappeared. “When the Drachaut let us go…” I murmured as milk lapped my cheeks, “I have some extravagant plans for us.”

“Do you?” Delight lifted Bryn’s voice. “I look forward to hearing of these, Rowan. In extravagant detail.”

“Then come here.” I dragged him into the water with me, whispering in his pointed ear.

His wings twitched, his tail swatted the water. “Careful, Rowan,” he warned roughly. “It is likely you shall implode this world again if you continue.”

On a laugh, I pushed away and watched as Bryn’s gaze ate up each ivory drop that rolled down my breasts. “You do have it bad for Nereida,” I chided, flicking the lake at him with my toes.

He caught my foot, massaging the sole as I floated languidly. The water was more buoyant than the sea. “Only you, my Rowan. As always, only you.”

I hoped so, because soon, Nereida would be as much a memory as Sahn.

“I could live here forever like this,” I admitted to the sky. “You and I in Ruhaven, if we remembered who we were.”

“Would you, Rowan? Stay in Loch Luna? With me?”

He said it playfully, but there was a question in his eyes. Was he still wondering about what had been unanswered? The one that left a ring between us and the memories of Abby?

I dipped my chin into the water. “Even with the tail and fangs,” I said seriously.

One pointed tooth slid out. “And the wings?”

Tugging my foot away, I flipped over and paddled toward him. His eyes stayed glued to me as I grabbed the backs of his thighs, lifting myself slowly out of the water, and dragging my tongue up his tightened belly. He grunted when I nipped his chest.

I gripped his neck, wrapping my legs around his waist again. “The wings were my favorite part,” I whispered in his ear.

“Indeed?” His voice lifted. “Then I am exceedingly grateful I was not born a dwarf.”

I chuckled against him before resting my head on his shoulder as he rocked us back and forth, humming quietly so his voice joined the chorus of babbles and flickering wings.

W hile we spoke, night had draped a thick curtain across Loch Luna. Trees glowed with an inner fire unique to Ruhaven, the light radiating up trunks as translucent as my own skin.

Sitting on the beach, he turned me so his chin could rest on my silver hair. I laid my hand over the arm he snaked under my breasts and relaxed into him, watching Ruhaven’s tiny creatures splash in the loch.

The thread whispered circles around us, as real as it had been on our only night together.

“Rowan, you tried to tell me before you left Naruka that you’d heard Willow.”

Before I’d abandoned him for Tye, for L’Ardoise. “Can we forget that morning?”

He stroked my cheek, and even with the claw, the gesture belonged wholly to Bryn. “I was not listening to you then, but I am now. What happened during the Fall? I know something did—beyond Kazie disappearing—for you shut down afterwards, suddenly deciding that you yourself must join her. I assumed it was the shock of experiencing the event, but later, I began to wonder if there was not something else…”

I squeezed my eyes shut, nodded. And told him.

When I finished, Bryn exhaled a shaky breath, a tree casting off snow from its winter branches. The arm around me tightened. “I believe you. That it was Ruhaven, that she called to you. That she did so because she—or some part of her, perhaps kept alive by the Gate—wishes you to make the Fall.”

I blinked in surprise. “No hesitations? No worries it might have been an Inquitate or my own hallucination?”

He brushed the birthmark on my shoulder. “I wish I could tell you it was the case, but no, I believe it is exactly as you have supposed. When I laid at the Gate the evening before James and Tye found me, I heard Nereida.”

My mouth went dry. “You did?”

“Yes. She spoke in Ruhaven, asking me to stay, not to leave like this. It may have been the first time I disobeyed her.”

I squeezed his hand. “Why did you?”

“I thought it was my own fear manifesting, but I read accounts of others afterwards and spoke to James. We learned it is not an uncommon experience, that many Ruhavens who have witnessed a Fall, or become so lost in the Gate, have heard a voice of a loved one at the end.”

I let out a slow exhale. “Do they come back or… I mean, is there something about the Gate that makes them alive again?”

His fingers stroked up the back of my neck. “No, Rowan. Nereida can no more speak to me here than Willow can.”

“But what if—”

“It is Ruhaven,” he explained gently. “I believe she has always protected her children. We are born from her, and if it was Willow you heard, who advised you to make the Fall, then you were asked by Ruhaven herself.”

“What would you do?” I asked him.

“If I had stood at the Gate as you did, and heard Nereida call me home?”

“Yes,” I whispered. “If she’d called you, if Ruhaven called you.”

He crossed his arms under my breasts, hugged me to him. “It would be against Ruhaven’s laws to disobey her. What would you do, Rowan,” he said instead, but his voice wasn’t teasing or playful, but deadly serious, “if you were not trapped here, if you had never left L’Ardoise, if I had supported your need to decide from the beginning? Would you have heeded the call?”

His breath, which had been stirring the hair by my ear, calmed to stillness.

Willow and I had loved each other for twenty-three years. Nothing, not Ruhaven, not even Bryn, could replace that. Willow would never have given up on me. She was the strongest person I ever knew, and I had no doubt that if she’d been standing before the Gate, hearing the call, she’d have met that destiny.

For me, for her.

Because Willow had never been afraid of the unknown, of remaking herself at every stage of her life. Never feared that she’d left something crucial behind, never worried she wouldn’t find herself again. She seemed to nurture a limitless source of will, of rightness, that no matter how she fell, she’d find herself.

I took a breath. “I would have gone back for Willow.”

I waited for the judgment to come, for Bryn to push me away, but then he only said, “I told you months ago that O’Sahnazekiel has been researching something in the Gate.”

At the change of subject, I let out the breath I’d been holding. “I’ve never seen Sahn working on anything.”

“This is because he was purposely keeping the project from Nereida. He began it while I was exiled in Norway, and I did not know the reason of it until recently. I did not tell you, because I did not want to believe it.” He stroked a claw along the inside of my wrist. I could hear his heart beating rapidly—too fast for Sahn.

This was what Tye had tried to tell me . “He was researching the Fall,” I said, and Bryn glanced at me, surprised.

“Yes. I believe that he not only knew what would occur with the Gate, but that he planned for it.”

Bryn’s exhale had goosebumps pricking my neck. Then Tye hadn’t lied, and Sahn had purposely wanted me to make the crossing, and all the times he’d looked at me, and I’d wondered if he’d seen an imposter as Nereida, a part of him had not only known—but predicted? “Why? How?”

Another deep breath. “Because—because I believe he wished you to return. From here, to Ruhaven.”

Me? No, Nereida. Bryn was saying Sahn wanted Nereida to make the Fall back. “I don’t understand. If he knew we’d make the crossing, why would he also want Nereida to make the Fall back? Why not just stay in Ruhaven? Why go at all then, unless…”

“Unless there was something that would happen in the future, some eight hundred years later, that she was needed for.”

“That’s a hell of a gamble, Bryn.” And one that had ended with me in a dirty attic in L’Ardoise, miles away from the dream Sahn might have once hoped for.

“I suspect it was not much of a gamble at all. You know that Kazie was a pattern detector. She and O’Sahnazekiel had planned for this very moment.”

“For us to be trapped by the Inquitate, unable to make the Fall?”

“I do not believe that is the case,” Bryn continued hollowly. “You see, despite knowing his wishes, I have resisted them at every turn. Even when you told me you wished to make the Fall, I attempted to dissuade you. Because I am selfish, Rowan, and I do not want to return you to Ruhaven, to Sahn, to a man I will not be and will not know.”

My heart thumped, so loudly he must have heard. “I thought that’s what you wanted.”

He pressed his lips to my neck, my cheek, my ears, like he couldn’t touch me enough. “Once. But not since I saw what was between us in L’Ardoise. I want you here, selfishly, to myself. That is why I reacted so poorly in my room before you left. And so now, for the first time, I find myself at odds with O’Sahnazekiel.”

Whatever he thought, there was nothing we could do now, no possible way to escape the Drachaut. And even if we could, was I really prepared to look Bryn in the eye and choose the Gate, choose Willow, over him again?

No, I didn’t have the guts for it, for what it’d do to him.

A lizard with butterfly wings plopped into the lake, swam deep, and disappeared into the crystal weeds.

“Rowan.” His voice was muffled against my neck. “I want a memory from you. Not one that I pull from our thread, but one you give me.”

I turned, my nose skimming his rough jaw. “One that I give you?”

“Yes.” His voice was steady, firm now. “If we missed the Fall, what would you wish to do together, after Naruka? After Ruhaven?”

I could think of a thousand things to do in bed alone, but that probably wasn’t what he meant. “Can we go to Norway?”

“Wherever you wish to be. Would you like me to find a tiny cottage for you to build and me to paint?”

I laughed deeply, picturing just that. “No, Bryn. I think—well, I think I don’t ever want to fix, paint, or build anything ever again.”

He nuzzled my throat. “Then what would you like? Perhaps a man who understands what a load-bearing wall is?” Bryn whispered, so seductively my toes curled.

“I—I’d like you to take me sailing. I want to see the fjords, to live on a boat for months, to see the lighthouse from your memories.” And know what it was like to live that freedom. To taste the salt air and feel the boat swell on waves ten meters high. To listen to the fiddles play below deck, the songs sung over a drink, the brisk, salty air slap me in the face. To grip the soles of my boots when the boat rose, to see the bow of the ship carve through the mist of Norwegian fjords. To have nothing and no purpose but tomorrow.

I stared at the flickering lights over Loch Luna, the opaque liquid that light didn’t penetrate, but it wasn’t an endless pit to me anymore, it was the tiny room between life and dreams.

“I would like that,” he murmured at last, voice soft as the milky waves. “What else?”

Encouraged, I nestled into his warmth. “Well, if I could eat meat with the memories finished, I really want to try that sausage and cabbage stew.”

“The memory I showed you of Odda?” He huffed a laugh. “Then it certainly looks better than it tastes, for it is rather bland altogether. However, if your heart is set on it, I do know a family shop in Trondheim that is famous for its stews.”

“I’d like to see that too—Trondheim, I mean. I want to walk up the steps to the college you went to, then I want to sail to Odda, and know the person you were before the fancy education, when you were working on the ship in the summer.”

He nibbled my ear. “Oh, but my Rowan, what if you do not like me windblown and uncouth?”

I laughed against his chest, his teeth tickling my earlobe. “ You , uncouth?”

“Perhaps you have already forgotten how close we were to trampling James’s carefully planted daffodils,” he teased.

“I don’t think I’ll ever forget,” I said as everything inside me heated.

“Neither shall I, and I have replayed it many times, just to be certain of that fact,” he promised, making me shiver. “What will we do after Odda?”

“If you aren’t bored of me by then?” I teased, and he squeezed my waist. “We’ll sail north until we hit the next country.”

“The North Pole?”

I swept my silvery arm at a mass of toothless shrubs. “We’ll take a left.”

“Scotland, then.”

As the fires steamed in translucent trees, Bryn and I sat wrapped in each other, his claw circling my belly, the rise and fall of his breath as gentle as the ripples in the loch while I told him every dream I’d never known I had.

“And then we could go somewhere hotter, like…” A warm drop fell on my shoulder.

I glanced up at the canopy of leaves, held out my palm. “Are you making it rain?” I asked, circling my hand in the air.

But when he shuddered, I pulled away, turning in his lap. “ Bryn? ”

I’d never seen O’Sahnazekiel cry.

Tears beaded in his eyes, tiny golden things that leaked out and over his cheeks. A single fang worried his bottom lip. Coral pink pushed away the normal gold sheen of his cheeks.

Something was very wrong.

I gripped his shoulders. “Did the Inquitate find you?” We must have been talking here for hours. Did time pass in the same way? “Bryn, tell me.”

“No,” he said softly as I smoothed away his tears. “No, I am quite fine.”

“Obviously you’re not,” I insisted as his hands moved up and down my arms, circled my wrists.

His damp eyelashes fluttered closed.

And that’s when I felt it.

A fissure ripped through my chest, a pain that could only come from the thread. I’d felt it hours ago, and now it felt like a dam burst, like he’d smothered it until this moment.

“Tell me,” I pleaded, my voice a shuddering puddle. “What is it?”

He opened his eyes. “I fear I have been drawing out the inevitable,” Bryn admitted, voice hoarse.

My chest sank. This was my fault—I’d let him stay here instead of insisting he return to Naruka with James. “Did the Drachaut find you?” I managed.

“No, it is not that.” He took a ragged inhale. “The Drachaut believe that when I—when O’Sahnazekiel—passed through the Gate in Drachaut, that he carried Nereida with him through their mated thread.” Bryn ran his hands over my shoulders, down my body and up again, mapping the dips and lines of it as I’d done with his. “I believe we may still have a few days left to make the Fall.”

It must be just settling in for him, with the last few days to see Ruhaven now ending, that this would be all there was left. “I’m sorry,” I said softly, wiping away his tears. I wanted to tell him he could go without me, that I’d understand, but I couldn’t get my thick tongue to work.

He cupped the back of my neck, stared into my eyes. “While you may not be able to travel to the Gate, I can.”

My heart stuttered. “If you—if that’s what you want.” He was going to leave then, now, while I was here with Tye, because he needed Ruhaven. I should have said it myself, for him to go.

Like I said, she’d take you, I said through the bridge, because I couldn’t stomach the words.

You misunderstand me. Bryn shook his head. “I told you once that you are written upon my very bones. Do you think I would allow my soul to be separated from yours?”

I pressed our foreheads together, like he’d done the night he’d tackled me into the garden. “But if you’re thinking of—of making the Fall, then that’s what would happen.” His soul to be taken by Ruhaven, mine to remain here as Tye intended. And then he’d be reborn as someone else, someone new, and I’d be Rowan. Not Rowan and Bryn. Not Rowan and Willow. Just Rowan.

“Do you recall what Tye told you, about triplets?” he breathed. “Eight hundred years ago, O’Sahnazekiel sacrificed himself in the crossing to bring Nereida here, and now, I will be able to do the same. For you, for Willow.”

Realization rolled through me like thunder.

“This is what you wanted,” he said softly, like his words weren’t tearing me apart, like I wasn’t even now staring at his lips and wondering if this was it. If this was all we would ever have. Just a dream.

Tears burned, swelled, and dropped until he was nothing but a blur. The bitter salt of them leaked into my lips that should have been kissing every piece of him.

He took my face in my hands, held me solidly as Sahn. “This is what you wanted, my Rowan. What Ruhaven wanted, and maybe, what Willow wanted too. We are still mated. The thread is as vital as it was in Ruhaven. It will work if I return to Naruka now.”

I gripped the hands holding my cheeks, licked my lips. “Bryn, I heard Ruhaven, but we don’t know if it meant Willow would make the Fall with me—”

“Is it not souls that make the Fall?”

“That’s what James said, but—”

“And is Willow not part of your soul?”

I squeezed my jaw shut. Yes .

His eyes guttered. “Then I believe I know why Ruhaven called you home, why she did so as Willow, why O’Sahnazekiel made the crossing, why he needed you to return.”

I met his starry eyes when they opened.

“Because,” Bryn answered his own question, “there was something for you to bring back. Not just Nereida. Willow .”

He fisted my hair and pulled me to him, kissing me over my protests so I could barely draw air. There was only him and the golden thread spiraling around us, the hands that slipped over my body like it was Bryn touching me and not Sahn, pressing us together so our hearts beat in a wild tango that roared in my eardrums.

Not a kiss of passion. But a kiss goodbye.

This couldn’t be happening. “We can’t—you can’t—”

“It is okay, my Rowan,” he insisted between kisses. “I can give you this. Give us this. You told me you wished to do it all over again, and this is your chance. The only one.”

But tears gathered, fell, in eyes of glistening blue and gold.

He flipped us in the sand. Covered my body with his again, demanding acceptance with each stroke and bite. Then his clothes were gone, and we were naked, pressed skin to skin to one another, because he didn’t fear the world imploding.

Because he was leaving.

He was ravenous, his hands everywhere, even as I tried to take back what I’d chosen.

You wanted this at the Gate before I attempted to convince you otherwise , he said inside me, but even here, I could hear the pain.

That was before I knew it would take you too.

Your sacrifice is mine. I will not exist where your soul does not.

Tears leaked down my face. “But I’ll never see you again. We’ll never have Norway, we’ll never be together here. You’ll never be Bryn.” And Bryn was who I’d wanted, who I’d loved. “I want you, not Sahn.”

His smile was the saddest thing I’d ever seen. “Rowan, there was never any difference. We will have the memory. Memories were enough for Nereida and I. They will be enough for us.”

I couldn’t accept this, wouldn’t. “Bryn, please. Not now, just wait.”

“It may already be too late to—”

I cried out when a sudden pain struck my shoulder.

Bryn rose above me, fear darkening his golden eyes. Rowan, what happened? What is it?

Then something pinched my arm, yanked on it, on me. “I don’t know. I—it feels like someone’s grabbing me.”

His dappled-gray wings whipped wide. “No. No! ” Bryn grabbed me, tried to pin me to this world while his tears fell like rain on my cheeks.

But Sahn’s perfect face wavered, the leaves behind him beginning to dissolve in pinpricks of light. My body jittered in the sand like it’d been struck by lightning.

“Don’t let go, Bryn. Don’t let—”

But then the world broke apart for a second time.

And when I woke, I met Tye’s desperate face.