Chapter Thirteen #2
“For?”
He hesitated. He had been doing that more often. It was about the bond. He was trying to figure out a way to break it. Turning himself inside out to try to fix an unfixable thing. How frustrating that must be for a warlock of knowledge.
“You know what? Never mind,” she said, taking a step back when he didn’t elaborate. “I’m too beat to follow anyway.”
“Wren…”
She held a hand up. “Tell me tomorrow. I’m going to pass out.”
He hesitated again before nodding. “I’ll be in soon.”
She forced a laugh. “If I know you at all, you’ll be up all night in here.”
“You do know me,” he said in a soft tone that went straight to her heart.
She would have killed to hear him say that in the past. For them to know each other this well. For these intimate moments to exist without just sex. She’d never opened herself up to that. And now that she had it…it was all jumbled.
Still, she forced herself to turn from his office and into his bedroom, reaching for one of his white dress shirts. It hung long to her knees and smelled like him—leather and fresh parchment. She inhaled deeply, savoring the parts of him that she could have.
She drifted to the nightstand and ran her fingers over the carved birds that rested there. “Hello, little wren,” she whispered.
Graves had told her that he’d begun carving them when he was with the Druids.
Back when everything had seemed right in the world.
The ability had never left him. And now she knew why the raven had always sat next to the wren on his bedside.
Not just a symbol of what a wren was to the Holly King, but a symbol of what Kierse was to Graves, the raven.
A book of poems from Edgar Allen Poe sat on the nightstand with a raven prominently on the cover. Another vestige of his past.
She flipped through the pages until she found the evocative poem about a man who had lost his love Lenore and the raven who haunted him with nevermore.
No wonder Graves saw himself in this. He had always pictured himself as the villain in his own story—yes, he had done some horrible things to get the moniker—but this tale was of loss and depression and grief.
The other side of the coin that he didn’t show the world.
The side he only showed her.
Nevermore.
Which made everything swirling through her mind more difficult. She closed the book and crawled into bed, hoping her brain would shut off, but it went round and round in circles.
All the events of the last week were a roiled mess in her mind. And somehow she had no words for what she was feeling. Nothing to explain how this soulmate business felt and how much she hated it and secretly how good it felt.
“Trouble sleeping?” a voice sounded in her head.
Kierse jerked upright, her heart rate skipping through the roof. “How many times do I have to tell you to get out of my head before you listen?”
The bond was silent a moment. “I didn’t mean to. You were practically yelling at me.”
“Leave me alone, Lorcan.”
“Kierse…”
Kierse reached for that spot in her mind where the vault was.
She opened and closed it. Opened and closed it.
She fought for control from him with every fiber of her being.
But she was tired. Beyond tired. Jet-lagged and exhausted and today had been draining on top of it.
She hadn’t topped off her magic, and it was hard to focus her energy when she was low.
“Fine. Fuck it. What do you want?”
There was a pause in her mind. Like a flat silence. “Are you okay?”
“Am I okay?” she practically snarled. “After what you did to me?”
Another long pause. “You’re louder than normal.”
“I am jet-lagged and tired, and my magic is low. I can’t keep you out the way I have been. Not for lack of trying, mind you.”
“Should you go pickpocket unsuspecting strangers to keep your defenses up?”
“No, I’m very safe right now behind Graves’s wards. In his bed.”
A longer pause. Long enough she thought he might let her sleep, but she wasn’t that lucky.
“I heard about the Ash Door.”
Kierse sighed heavily. “Of course you did. You still have Druids on the inside?”
“The Druids were the only thing I cared about for the last hundred years. They were my entire world for half a millennium. It is not that easy to extricate me from them.”
“So Niamh tells me,” Kierse grumbled.
“Niamh might be sitting on my throne, but we both know it doesn’t belong to her.” Lorcan sighed. “The fact that I lost everything isn’t why I was checking in. I have a theory about the door.”
“Not interested.”
His laugh was almost infectious the way it resonated through her mind like honey sliding down her throat. “I’ll remind you that you were yelling at me through the bond. I just wanted you to be able to sleep.”
“Fine. Then silence the bond from your end. I’m sure you can do that.”
Another long pause. “I can.”
Kierse squeezed her hands into fists “Then do it.”
“I will if that’s what you want, but would you meet me tomorrow to talk about the door?”
Kierse released her breath. What if he did have information about the door and she ignored him? Maybe it would be worthwhile to find out. In exchange, she’d get information and finally some peace and quiet?
“Five minutes.”
“An hour.”
“Fifteen.”
“Thirty.”
“Twenty,” she snapped.
“Done. Sushi in Hell’s Kitchen at say one?”
She wanted to scream. Was he really listening to her thoughts?
“Lorcan!”
Lorcan’s laugh rang through her mind again. “I’ll take that as a yes. Good night, little songbird. Sleep well.”
And then the connection between them went blissfully and utterly silent. She could still sense him if she concentrated, but it was like before when he’d been living in Brooklyn and she hadn’t been able to feel him until she was right in his territory.
A weight lifted off her shoulders, and she felt her body sink into the bed. She could finally relax, could finally sleep.
Except that wasn’t what she wanted. Not if the connection was really silent. If it was really quiet, then she wanted Graves. Right now.