Chapter 15
15
Keyanna
“I think my spleen is rupturing.”
I hear a disgruntled sound from ahead, Lachlan not even bothering to turn around for my dozenth complaint since we set out. “Quit your whinging. You wanted to take this trip.”
“Yeah, yeah,” I grumble. I hoist my backpack higher up on my shoulders, pausing to peer out at the rolling hills of lush green ahead of us. The sky casts a gray light with the promise of another dreary day, and I frown as I continue walking. “Is it supposed to rain?”
“It’s always supposed to rain,” Lachlan tosses over his shoulder.
“So what do we do if it rains?”
“Walk faster.”
I huff out a breath. “You’re a real ray of sunshine, you know that?”
“That is what people say about me. Yes.”
I scowl even though he can’t see me, trudging along in the path of his footsteps as I try to keep up. I swear the man must have some super-monster strength even when he’s in human form, because the guy moves like the fucking Terminator.
Still. I can’t pretend that the view is…all that bad. From my few steps behind, I can’t help but notice the way his burgundy-colored wool sweater hugs his shoulders, and if I glance down a little lower (which I wish I could lie and say that I haven’t), it’s impossible to miss the way his jeans hug his thick thighs and his firm ass, which is actually kind of hypnotizing in the way it moves with his every step.
Jesus. Get a grip, Key.
I clear my throat, tearing my eyes away from the ass’s ass.
“So what’s the castle like?”
I can’t see his frown, but I can hear it, I think. “It’s a castle.”
“Okay, but what is it like ? Are we talking about collapsing roofs and crumbling walls or…?”
He doesn’t say anything for a moment, and from my vantage point I can just make out the way his jaw works. “Roof is still mostly okay. There are definitely some unstable parts in the floor, so you’ll want to watch your step, and the walls have begun to crumble in many places. No one has lived there for centuries.”
“Why not?”
“Wars,” he says. “These lands were invaded by the English not even a decade after my family was cursed.” He snorts. “My ancestor was so busy worrying about neighboring clans, he didn’t prepare himself for the possibility of anyone else.”
“So it’s been abandoned that long?”
“Aye. I hear tell of some great-great-something-or-other trying to repair it back in the thirties, but…Well. Numpty got his picture taken and everyone had to go into hiding after.”
I stop walking, my mouth falling open. “You don’t mean the surgeon’s photo.”
“Mhm.” He pauses, turning to take in my shell-shocked expression. “What?”
“You mean the photo was actually real?”
Lachlan makes a face. “What else would it be?”
“But that guy came out and said it was all a hoax?”
Lachlan chuckles. “Alastair? Oh, aye. He was…a family friend. Did us a real solid coming out with all that talk of Spurling confessing.”
“So the hoax was…a hoax?”
“Kelpie magic and monsters, and that’s the part you’re struggling with?”
His quiet laugh drifts back toward me as he continues forward, and I stumble after him, still in a daze. “Okay, but you have to admit that plaster and wood on a toy submarine was pretty believable.”
“A toy submarine from the thirties? How on earth do you think they even got it into position? Remote controls?”
“I…Hm. I didn’t think of that.”
“Sometimes, lass…things are exactly what they appear to be.”
I pick up my pace so I can fall into step beside him. “Have there been other real sightings?”
“A few,” he tells me. “It’s hard to hide when you’re so…big.”
And he really is big.
I shake my head back and forth.
Stop that. Just because he isn’t being a total dick to you doesn’t mean you should start appreciating how hot he is.
I sneak a glance to my left, eyeing the way his neat beard highlights the sharpness of his jaw. The way it makes his mouth look soft and full and—
Stop. It.
“So how much further?”
Lachlan shrugs. “We’re close to the halfway point. There’s an auld barn on the other side of that hill”—he points to the rising slope that seems miles away from this vantage point—“and from there it’s less than an hour left, I’d say.”
A rumble of thunder sounds above us, and I peek up at the sky warily. “Do you think we’ll make it there dry?”
“Don’t worry about it,” he says confidently. He taps the side of his nose. “I can smell when it’s going to rain. We’ve got hours yet before it starts.”
Sounds like bullshit, but what do I know?
“Okay,” I answer. “If you’re sure.”
Lachlan scoffs. “I’m always sure.”
We’re utterly drenched by the time we make it inside the dilapidated old barn that’s really more of a leaking, thatched roof over four rotting walls—and I shake off my backpack as I glare at Lachlan, who is shaking the rain out of his hair.
“You can smell the rain, huh?”
He shoots me a glare. “Haud yer wheesht.”
“English,” I groan.
“Be quiet, you arse.”
“Wow.” I ring out the end of my sweater. “Real nice.”
He presses his hands to his hips after he drops his pack, looking around the space. “Least we’ll be dry here. I’m sure the rain will pass soon. It always does.”
“So what do we do until then?”
“Well, you could ask nicely for it to stop, I s’pose.”
I narrow my eyes, but he actually looks sincere. I frown out at the entrance, where it’s still coming down in buckets, chewing at the inside of my lip.
“Stop raining,” I say to the air, feeling silly.
I hear a snort behind me. “Think you’re going to have to be a wee bit more forceful than that.”
My hands fall to my sides, and I clench them into fists. “Stop raining!”
There’s a stretch of silence before, “Well. Merlin, you are not.”
“Shut up,” I grumble.
I turn to watch as Lachlan trods over to the remnants of what might have been a hay bale, testing the straw with his foot before appearing satisfied. He drops down onto it with a groan, stretching out his long legs and leaning back on his hands. He lifts one to pat the space beside him, arching a brow.
“Your throne, princess.”
I narrow my eyes. “You’re a dick, you know that?”
“Aye, aye, I know. Sit down and dry off. Get away from the wind. You’ll catch your death over there.”
As if on cue, a shiver runs through me, and I wrap my arms around my chest as I eye the spot next to him warily. “No funny business?”
“Who actually says that in real life?” A laugh burbles out of him. “Come sit, Your Highness. Your virtue is safe with me.”
“My virtue is the last thing I’m worried about,” I grumble, trying not to picture what that might entail. I plop down beside him with my arms still wrapped tightly around my chest, trying to urge some warmth back into my limbs. “You really think it will let up soon?”
“Most likely,” he says. “At least you have good company while you wait.”
“Oh, yeah,” I snort. “Absolutely stellar.”
We’re both quiet for a bit while we watch the rain coming down outside, and after a few moments I notice the warmth radiating off Lachlan’s side where he’s almost touching me.
“Are you a furnace? I can feel you from over here.”
He shrugs. “Always ran hot. Side effect of the curse, I s’pose. The loch can get right chilly.”
I frown as I hug myself tighter, feeling my teeth begin to chatter as I try to keep my limbs under control. The last thing I need is to appear weak in front of him. He’ll have a field day laughing about it.
“You cold?”
Damn it.
“No,” I huff.
“I s’pose the shivering is just your excitement to be in my company, then, aye?”
“I think I liked you better when you were avoiding me.”
He chuckles. “You wanted to be allies, remember? You made your bed.”
I continue to shake for another minute before I finally cave, scooting closer until my entire right side is squished against his left. The heat emanating from him is an immediate relief, and I have to physically restrain myself from snuggling closer.
“There now,” he teases. “Was that so hard?”
“Debatable.” I lean in just a little closer. “You’re being awfully…agreeable.”
He shrugs. “I reckon if you’re going to be a stubborn arse about helping me, the least I can do is be a bit more agreeable.”
“That’s…nice. Almost.”
He chuckles softly. “Trust me, it’s a foreign concept to me too.”
I watch the rain falling outside the sagging entry to the barn, oddly content to be quiet for a time. Lachlan says nothing beside me, and I can’t help but wonder what he’s thinking. I find myself wondering a lot of things about him since learning the truth of his curse. I wonder what it’s like to live your life knowing how it will end. It makes my chest feel funny when I think about it.
“Do you remember the last time you spoke with your father?”
He startles at the question, his head whipping toward me. I can feel his eyes on the side of my face, but I continue to stare at the rain. I’m not sure what prompted me to ask, but I realize I’m curious, now that it’s out there. Maybe it’s because he knows how I feel, given the things we’ve both lost.
“Aye,” he answers finally, his voice soft. “I remember.”
“How old were you?”
He leans to brace his forearms over his bent knees, eyes on the downpour outside. “I was only eight. A wean, really. I still remember the day, though.”
“What happened?”
“There were signs,” he tells me. “The curse is becoming unstable, see? We saw it in him, my mother and me. When he was angry, when he lost control…It was like you could see bits of the beast shining through the man.”
“Does that—” I can feel myself leaning in. “Does that happen to you?”
“Not much,” he answers. He looks at me then, his eyes moving slowly over the planes of my face as if studying me. “I do my best not to lose control.”
I swallow, the weight of his gaze suddenly too much. I avert my own gaze, clearing my throat. “That’s…good.”
“Aye. My da…he lost control one day. He…” Lachlan’s fists clench, and his body tenses, his brow furrowing as he remembers. “He hurt my mother. Not badly, you see, but enough to scare them both. The grief of that, of what he’d done…It’s like he let himself go to the monster. He went into the loch that night…and he never came back out.”
My chest clenches in sympathy, and I have the strangest urge to reach out and touch him, to offer him some sort of comfort—but I can’t decide if it would be welcome or not.
“I’m sorry,” I say softly.
He shakes his head. “I still remember what he said that morning. The last words he ever spoke to me.”
“What did he say?”
“He said…” Lachlan’s voice breaks, and he sucks in a breath just to blow it out. “He said that he was sorry. He said that he—that he tried. He tried to save me. I’m still not sure what he meant by that, but I can’t forget the sadness in his eyes when he said it.”
“It sounds like he really loved you.”
“Aye,” Lachlan murmurs. “He did.” He’s thoughtful for a second before, “My mother left not long after. She told me it would only be for a little while, me staying with my granny, but…I think looking at me was too hard. She missed my da too much. It did something to her mind. She’s never been…quite right since.”
“I’m sorry,” I tell him, meaning it.
He shrugs. “S’fine.”
“Did she know?”
“Hm?”
“Your mother,” I clarify. “Did she know about the curse?”
“Aye, from early on.”
“Then why did she—”
“She never expected to lose him to it,” he tells me. “My da was the first to be consumed by it like he was.”
“Oh.” I consider that, feeling sympathy for this woman I don’t know, but also irritation. “But she abandoned you in the process too.”
Lachlan is quiet for a moment before admitting, “Aye. She did.”
A shudder racks through me before I can say more, making my whole body quake from the lingering chill. Lachlan’s arm comes around me in an instant, and I don’t know who looks more surprised by the quick action—him or me.
“Sorry,” he says quickly. “I wasn’t even thinking. I just—”
I lean into him, letting the heat of his arm seep through my still-damp clothes. “It’s fine.” I take a chance and rest my head on his shoulder, trying not to read too much into it. It’s just necessity, after all. Just to keep me warm. “Fucking freezing.”
“Far be it from me to let the princess freeze to death,” he chuckles.
“Asshole,” I grumble.
Silence falls over us once more, and to my surprise, it’s not as awkward as it should be. It’s almost…comfortable. His fingers twitch against my shoulder, like they want to move, and I am all too aware of the warmth and weight of his arm as it drapes over me. I’m dialed into the firmness of his body against mine. How long has it been since someone touched me like this? Am I so touch-starved that I would relish something so simple?
Apparently so.
“What about you?”
His question shakes me out of my errant thoughts, and I peek up at him. “Hm?”
“Your da,” he says, still studying me with those icy blue eyes that seem to see right through me. “Do you remember the last time you spoke?”
“Oh.” My gaze falls to the straw beneath us, my lips pressing together. “Yeah. I do.”
“If it’s too painful—”
“No, no,” I assure him. “It’s fine. Fair is fair.”
“Key,” he says firmly, forcing me to turn up my face and look at him again, something that is becoming harder and harder because he really is sort of beautiful, and without the distraction of, well, hating him—it’s hard to ignore that fact now. His fingers brush against my chin, tilting up my face even more. “There’s no quid pro quo here. You don’t owe me anything, all right? I’m just asking as…” His brow knits, like he has to ponder his next words. “As a friend?”
I can’t help the way my mouth turns up in a grin. “Wow, that must have been so hard for you.”
“Like pulling teeth,” he scoffs.
I bite the inside of my lip slightly. “Are we? Friends?”
He’s doing it again. Studying me. I can’t help but wonder what it is that he’s thinking when he looks at me. It’s strange to think that only a week ago I considered him an enemy, and now…Now it’s like there is some insatiable urge inside me to help him. To save him, if I can. One that I can’t even figure out where it comes from. It pulses inside like a seed waiting for water, one that is desperate to grow.
“Aye,” he says. “I s’pose we are.”
I feel warmth flush at my neck and chest, and I can only pray he doesn’t see it. He already thinks I’m a numpty , as he likes to say—he’d never let me live it down if he knew I was getting flustered from just this.
“R-right,” I manage, tearing my eyes from his. “Yeah. Okay.”
He doesn’t say more, seeming to sense that I need a moment to collect my thoughts. I let my memories drift to the last days with my father, choosing one as if plucking it from a box, dusting it off and letting it breathe as happiness and sadness course through me all at once.
“His last day,” I start, willing my voice not to crack. “It was strange, really. He’d been mostly out of it for the week before, and I knew he would go soon. You just…know. At the end. You can sense it. But that day…” A smile touches my lips despite everything. “That day it was like he’d come back to me, just a little. It was almost like that day he was my dad again. Even if only for a while.”
“Maybe he knew too,” Lachlan offers. “That he was close.”
“Maybe he did.” I can feel myself resting more and more against Lachlan, the indelible warmth he gives off like a siren song that I can’t resist sinking into. “He looked at me that day and for the first time in ages, I could just…I could tell that he was really seeing me. He put his hand on my cheek”—I reach to press my own palm against my cheek, closing my eyes—“and he said my name. Said it like he hadn’t seen me in forever. Like he’d just been away for a long time, and he was finally coming home.” A choked sob gets trapped in my chest, and I force it back down. “He said he’d missed me. He asked me where I’d been.”
I can feel Lachlan’s fingers at my shoulder gripping me tighter, his thumb stroking there. “Key…”
“We talked for a bit. Not about what had happened to him or what he’d been through—just about little things. Things that made us laugh. Things that made him smile.”
“I’m glad,” Lachlan says gently. “That you have that memory.”
I nod. “Me too. And then…before he went to sleep—for the last time—he asked me…” I blow out a shaky exhale. “He asked me to take him home.”
“Home,” Lachlan echoes.
I manage another nod. “He said to take him back to the loch. That he wanted to see it one last time. I’d heard the story a hundred times growing up—I knew exactly which one he meant. Obviously, I never got to bring him back, but I just thought…I thought he would like knowing that it would be his final resting place.”
I catch a glimpse of Lachlan hanging his head beside me, and I can’t help but twist mine to take him in. “What?”
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I was a real arse that day I found you.”
“You didn’t know.”
“I didn’t, but still. I could have been better. I heard who you were, and I just—”
“You didn’t trust me.”
He shakes his head. “No, I didn’t.”
I can’t help it—the question bubbles up inside without my permission, so violent that I physically can’t hold it back.
“Do you trust me now?”
He looks up at me, his eyes holding mine, an intensity in them that makes me hot all over in a way that has nothing to do with how he’s touching me and yet everything to do with how he’s touching me. I notice his gaze dip to my mouth, and I feel my lips part, because it’s insanity to even entertain it—isn’t it?
“Aye,” he half whispers. “I think I do, Keyanna.”
The rain is still falling outside, but there’s a roaring in my ears. I can feel the heaviness of my chest with each rise and fall, feel the thumping of my pulse in my throat, and I notice the second he starts to lean in, looking as hypnotized as I feel. The heat in my skin feels alive, climbing higher and higher, my fingers tingling and my palms burning , but he’s so close. One more second, one more inch, and we’ll—
“ Fuckin’ hell ,” Lachlan shouts suddenly, his accent thicker than usual as he jolts away.
I blink, trying to discern what happened—and then I feel it.
“Shit!”
The straw beneath us has been set aflame, the fire small but growing. I try to pat it out with my hand, beating at the smoking lump incessantly.
“Key,” Lachlan says incredulously. “It’s you. ”
And that’s when I notice.
The fire is coming from my fucking hand.
I panic, shooting up and shaking my hand frantically as if I can somehow put it out. “What do I do?” I give it another frenetic shake. “Lachlan, what do I—” I go still even as Lachlan starts to stomp out the crackling straw with his boot. I stare at my palm, where a tiny flicker has formed, resting in the cradle of my hand, and I realize: “It doesn’t hurt.”
He stops smashing the small flames below with his shoe, peering at the one in my palm with a slack-jawed expression.
“How long have you been able to do that?”
“Um…” I roll my hand this way and that, watching the flame roll with it. “Just now?”
“Jesus suffering fuck,” he breathes, running a hand through his hair.
I close my fist, astonished when doing so extinguishes the flame. “Wow.”
“That’s a lot more than blowing open a window,” he notes.
“What do you think it means?”
“I think…” He blows out a breath. “I think it means we need to hurry and find some fucking answers.”
I nod dazedly, agreeing wholeheartedly. I’m still a bit stunned as he starts to gather our things, and I can distantly hear him talking about the rain starting to let up, dictating that we should be going. I hear all of it, but it seems far away because even with everything that just happened—the fire, the magic, all of it—there is another thought that rings louder than all the rest.
Did Lachlan and I almost kiss just now? And what’s more…am I disappointed that we didn’t?