Chapter 34
Chapter
Thirty-Four
ALLIE
“ W hat do you mean you saw him?” My voice tremored as I yanked my hand away from him and took three large steps back. “While he was sitting in front of the altar?”
Of course that’s what he meant.
There was no other possibility.
My father had been sitting in the front row when the Blood Brotherhood had crashed Evie’s wedding and a few good minutes had passed in a tense stare-off before the true danger began. Plenty of time to notice my father–
“No.” He turned to me, face tense as if readying for battle, and my heart plummeted.
No.
Please, no .
“Then when?” I asked, voice and body shaking in perfect frightened synchronization.
He took a step toward me.
I stepped back.
He raised his hands, palms open, as if dealing with a frightened doe. But he was wrong.
I wasn’t prey.
Not here.
Not with this.
“Start talking,” I bit out, even as my heart cracked once more.
“How do you think you got off Sanctua Sirena and onto the Blood Brotherhood ship?” The words tumbled out of his mouth.
I’d been so confused on where I’d ended up, I hadn’t paid much mind to how .
But now that I was faced with it, it was so obvious.
The revelation took the air from my lungs. He’d seen me, then, in the middle of the labyrinth, on the worst day of my life, crying, torn, and lost.
“You–you took me from the island yourself?” Good fucking luck for these sturdy walls, because I swayed on the spot and placed a hand onto the cold stone to keep myself upright.
He nodded. “Evie agreed to marry The Dragon if he agreed her cousins would be safe–”
I shuddered a breath. Evie truly was too pure for this Clan world.
“–and it was obvious Sanctua Sirena was dangerous for you all. I found you with your father and carried you out of there. I doubted the decision then, but time has proven you are safest here. That’s when I saw him. You were cradling him in your arms and he was already dead.”
Dead .
That lone word still stung, despite the reality.
But the confession released the tightness building up inside me.
He’d already been gone when Ryker had seen him.
I sighed, chest caving in on itself. I didn’t know what I feared–something awful and heinous I couldn’t have lived with.
A grim question instantly sprung in my mind.
“What–” The words crawled up my throat, but refused to spill past my lips. Too raw, too painful. “Did you–his body–I–”
Ryker’s face softened as his gaze fell down from mine. “I carried you both from underneath the olive tree. I feared the mist might…affect his body. I laid him down on the castle terrace, right in front of the doors, facing the sky. Your Clan couldn’t have missed him.”
Facing the sky. So my father could always see the stars.
This time, I couldn’t stop the tears. My legs had already been shaking, but now my spine felt hollow and breakable.
Standing here, among so many families and loved ones lost, it struck me like a dagger that I hadn’t cried at my father’s grave.
Would probably never get a chance to.
He was gone from me, in this lifetime and the next.
“Thank you,” I managed to say, tears soaking my cracking voice. “Thank you for not leaving him there.”
I couldn’t imagine what that blasted mist would have done to him.
I didn’t want to.
My father deserved to be remembered as he was in his life, not in death. Snuck up on, stabbed in the back by a coward . A fucking coward had taken him from me.
“I miss him so much.” I breathed out. My palms flew to my chest, as if that touch could soothe the pain trying to rupture out of me. “It hurts so fucking much.”
“I know.” Ryker took another careful step toward me. This time, I didn’t retreat.
“I’ll never see him again.” The ache tumbled out of my mouth, just as it had his. Only mine was raw and unhinged, soaked with tears and shame, whereas his had been coated with guilt, yes, but had been the kind of suffering time had scabbed over.
“I know.” Another step.
“I–” Gulps of air weren’t enough to fill this growing void inside of me, which I’d avoided for too long. “I–I lost my dad. He’s dead.”
Sobs spidered all over my back.
My skin felt on fire, a million stings crawling underneath my skin.
It didn’t feel enough to cry.
I wanted to roar.
I wanted to blaze myself away from this life and stop feeling, because it hurt so damn much.
“He left me alone.” I managed between sobs. “He left me all alone and I can’t–I can’t deal with this, it’s too much. I can’t–”
Suddenly, my caving body was engulfed in a warm embrace that smelled so different than the sea and parchment of all the hugs I’d received back in Aquila. Its scent of pine, leather, and embers jarred my senses with their newness and intensity, but still felt oddly comforting.
This wasn’t the first time his arms had coiled around me, both to save and to savor. But this was the first time I felt I wanted to receive it and delve into it. Not out of fear or lust.
Because it felt right.
His body held mine up, not because I was caving. But because he was there, willing to share the burden of my anguish. He didn’t shy away, he didn’t vanish.
He was there.
And I collapsed into him.
Not like a warrior or the feared Huntress.
Only a daughter who’d lost too much.
I cried my heart out against his uniform, tears, snot, and body tremors, in all my glory.
Ryker only held on tighter, letting me spill out all the ugly which had been festering inside me.
“I miss him,” I kept on saying, like a melancholic lullaby. “And it feels like I miss him more every single day.”
“I know,” he whispered against my hair.
How ironic. Before we’d entered the crypt, I’d imagined he was the one who needed comfort. Yet here he was, giving it to me.
“I can’t–I can’t escape seeing him in my arms. Dead. The blood, the mist, the sound of the wind in the olive leaves. It haunts me, day in and day out.” I sucked in a shuttered breath. “And I blame myself more and more for what happened.”
Ryker’s soft, welcoming embrace changed instantly. He leaned back and gently tilted my chin up, gaze searing me.
“What happened wasn’t your fault,” he said.
“If I was the target all along…” My lower lip wobbled. “Then it was my fault.”
“Listen to me,” he said fiercely. “You’re a force of nature, but nobody sets up an attack of that magnitude for one person. They came there to kill . As many, as fast, and as horrible as possible.”
As morbid as it was, I wanted to believe.
I needed to live without that guilt inside of me.
“We won’t know for sure until that strange cousin of yours brings you whatever you asked for from Aquila, yes?”
“Yes.”
“And what if you weren’t the main target, hmm? What if they wanted to kill someone else all along? Are you going to rust away from the guilt just because?”
I shook my head.
“It wasn’t your fault,” he said, voice unbending.
I nodded, the same way he did. And he understood and didn’t press for more. Guilt was a terrible thing and we both shared it.
“You know,” he began, palm gliding up my cheek. His thumb wiped the tears away, one by one. “We believe the souls of our ancestors hear our call, no matter where they are.”
I wiped my nose with the back of my sleeve, trying to ignore the stains I left on his uniform. He took my hand in his and guided me toward the table.
I watched in amazement as he took out a bottle from the same satchel–but unlike the others in this crypt, his looked like a remnant from a shipwreck, green, with its bottom half calcified, as if the underwater algae hadn’t wanted to let go of it. He also dug out two glasses.
The cork hissed as it opened, filling the entire space with that spicy alcohol. Ryker tilted the bottle toward the moat in the center of the table, the table greedily gulping the amber liquid. Then he filled both glasses, handing me one and placing the other on his mother’s coffin.
The entire space filled with the air of ritual. Once again, I felt like an intruder.
“What about you?” I asked.
He swirled the liquid in the bottle with a smile. “I’ll make do.”
I watched with fascination as he took one of the candles and lit the moat. The circle came to life with flames instantly, blazing toward the ceiling.
“For those who gave their lives so we could live.” He raised his bottle at his mother’s grave, completely ignoring his father’s; I followed his movements with my own glass.
The past needed to be remembered.
Always.
Then he turned, looking at me like I was his future. “And for those who carry on their memory, no matter how painful.”
The flames danced across the glass as we clinked, and both took one large gulp, as if that would somehow burn the ache still beating through us. This alcohol definitely tried to burn something.
It blazed through the tears still stuck down my throat, the spices lodging in my nose.
I let out a disgruntled cough. Meanwhile, Ryker licked his lips, like he’d tasted nectar, not liquid fire.
“They raise you strong here in Solkar’s Reach,” I managed between coughs, my voice and insides raw.
“Rumor has it they do the same in Aquila.” He took another long gulp, as if teasing me.
Here he was, trying to yank me out of my sadness once more.
I’d resented him the first time, when I’d been too caught up in my own misery to face reality.
Now I saw his insistence for what it was–care.
Messy, rough-around-the-edges care.
For me.
Maybe as his future wife, who needed to rule just as firmly as he did.
Perhaps because he saw a girl break in front of his eyes and wanted to patch her up.
Or maybe he just liked taking care of us strays, who had nowhere else to turn to.
Whatever the motive, it warmed me more than the entire bottle ever could have.
I fixed my gaze on the flames.
I burned, too.
With unspoken truths I needed to let out before I truly ended up in one of these coffins.
I took another swig of alcohol, grimacing at the taste.
“Thank you,” I said, eyes lingering on the fire. I couldn’t have uttered the words if I’d been staring at him.
“For what?” he asked, sounding genuinely curious and taken aback.
“For everything.” I took a long inhale; I needed a good breath for what I was about to say.
“For not being as rotten as I feared a Blood Brotherhood Commander and former Northern heir to be. For saving me. For offering me shelter. For not judging my mistakes. For not letting me crumble. For still trying and not looking away then I was at my weakest. For–” I licked my lips.
I tasted tears once more. “–for not letting my father rot there in the garden. For having my back against my own family. For letting me roam free. For letting the storm rage inside me. For being the kind of enemy that stood by me more than any ally. For being you and allowing me to be myself. My messy, maddening self.”
The silence that followed was so thick, I had to take another swipe from my glass; soon enough, I might swipe his bottle. I laid my palm against the edge of the table.
The crypt was now deathly silent, except for the fire in this chamber and our mingling breaths.
Just when I felt the tension rise, his voice cracked the stillness. “It’s my honor, Huntress.”
“Allie,” I piped up and finally looked at him. “My name’s Allie.”
Trust went both ways.
Underneath my fingers, the table began to warm. Or maybe it was my body heating up under his eyes.
“Allie.” A slow, open smile bloomed on his face as he inclined his head.
If I concentrated hard enough, I could imagine we were just meeting at a ball and this handsome stranger had asked me for a dance–instead of drinking a ceremonial hooch, surrounded by graves.
“I’d like to think you would have done the same for me. ”
“Yes,” I said without hesitation. Out of sheer stubbornness to have him not die on me, if nothing else. “I might’ve housed you in a dungeon, though.”
He huffed a laugh. I’d never heard him so unrestrained. “Told you you’re a brat.”
He was funny, too.
Shit.
“Maybe I am.” I took one more gulp of alcohol. It didn’t burn as hard now. Maybe I could blame it on my loose tongue. “But you like it.”
“Fuck me, I do.” He turned his head and bowed. “Sorry, mother.”
Instead of sobs, the chamber resounded with my laughter. Unrestrained, raw, a bit unhinged. But laugh I did.
And it felt fucking good.
“How do you do that?” I asked, wiping the last of the tears from my eyes.
“Do what?”
“Somehow cheer me–” The words died on my lips as I looked up at him and caught him watching me with an intensity that burned hotter than the table. That smile of his had turned soft and there was such a gentleness in his eyes, I couldn’t help but leaned forward toward him.
His gaze traveled to my mouth and his tongue darted out, like a man parched for eternity, desperate for a sip of water.
He looked like he wanted to drink me whole.
And I wanted to let him.
As our faces drew close enough together to feel his breaths on my cheeks, a flutter from the corner of my eye caught my attention.
The vines in the table flashed right next to my hand.
I flinched back as if scalded, my yelp breaking the delicious tension we’d been building up to.
I looked at the table, horrified.
That strange light had almost touched me.
But my fright was nothing compared to the shock on his face.
Gone were the smile and soft eyes.
His disbelieving eyes travelled from the spot where the purple light kept flickering toward me with a reticence that didn’t feel natural on him.
And when he finally met my eyes, his sparked with terror.
Ryker had vanished, replaced with the Commander–and he looked at me like I’d betrayed him.