Chapter Twenty-Seven
Nicole
NICOLE AND HER FAMILY DIDN’T WANT TO RISK USING THE main entrance of Kyan’s townhouse, so for added caution he’d told them of an address several streets away from the row of handsome, red-brick buildings on Rodney Street, which hid a secondary entrance.
After splitting up from Kyan and Callum to travel separately to Liverpool and parking their car full of cases and books, her family approached the location.
Nicole was glad Kyan had disobeyed the Wake’s rule that Empyreals couldn’t have their own properties.
The anticipation of seeing it helped her tackle the sheer overwhelm of being in a city after she had spent all her post-transformation time in a secluded country manor. Car horns, traffic, laughter, music.
The gasp of air after the long drive helped to clear her head, even if it was laced with new scents.
Nicole scanned the quiet streets for anyone watching as her father knocked on a glossy black door.
An old woman opened the townhouse’s secret entrance.
Nicole got a glimpse of her silver hair – tied back in a neat chignon – and the tidy apron around her waist. But her most notable features were her eyes: lit with a conspiratorial light that charmed Nicole immediately. Biróg, Kyan said, had been his housekeeper since he bought the place.
‘Come through,’ she said in a strong Ulster Irish accent before letting them inside the unfurnished shell of a house and closing the door. It cut out the din of the city and Nicole’s ears rang in the sudden calm as her eyes adjusted to the dark hallway.
Biróg took them in momentarily, seeming intrigued to have guests, and turned to head to a door under the stairs that led to tunnels connecting this house to Kyan’s.
Soon enough, they were through the musty, but lit, passageway and coming up into Kyan’s townhouse.
It shouldn’t have surprised Nicole that the atmosphere was slightly historic, but stepping into the dark entrance hall felt almost hallowed.
‘You make yourself at home,’ Biróg encouraged, gesturing to the rooms from the hallway: the living room on the left and the dining room in the middle.
‘I’ll get the tea,’ she said, before hurrying off to a third room at the end of the hallway on the right: a kitchen done in plum and dark grey, its walls lined with copper pots and vintage tins.
As the family settled in the dining room, Nicole discovered the rooms had a subdued, earthy palette that kept the atmosphere intimate.
It was elevated with luxurious accents like marble fireplaces streaked with dark purple veins, dark tones of olive greens and umbers, and polished woods and copper accents.
At night, it would look like a forest. Several of the lighting options were merely candles on the walls, set before age-spotted mirrors. Some fabrics were slightly faded and some of the walls papered with tapestries of woods.
Whether Kyan had curated the space, or Biróg had, it was so Kyan that it made her heart hurt. Just being here felt like an education in his taste and personality. Quiet and contained. Earthy and slightly antique.
She could imagine him here, going silently from one room to the next, or coming in and out as briefly as possible.
Yes, he had Biróg, and Nicole was increasingly grateful that he had Callum, but the idea of him being so solitary all this time got her by the throat. Made her not just upset, but angry.
Never again, she vowed. No matter what was brewing between them, how complicated, or how complex her feelings.
It meant so much that he trusted them in his secret home – whether he considered it one or not. She knew how personal that safe space could be. How sacred.
The front door to her left opened to a hulking silhouette.
She knew it was him immediately, but—
‘What happened?’ Nicole demanded as he closed the door.
Whatever wounds Kyan had sustained were healed now, but the smears of blood on his face and tears to his clothes gave them away. Instead of distress, capable danger breathed off him, but it barely tempered the way her blood dragged to her feet with panic.
The sight threw her back to the night he’d nearly died a few feet away from her. His stomach had been dark with too much blood, the pain and shock in his eyes such a stark, horrifying difference to his reassuring energy now.
‘I’m all right,’ Kyan said, more exasperated by the ordeal than wounded.
‘Who did this?’ she managed.
He must have noticed the dangerous tone of her voice, because a frown flickered across his brow and he drew closer carefully. ‘Just Logan and some of his friends, it’s over.’
Sure. It would be over if she could rip the bastard’s throat out.
‘Nicole,’ Kyan said softly, stroking her jaw and stooping to look at her.
She forced herself to listen over the rushing of her pulse. To meet his eyes and focus on the dry heat of his palms and the fact the pads of his fingers touched the curve of her ears, instead of on the scents of danger that perked her Empyreal up into a wild little menace.
‘You dealt with it?’ she asked, voice raw.
‘I did.’
‘You’re okay?’
He nodded, eyes sincere, the affection in them lightening the anger that had simmered there like just-painted ink.
She’d taken his wrist in her hand, feeling his bracelet and – a hair band? She focused on that instead of rehearsing the ways she could slip out of the townhouse and kill the little—
‘I’m going to clean up, all right? I’ll get rid of the blood. I’m all right.’
She managed a nod as he brushed a kiss across her temple, before he headed up the stairs behind her, the wood creaking beneath his steps.
Nicole watched, concerned. Perhaps he needed time alone.
She nearly headed into the dining room after Bells’ concerned peek around the door, until she heard Kyan’s sigh.
Nicole found him at the top of the stairs in a small, dim powder room with the door ajar.
She knocked softly, causing the door to open wider and reveal him standing shirtless in the shadowed, darkly painted space.
She was momentarily assailed by the heat and scent and sight of him.
Not just the blood smeared on his knuckles, but the pump of fighting hormones that prickled musky and spiky over her tongue.
His back was an epic canvas, defined by the low spotlights that cast shadows over his chest as he turned, the muscle slightly brushed with hair.
He must have just thrown water over his face because droplets ran down his mouth and jaw, and the sight hit her like a freight train. Her concern turned swiftly into something else and Kyan’s nostrils flared.
She cursed and twisted to leave. ‘I just—I’m sorry—’
His damp fingers closed around her wrist instead.
Kyan
KYAN DIDN’T KNOW WHAT TO SAY, HOW TO EXPLAIN HIMSELF. He just knew he wanted her here more than he could process.
‘What caused the fight?’ Nicole asked as she turned back to him, eyes slightly dilated.
He sighed, grappling with the need to hold her. He sat on the lid of the toilet instead, releasing her and scrubbing his face, trying not to greedily inhale in the process.
Nicole turned off the water after soaking his shirt and began to dab away the blood still left on his face.
He was healed already, he didn’t need her to do this, and yet he did.
He closed his eyes at her gentle touch and realised how much he needed the connection, needed her hands, even her scowling on his behalf.
His hands found the backs of her thighs, feeling the delicate heat of her body, even through her jeans.
He worried for a moment that the action was too intimate, too sensual, when they’d barely touched after being reunited.
But when she eased into it as he rubbed up and down, he continued, soothing himself as well as her while she stroked the damp cloth over his face.
The feather-soft touch of her fingers lifted his stubbled jaw and called up all his smothered desire and affection.
‘We had an argument back in the Wake’s labs,’ Kyan said. He forced himself to shrug. ‘He’s still pissed off I killed Alexander and has something to prove.’
Nicole’s brow furrowed softly. ‘Was he there that day? I suppose he must have been.’
Kyan nodded. The memories of the 1902 oath-swearing at Lanhydrock eddied in his mind: the lash of leaves and branches whipping across his skin and tearing his civil, Edwardian suit, as he hunted Alexander.
A seething new scar carving into the flesh of his arm with eye-watering wrongness.
A magic that might have been stolen from the God of Oaths himself; changing him on a level far deeper than blood and bone.
The crack of Alexander’s neck in his hands.
‘So, Logan just attacked you?’ Nicole asked as she put down the shirt and toyed with a torn thread on it. Her mouth was tight, worried; her brown eyes dark gold with anger.
‘He baited me and I – I’m not feeling as calm as I should.
’ He shook his head, seeking the emotion-honing techniques Scáthach taught him.
He couldn’t betray her memory by throwing out his training like a child.
But he hadn’t been tested like this since then.
‘When he started talking about—’ He couldn’t say it.
‘I just snapped. But it wasn’t just his threats.
The thing is, what I did to Alexander was wrong.
What the Wake have done is wrong. I can’t fault that. ’
‘But you’re trying to fix it now,’ Nicole said. ‘That’s all you can do.’
‘I can’t let someone hunt the Druids. Not again.’
Despite it, Nicole was his priority, because until he saw proof of this Druid, he didn’t really believe they were more than a hoax, or a mental test.
‘It was a part of my past I’d made peace with being long gone. Like my cousins, my king; the way the world had been.’
Echoes of that magical, luxurious past torqued through his mind, drawing themselves up from the great deserted well of his memories: stars and capes and lost culture; epic, mythological dangers.
‘We’ll stop it,’ Nicole said.
‘You have your mother’s clues to deal with, you don’t need to be concerned with this—’
‘We can do both.’ It was a dangerous promise from the woman who had torn apart a Spectre with her claws and teeth. But her eyes burned with it. ‘You won’t be doing this on your own. You don’t deserve to have to choose between the two.’
His heart tightened and he drew her closer. Her subtle curves met his stomach and chest as she stepped between his thighs. Hunger shuddered beneath his skin.
Was his chest heaving? He wasn’t sure, he just knew that his hands had moved upwards, that every moment he was with her he was honoured. By her mind, her care.
He swept her hair back, fingers brushing the warm stretch of her neck. Nicole shivered, and he noted a small freckle at the base of her throat on the right-hand side. Stroked it with a thick, rough thumb.
Her lips parted on a breathy exhale. If they didn’t stop, he’d find a hundred ways to keep her here.
To finally kiss her the way he needed. To be alone, and together.
So he could strip off the little shirt his fingers tangled with slowly and show her how much he missed her, how he wanted to make up for everything by worshipping her—
His teeth ground so hard he could swear she heard it.
They had a mission to complete. The day was waning, and Empyreals were prowling.
He couldn’t.
He shouldn’t.
But he really fucking wanted to. And not kissing her when her eyes were so dark and she near vibrated with yearning might kill him.
She really had no idea that gaze was a fist around his heart.
Kyan tucked a finger under her chin and lifted it slightly, brushing his lips across the corner of her mouth, cursing and praising the temptation of her.
But there was more than desire in her eyes. Every time a noise sounded downstairs her attention flickered, as if she needed a moment to focus on it and determine if it was a threat. She seemed to war with wanting to be close, as if she was forcibly restraining herself.
‘What’s wrong, mo ghrá?’ he asked, then bit down, not realising he’d said it out loud.
‘Nothing.’
He took her wrist. ‘Don’t pretend with me.’
‘If you two are done,’ called a familiar voice. Callum. The bastard must have arrived early. ‘I want to hear the news.’
Nicole’s lips curled up, her eyes still shielded.
‘Let’s go,’ she said.
Kyan’s jaw flickered as he considered asking again, but let it go. For now. ‘Before we go to the Muse,’ he said, ‘there’s something else you’re going to want to know about.’
‘What is it?’
‘It’s downstairs.’
He grabbed a fresh shirt as she descended warily ahead of him.
‘If it’s bad news, just tell me now.’
He smiled as they reached the ground floor and the door beneath the stairs opened.
Kyan stepped out of the way to reveal the two people who’d come through. A gasp tore through Nicole’s throat.
‘Oh my god!’ Nicole cried, her baffled eyes darting up to Kyan.
Her shout brought her family from the next room.
‘Did you miss me?’ Remi asked, amused joy in her voice.
‘Yes!’ Nicole laughed, then threw herself into her friend’s arms.