Chapter Nine #2
“I grew up here, it’s not the middle of nowhere to me.
I mean, I suppose it was for a while, but I’ve never really imagined myself ending up anywhere else.
This was my parents’ place, and… now it’s mine.
Well, they left it to me and my brother Magnus, but–” I took another gulp, and let it burn away the very sudden lump in my throat. “Mags left.”
“Why?”
I hesitated. Even with what Caelan knew about my magic, it felt like a betrayal to admit that Magnus was afraid. And as angry as I still was – might always be – I couldn’t do that to my brother. Besides, how could I explain his fear to a loyal servant of the crown?
My brother ran because we’re too close to Kingsborough.
Because Kingsmen like you are arresting magic users left, right, and centre.
He ran because the master you serve seems poised to stamp out magic altogether.
“Because he – didn’t feel we fit in around here.”
But the Captain was far from stupid.
“Because of his magic.”
I didn’t confirm, but it seemed I didn’t need to.
Caelan nodded thoughtfully to himself, frowning down at the tumbler he held on his knee.
I would have given anything, in that quiet moment, to know what he was thinking.
And as it turned out, all I’d had to give was a truth of my own – because in the next breath, he glanced up and prompted; “It’s your turn. ”
Gods. Here it was, served up on a silver platter. It seemed too easy, and yet unfathomably complicated. Because how in the world could I ask him what I wanted to ask? The options flitted around my head as I stalled with a long sip of whiskey.
Why are you so at ease around me, knowing what I am? How can you, a Kingsman, sit here with a Class C magic user like it’s nothing? How are you nothing like I expected?
I couldn’t ask him any of that; in the end, I chose the safest and most veiled phrasing.
“Alright, erm – same question, I suppose. How did you end up a Kingsman?”
He cocked a brow. “What, I don’t seem the upstanding lawful type to you?”
I cocked my own brow, and he laughed.
“Fair enough. Similar story, I suppose. Family.”
“Your father’s a Kingsman?”
“No,” he laughed, “no, if there’s a polar opposite to a Kingsman, that was my father. He was a rogue, and proud of it. He’d be rolling in his grave to see me wear the red cloak.”
Caelan was silent for a very long moment, and when the slightest frown etched a line between his brows, I felt the air shift. Rolling in his grave, he'd said. “He died,” I said quietly.
Gentle horror settled over us both before he even spoke his next words, quiet and distant enough that it felt as though he suddenly sat very far away.
“When I was eight. Murdered, actually. My mother, too. My sister and I saw the whole thing, and she was – gods, she was so young. Too young. I don’t think you’re ever old enough to witness your parents skinned alive, but –”
My entire being seized up and I watched, frozen, as he paused to take a long drink from his tumbler, his hand trembling ever so slightly. My throat was suddenly raw, chest cold as a cavern.
Skinned alive.
And he’d seen the whole thing, they both had – children, forced to watch as their parents were brutalised.
“My sister, Brigid, was barely four years old. Never stood a fucking chance.”
I didn’t ask what he meant; the grief now thickening his voice was explanation enough. A chance at the kind of peace and security that rears happy children. At a childhood, at the kind of life my parents had built for myself and Magnus right under this roof.
The kind of childhood he had never had a chance at, either.
“Caelan.”
I didn’t know what to say. I took his hand, and my touch seemed to breach the frozen depths of some awful reverie. He glanced up at me, eyes glistening, then forced a harsh swallow.
“Long time ago,” he said gruffly, squeezing my hand.
He turned it in his own and studied the backs of my fingers as he spoke.
“Anyway. We were wards of the King’s state, so I couldn’t do much to protect her growing up.
Couldn’t keep them from separating us, though I did everything in my power to find my way back to her.
And in the meantime, I set my sights on the Kingsmen.
If I couldn’t protect her, I’d protect people like her. ”
He made a dry noise, something like a laugh but without a hint of humour.
“I don’t know. It seemed noble, at the time.”
“It is. Gods. It is, Caelan. I don’t think there could be any better reason.”
He took another swig.
“I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry,” he said, a little too brightly. “Like I said, anything’s fair game.”
That wasn’t what I’d meant, but I think he knew that. I didn’t push. And for several solemn moments, we sat there in silence, my hand in his. The occasional sip from our glasses was the only sound, until eventually Caelan looked up at me with a determined smile.
“Magnus and Rosaleen?”
I stared for a moment before I nodded, once more thrown by his swift change in tack.
Though I thought I understood it, in a way.
He’d had something in mind, when he picked out that bottle of whiskey and suggested we get to know one another.
And from the little I knew of him, I doubted this was how he’d wanted to spend this night; swapping morose stories.
He was trying to get back to that easy, teasing dynamic; the comfortable middle ground between our initial animosity and whatever fragile thing was growing between us.
“The Mage and Rose,” he said thoughtfully, then shot me a look. “They named their tavern after you.”
I offered a wry smile. “Other way around, I’m afraid.”
His eyes widened, green flashing gold with amusement in the flickering lantern light.
“You’re joking.”
I shook my head, but my lips tugged into a wry smile.
I’d had the same reaction, when I’d first heard this story.
Heard how my fiery, passionate father had gifted this home to a woman he’d just met, a woman who walked on little tufts of daisies and sang to his fire with her flowers.
How they’d named their children after the place that had first made them a family.
“My father bought the tavern as a wedding gift to my mother,” I told Caelan. “Years before we were born.”
That booming laugh burst out of him again, and my magic swirled and fluttered in response, flooding my whole chest with warmth as it nestled against the front of my ribs, trying to get as close to the sound as possible.
I spread a hand over my chest, kneading subconsciously at the heat beneath my breastbone.
Stop it.
“Wish you wouldn’t do that, you know.”
My head snapped up.
“What?”
“You keep pulling back your magic like a beast on a leash. You don’t have to do that; I’m not afraid of it.”
It wasn’t his fear that concerned me though; it was his notice.
“How do you—”
“Your eyes. They glow when your magic’s flowing. From brown to gold. Your whole face lights up, actually.”
He drained his glass, holding my gaze over the rim, and even still as he slowly licked the whiskey from his lips and went on.
“Then you yank on that leash, and it all just sort of dims. Still beautiful in the shadows of course, but gods, I love to see you alight.”
Dagda save me. I was far too hot all of a sudden, desperately uncomfortable. Why had I worn such a thick dress today? I tugged at the neckline for some air, and my fidgeting must have given me away because Caelan took one look at me and grinned.
“Poetic, eh?”
He got to his feet and for a moment I thought he was about to leave, to offer me the mercy of gaining my composure in private.
My heart fell, then swooped right back up past my ribcage and into my throat when he leaned in, stretching past me to set down his glass – then pausing right where he was.
His other hand came up to cage me against the vanity and he hovered above me, breathing in my exhales as I gazed up at him.
“I reckon,” he said quietly, eyes grazing the blush on either cheek, “you’d let me kiss you right now, if I wanted.”
My heart was beating so hard it shook the breath in my lungs, and there was little I could do to stop my voice from trembling.
“What makes you say that?”
My Flame writhed and danced, twirling gleeful little loops around my heart.
Caelan grinned.
“Because you’re glowing, Rosie.”
My breath stopped altogether when he dipped his head, and at the first clumsy, eager meeting of our lips, golden light exploded between us.
I could feel Caelan’s smile as he took my face between his palms and slowed the kiss, deepened it.
This wasn’t the messy, desperate way he’d kissed me a few nights ago. This was savouring; exploring.
He kissed my top lip so soft it was almost a question, promptly answered with the slightest, most mortifying gasp from the overheated depths of my chest. He was firmer when he caught my bottom lip between his own, slowly rolled his tongue over it.
His kiss dizzied me, sent something fizzing through my racing blood like a drug.
I could see the pulse of my firelight behind my closed eyes, heard his slight groan against my mouth as Flame licked down my arms where I’d wound them over his shoulders.
And then his hands were on me, on my back, dragging me to my feet only to crush me against his chest. His tongue swept into my mouth, a little more urgent now.
And when he backed me into the vanity, lifted me atop it to part my thighs around him, I was reminded so vividly of the last time he’d done this that my whole body shuddered with anticipation. The satisfaction that hummed through his chest told me his thoughts had strayed to that same dark closet.
“This what you want, Rosie?”
Yes, cried a needy, mindless little voice within me.