Chapter Ten #3
“For Brigid. She was still a child really, but she was growing into a young woman and those around her were beginning to take notice. Too much notice. She was beautiful. She is beautiful.”
He added the last part so fiercely, as though he imagined I’d disagree with him despite never having met the girl. But then he sighed, his eyes screwing shut in a momentary grimace that told me the conversation physically pained him.
“You don’t have to talk about it,” I whispered. “Not if you don’t want to.”
My heart was heavy with a foreboding sort of understanding – and I hadn’t even heard the end of the story yet.
I could only imagine the ache of Caelan’s own heart having actually lived through it.
I untangled our hands and laid my palm over his chest like I could feel for that pain, root it out and soothe it with the heat of my Flame.
And maybe I did, in some small way because he laid his hand over mine and shook his head, eyes suddenly determined.
“It’s hard for me, in my position, to share everything I want to. But this is something I can share with you.”
He took a deep breath and tried once more.
“Brigid was attracting notice,” he said again. “From one noble-blooded man in particular. A young man with peculiar appetites and just enough power to see them sated. He didn’t like that Brigid refused his advances – but he did enjoy making her bleed for the audacity.”
The fire in my chest waned, pulling back into a low, mournful flicker at the sorrow and simmering anger in Caelan’s voice.
“It is among my greatest regrets,” he went on, enunciating each word with dark intent, “that I never had the satisfaction of soaking my hands in his blood. But I’m proud to say that Brigid did.
When she’d healed from the beating, he came back, you see.
Not to apologise – to see if she’d changed her mind.
So she let him believe she had, and when he drew close enough, my ferocious little sister snatched his pretty jewelled knife from his belt and slashed it across his face. ”
“Oh gods,” I murmured. “What did he do?”
“He had her thrown in a cell, of course. He wanted to do worse. He wanted to retaliate in kind, but I went to his father and requested a deal.”
“You took her punishment.”
He said nothing for a moment. And then, with quiet fervour: “I’d have let them carve my eyes from my head if I had to.”
The pride and fury in his voice resonated; it was familiar, something ingrained marrow-deep in us both. I recognised it because there was no pain I would not endure to protect my own.
“Of course you would,” I said.
“I’d do anything to protect her. And you would too, wouldn’t you?” His eyes flicked over mine, reading me as easily as ever. “For Sorcha.”
I blinked at him, and my Flame gave a jolt beneath my ribs. I had imagined Magnus in Brigid’s place, but – For Sorcha. Gods, of course I would. I would do anything for that girl. She was as good as mine now, wasn’t she? My sister by heart, if not by birth.
“Yes,” I said simply. “I would.”
I don’t know why the thought struck such a chord, but my Flame simply would not settle.
Even when Caelan folded me into his arms and smoothed his hand down my back in those long strokes that normally coaxed me to sleep.
I lay in his arms, my mind ticking back and forth over fragmented thoughts and drowsy, waking dreams. Tanner sitting in his favourite spot at the bar, beaming at Sorcha.
Caelan’s defiant green stare beneath an open, ragged wound.
Ciara McAlpine’s tear-soaked face as she clung to a bottle of whiskey.
Brigid, pictured as my cousin’s double with Caelan’s vivid eyes, lunging at a faceless nobleman with a silver dagger in her hand.
Sorcha’s bloodied knuckles. Fischer’s sickening red grin.
“You’re still awake,” Caelan said finally, the low rumble of his voice tugging me gently from my thoughts.
“Yes.”
“What is it you’re agonising over?”
I swallowed. “Caelan, I need you to do something for me.”
“Anything,” he said at once, and my heart gave a funny little flip.
“I need you to get Sorcha out of Stormsby.”
He stiffened.
“Rosie, the borders –”
“You said anything.”
“And I would do anything for you – anything within my power. Going against the King’s direct orders to keep Stormsby under lockdown is decidedly not within my power.”
“You did it for Madame Bracken.”
“With the Crown’s blessing. After the Serpent wore her skin, we had little choice. She was making an absolute nuisance of herself.”
“I could be a nuisance.”
He snorted. “Don’t I know it.”
But I wasn’t laughing.
“Caelan.” My voice cracked, and I felt his breath catch beneath my hand on his chest. I could tell the sound pained him and I didn’t want that; but I couldn’t let up. “Stormsby isn’t safe. Not with the shifter still out there.”
He said nothing for a long moment, and when he did speak in a near-whisper, I didn’t understand the slight flattening of his tone.
“I thought you weren’t afraid of Serpents.”
I stiffened.
A throwaway remark from over a month ago – was he really throwing that back in my face? I was not afraid of Serpents. Not anymore than I was afraid of Earthwitches, Bear Shifters, or even Necromancers. I was not afraid of magic at all. Magic was not inherently evil; people could be.
I pulled back a little to fix him with an incredulous stare, and watched regret flicker over his creased brow. His hold on me tightened so swiftly I wondered if he sensed my sudden impulse to pull away.
“I’m afraid of this Serpent. People are dying,” I said, not bothering to hide my astonishment.
He grimaced.
“I know. I’m sorry. That was a stupid thing to say.” He hesitated, weighing his words more carefully. “I suppose I just meant; what about you?”
“What about me?”
He stroked at my back and shoulders, trying to coax me back into the easy warmth of our tangled limbs, but my muscles were stiff and reluctant, and they tensed even further when he said; “Do you want to run, Rosie?”
“I can’t.”
My answer came before I could give it any real thought, but I knew it was the right one. I wasn’t going anywhere. I wasn’t leaving Stormsby. I was not leaving The Mage and Rose. I was certainly not leaving –
I cut the thought off, but that strange new voice echoed the sentiment, that fierce, possessive thing inside me that was somehow both myself and not.
Not leaving Caelan.
The truth of it resonated in the fiery depths of my chest.
It was terrifying.
Caelan tugged me to him again, and this time I went, reluctance giving way to that same resonant feeling that seemed poised to consume me.
“Good,” Caelan said, before I could examine the odd feeling any closer. He was suddenly fierce, entirely distracting. “Because I want you here. I want you where I can keep you safe.”
My heart tripped and snatched at my breath for balance. The room lit with a sudden swell of my Flame, and I caught the soft, knowing gleam in Caelan’s eye before he bent his head to kiss me.
“And what about Sorcha?” I whispered when he pulled back. My Flame still pulsed between us, and in its light I could see the way his brow tensed, could see that he was wavering. “Please, Caelan. You said it yourself; I’d do anything to protect her.”
It felt manipulative to speak his sister’s name, but we both heard the unspoken implication. You would do this. You would find a way over the borders if it were Brigid’s life at risk.
“If I tell you I’ll give it some thought,” he said slowly. “Will you promise to get some rest for me?”
I smoothed a careful thumb beneath the hollow of his eye, where the skin was thin and dark.
We’d shared exactly one deep sleep since Tanner’s death, and in the nights since then, he’d almost always been awake when I woke from my own fitful rest. He had been out all day today too, his shift overlapping with Brennan’s – and not for the first time.
I could see how drained he was. More than that I could feel it, with such potency that I had to wonder if I hadn’t quite managed to call back every ember of my magic after we’d last lain together.
“Will you get some rest?” I asked softly.
Caelan’s laugh was a mere echo of its usual glory; a humourless huff of breath.
He turned his head to brush his lips to my palm, then he turned onto his back, taking me with him so that I lay half-draped across his chest. His heartbeat beneath my head was a familiar lull, and it took only a moment for the pulse of my Flame to fall into sync with it.
“I’ll try.”