Chapter Seventeen
The Duet
The dregs of winter swirled away into spring, and spring to summer. Of course, to Stormsby, it made little difference. Life carried on beneath the same grey skies day in and day out, just as it always had.
And yet, change came with the seasons.
The new King was crowned, and any tremulous whispers of a cruel reign ahead quickly faded with the cold winds.
Laws were passed, and old ones torn down.
The King’s first decree was that human beings throughout Qyelles should no longer be subject to classification.
And if his momentous change of heart was confusing to his subjects, the people of Stormsby certainly didn’t dwell.
It turned out that our little village had been something of a safe haven for magic users, and many of us had been living side by side our whole lives without ever knowing it.
Postmaster Ginny, we learned, was a raven shifter, and had been intermittently soaring around Stormsby with our messages for years, quietly amused at our concern for her aging knees.
The new King’s reign was a blessing, she’d told me one morning, as she sat on Roy’s fence and stretched her great glossy wings
It was not, however, the only blessing bestowed upon Stormsby.
The Mage and Rose was under re-construction at the pleasure of the crown.
A generous apology, the royal messenger had said, for the actions of the disgraced Kingsman who had burned our home to the ground and perished in the flames of his own violent act.
The workmen who came to clear the ruins worked fast, and the builders even faster. But in the meantime, Roy opened his home to us; all of us.
One large unlikely family, overlapping even within the clean open space of his beautiful farmhouse.
Will, it turned out, was not nearly as quiet as he’d seemed on that first night.
He was always the first to laugh, to fill a silence with his meandering and entirely charming stories.
It surprised no one that Roy took comfort in Will’s familiar, effusive nature, and within weeks they were inseparable.
I was grateful for the space it lent to me and Magnus to rebuild the bond that had been doused with his departure all those months ago.
We visited the site of The Mage and Rose day after day and bickered over paint colours and kitchenware.
We watched together as the crown’s generosity erected something beautiful from the ashes.
Something different. This was no longer the last echo of our parents’ Soul Song.
It wasn’t the home they’d once dreamed of, content in their bond and with their whole lives ahead of them.
No longer the gift a passionate firewitch had once bestowed upon the woman whose heart sang to his own.
It was something new; and a gift, all the same.
The morning after the builders finished work, Magnus, Sorcha and I rose early to tour the new Mage and Rose. Stepping past that front door, I had cried for the first time since the night I woke with my Flame nearly doused and half my soul torn away.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” I had managed, between great gulping breaths, while Sorcha and Mags exchanged worried looks.
“It’s overwhelming,” Magnus soothed. “It’s all so new.”
But that wasn’t it at all. It was new, and yet – it held the shape of my childhood home, and so much more.
This was the floor where I’d taken my first steps, once strewn with my mother’s lovingly woven rugs and now paved with gleaming white flagstone.
That was the corner, painted a new, warm marigold, where my father would drop to his knees so I could climb atop his shoulders to reach the top of the Yule tree.
Where Caelan had stolen the star from my arms. Where Tanner had lain as the priest bestowed his final blessing.
And here was the chipped and battered bar, now polished to a high shine, where I would pour pints with Sorcha, stood across from Tanner and Roy.
Where I would get lost in the easy rhythm of conversation that flowed between those three people I had slowly come to love in a time when love had left me so alone.
But there.
There was the closet, now with a glittering golden handle that opened on both sides, where Caelan had kissed me for the first time.
“I think,” I said slowly, still trying to breathe through the hiccups. “I could do with a moment outside.”
“We’ll come with you,” Sorcha said at once, and Magnus stepped forward.
I waved them both off.
“No, go with Mags,” I said, waving her off sternly. “Magnus, show her the attic room. There’s a stained glass window now; you’re going to love it.”
The moment I stepped outside my chest flickered with warmth, as though my Flame were breathing a sigh of relief.
I laid a comforting hand on my chest, grateful for its presence.
It had taken so long to coax it from the shadows, and it was not the reactive, lively wildfire it had once had been.
Perhaps it never would be again. But it was here, and it was mine and –
– And it was burning my fingers.
“Ouch,” I hissed, snatching my hand back. “What’s your problem?”
It strained against my chest with such force that the breath was knocked out of me from the inside.
I gasped at the sudden burst of sensation; it was like having a live fish trapped in my ribcage.
The thrashing came again, and I stumbled forward with it, then realising this was what it wanted, I kept walking.
My pulse was thundering, but I didn’t dare let a sliver of hope slide past my guarded heart, even when I glanced down the path and saw a tall figure riding down the road on a handsome black stallion.
He was slight and pale as the moon, with long white hair that sat stark against the dark gold cloak on his back; the banner of the crown.
The rider slowed as he approached the tavern, and I could have sworn his gaze, shaded beneath his cap, flicked my way before he guided his horse around the gate to the back where the stables sat empty.
Although I didn’t know him at a glance, my Flame was blazing harder than it had in months and it could not have been less subtle with the wild thrashing that dragged me after him. I hurried around the side of the tavern, and emerged just in time to see the stable door open.
The man stepped out and my breath froze, my Flame stilled.
Until his skin began to shimmer and shift.
Taller and broader, the man removed his cap to reveal a mess of dark hair. It was Caelan’s green eyes that stared back at me.
“Hello, Rosie,” he said.
For a moment, all I could do was breathe.
Breathe, and ease the tension and pain in my chest. Breathe, and calm my feverish Flame before it got ahead of itself and did something awful like set my whole body alight in golden, glowing warmth.
“Hello, Caelan,” I said finally.
Something shifted in his gaze at the sound of his name on my lips, but he didn’t move any closer.
Neither did; I had to keep my distance, just as I had all those months ago, when to get too close was to risk the leash over the willful creature in my chest. So we stood there on opposite ends of the barren back garden, separated by a clothesline and openly staring at one another.
He looked the same; hair a little longer around his ears, beard so thick now it almost obscured half of his scar.
But still Caelan, still beautiful and a little wild in that way that spoke to the unpredictable fire in me.
We stood there for far too long, and might have remained locked in that gaze until nightfall – but Caelan’s eyes slid to something just beyond me and his lips twitched beneath his beard.
I turned to the kitchen window just in time to see Sorcha’s dark hair whip out of the way, leaving Magnus wide-eyed and mouthing Shit before he ducked beneath the sill.
“We have an audience,” said Caelan.
His voice was just how I remembered it, dark and rolling like a spill of fine velvet. Mine, by contrast, creaked out in a weak, uncertain hush when I turned and said; “They’re probably wondering where you’ve been.”
The look on his face was pained. Far too soft and understanding.
“I had to go.”
“Did you have to stay gone?”
He took a step forward, and I moved instinctually back. The pull between us had always felt magnetic, but right now those magnets were flipped. Caelan’s throat bobbed, but he didn’t comment on my gesture nor the obvious simmer of anger beneath it.
“Yes,” he said instead. “For a while.”
“Why?”
The word was a challenge, and he rose to it with grace.
“Because Brigid needed me, and I made a promise.”
It would have been selfish to tell him that I’d needed him, too.
That my cold chest had hurt every day, that the fiery hole his absence ripped through my very being had ruined me.
I was ashamed of how badly I wanted his apology in that moment.
He hadn’t made me any promises, not like the oath he’d sworn his baby sister.
And if the Dagda had promised him to me in some way, I knew I would never want that to rob Caelan of his choices.
But I couldn’t tell him it was alright, because it didn’t feel alright. Not yet.
“Why didn’t you just tell me? You knew what I was, you accepted me. Why would you think—”
The words choked off with a pathetic croak, but Caelan understood well enough. The look on his face was sheer agony.
“Because it wasn’t enough to tell you what I was,” he said, voice as pained as his furrowed brow.
“I would have had to tell you everything. I would have wanted to. And if I did that, if you’d asked me not to risk my life, or to spare the King’s — if you had asked me not to go through with any of this…
I don’t think I would have. I was scared that I’d have it in me to betray my own sister, the person I’ve spent my whole life trying to protect.
And that’s not something I wanted to discover about myself. ”
He was right.