Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
When Carys returned to the dining room, Duncan and Lachlan, Laura, Naida, and Godrik were all still there, but they’d been joined by a massive silent man standing in the corner.
He reminded Carys of the old fishermen who docked their boats in Baywood. He had on a pair of muddy boots, a knit sweater, and canvas cargo pants.
He didn’t look fae. He didn’t look like a wolf, though he was sized like one. And he wasn’t talking to the others. He was just staring out a window.
So… normal human? What was he doing in Temris?
“Carys.” Duncan walked over. “So the thing is—”
“Ey up,” the man blurted as he turned to Carys. “I’m Wade.”
Oh no. Not human. At least not a normal one. This man radiated power in the same way Duncan’s friend Angus did. Cold and old and enigmatic.
“Hello, Wade.” Carys looked at Duncan, then at Lachlan, who simply shrugged.
Wade moved from the window over to Carys, his massive arms crossed over his chest. “Don’ like your accent.” His face barely moved when he talked. “But I like his less.” He angled his head toward Duncan.
Duncan muttered, “Fuck off.” He looked at Wade. “Yer askin’ me to carry ye somewhere and insulting me at the same time?”
Wade kept looking at Carys as if she was the one in charge. “Dru’s people said you c’d give me a lift back in the Brightlands.”
“A lift? I mean, we don’t have a coracle, so we’re just walking back and—”
“Nah, not with the wyrm,” the man mumbled. “I mean, in the Brightlands, you know.”
“You want to go through the gate with us?”
“Aye.”
“To England?”
“Aye.”
Carys shook her head. “Sorry, but I don’t know you, and I recently made a very bad decision about taking someone through a gate who really shouldn’t have been there to begin with. I’m still trying to clean up that mess, so—”
“Ah, be reet. I c’n go through the gates,” he said. “Ask the little one over there. She knows me. Just need a lift to th’ Great Ouse.”
Carys blinked. “The great house?”
“No, th’ Great Ouse.” He huffed. “This is the problem with the accents.”
Yes, because his was so easy to understand.
Lachlan stood and walked over. “I believe he’s referring to the Great Ouse.” He looked at Duncan. “The River. The Great Ouse River.”
“Oh.”
“Aye.” Wade pointed at Lachlan. “See? Better accent.”
Carys frowned. “They have the same accent—what are you talking about?”
Duncan coughed. “What?”
Lachlan’s eyes went wide. “I beg your pardon, mo chridhe, but Duncan’s and my—”
“Don’t call her that,” Duncan snapped.
“I apologize.” Lachlan’s cheeks went red. “It’s a habit, and I—”
“It’s a habit you’re breaking today or it’s your face I’ll break,” Duncan rumbled. “I’ll not hear it again, Lachlan.”
“Will you calm down?” He sighed. “Honestly, you’ve won the contest, all right?”
Carys cocked her head. “Excuse me? Contest?”
Lachlan spread his hands. “You’ve won her heart. Can you let me—”
“I’ll not fucking let you do anything when you…”
Duncan and Lachlan descended into an unintelligible argument in Gaelic while Carys took a step back and closed her eyes, trying not to lose her temper.
Wade took a step closer, a frown set on his face. “So ya fucked both of ’em then?”
“What?”
The old man shrugged. “No shame in it, girl. They’re fine-lookers. But fuckin’ a Shadowkin and a Brightkin—”
“Okay. One, there is a lot of context you’re missing with all this, and two, there was over a year between…” She shook her head. “I’m not explaining this to you. What do you even want?”
“Ya got an automobile, do ya?”
“A car?” She blinked. “Yes, we have a car. A van.”
“And the little one there said ya came across from the Great Bern Wood. That’s close to where I need t’ go. Just up the road from Wappenham.”
“I have no idea where that is.”
“Just saving some miles on the old feet, girl.” He nodded at Lachlan and Duncan, who were still shouting. “And you know the Shadowkin is coming with us.”
Carys blinked. “What?”
“Oh aye. Heard the wolf and ’im talking about it. Settled business that.” Wade’s eyebrows went up. “Course maybe ’tisn’t.” He looked down at Carys. “Context and all that.”
Carys decided Wade probably had the right idea after all. She crossed her arms over her chest and let Duncan and Lachlan bicker at each other while she and Wade struck a bargain.
“So you want to go to Wapa…”
“Wappenham. It’s about forty minutes from the Bern Wood gate as the humans drive it.”
Okay, so Wade was not human.
What was he?
She looked for Cadell, but the dragon was obviously back in beast form and she didn’t want to bother him. “So you want a lift in our car?”
“Metal don’t bother me, if that’s what you’re wondering. I c’n pay ya.”
“In what?”
“Good old English money, girl.” Wade opened his palm, revealing a handful of gold coins. “Of the old-fashioned variety.”
Carys nodded. “I’m going to make an executive decision that you can come as long as Godrik and Naida say you’re okay.”
“Nowt. Like I said, they know me.”
“Okay.” She tried to catch Naida’s eye, but she was deep in conversation with Godrik. “So what do you do in Wapping—”
“Wappenham.”
“Right. That place.”
Wade shrugged. “Ah, nothing much, but it’s the source of the Great Ouse, and I’m working on an environmental reclamation project on the river.”
“Oh yeah?” That was strikingly normal for someone she’d met in the Shadowlands. Sort of like meeting a unicorn who bused tables at a vegetarian café on the weekends.
Wait, would a unicorn do that?
“So what’s the focus of the reclamation project? Industrial pollution or something?”
Duncan and Lachlan seemed to be coming to some kind of truce, but Carys was irritated with both of them, so she ignored them.
Won the contest? She would be having a conversation with both of them later.
“Eels.”
She turned to Wade. “Pardon me?”
“You asked what the focus of the reclamation project is,” Wade said. “It’s eels.”
“Huh.” Carys blinked. “Eels.”
“Fascinating creatures, eels. Very important for the ecosystem.”
The mysterious Wade sat in the first row behind Carys and Duncan with Cadell sitting next to him as they drove off the small country roads around Bernwood Forest and up the dark roadway through the English countryside.
The dragon was glaring at the stranger. “Nêrys, I thought we agreed that you bringing magical creatures from one world to the next was a bad idea.”
Wade muttered, “Not a magical creature.”
“Then what are you?” the dragon asked.
“Not your business, wyrm.”
Wade had kept mostly silent when they walked back through the portal from Temris, then back up the road to the Bern Wood, and through the gate—which again tried to grab Carys—and he walked with ease.
So whatever he was, he felt comfortable enough in both worlds.
Naida kept her eyes closed but let out a sigh and said, “He’s more trustworthy than a unicorn, Cadell. You don’t need to worry about Wade.”
Wade muttered something under his breath.
“Be polite, ferryman,” Naida said softly. “The humans have granted you a favor, and now you owe them one.”
“Don’t owe nothin’ to nobody,” Wade muttered.
“That’s not what we agreed.” Naida still had her eyes closed. “Be nice.”
Whatever bargain Naida had struck with Wade, she hadn’t shared it with the rest of them.
They’d returned to the Brightlands in the middle of the night, and Duncan had to break a chain on the gate of the Bernwood Forest parking lot to get the van out before dawn.
Carys was not going to pretend that the blacksmith twisting open that chain with his bare hands was not hot as hell. It helped a little to assuage her irritation with Duncan and Lachlan’s pissing contest in Temris.
So now they were eight instead of six, packed into the van in the middle of the night while Duncan drove, his expression locked down tight.
He gripped the wheel with both hands, very pointedly not looking at his Shadowkin, who was sitting silently in the back. The night flew by, and the clock on the dashboard read 1:00 a.m.
Cadell was still staring at Wade with piercing gold eyes. “Lady Carys is my business, and you are in the same vehicle as she is. Therefore, you are my business.”
The dragon was not good at letting go of arguments.
So Wade decided to ignore him. He leaned toward Duncan in the driver’s seat. “Yer Angus’s smith, aren’t you?”
Duncan glanced in the rearview mirror. “You know Angus?”
“What kind of question is that?” Wade grunted, then sat back and stared out the dark window. “Course I know Angus.”
“Naturally,” Duncan muttered. “Why wouldn’t you know a magical creature from Scotland who works at my forge? What a completely obvious answer.”
Carys reached over and took Duncan’s hand. “Are you tired?”
He glanced at her, and his expression softened. “Honestly, I don’t know what day it is or what time my body thinks it is. And I’m hungry. But I’m fine for now.” He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed her knuckles. “Are you tired?”
“I’m okay.” She was also exhausted and hungry, but she wanted to get rid of the giant who’d hitched a ride.
“Tell me when you’re tired, and I’ll find us a hotel,” Duncan said. “Wade and his eels can fuck off.”
“I heard that,” the old man said.
Carys looked over her shoulder for a moment, then looked away.
Lachlan was silent and brooding in the middle row behind Cadell and Wade. Every now and then, Carys caught him staring at her.
She tried to keep from looking, but it was as if she could feel his eyes on her even when she fixed her gaze ahead.
None of this was ideal.
Not the Morrígan in the Brightlands.
Not Dru’s cryptic advice.
Not a strange giant in rubber boots hitching a ride in the van.
And definitely not Lachlan being back.
Once, Carys had been so in love with the man that she’d flown to a strange country to figure out where he’d gone. And now?
Looking at Lachlan was painful. It was just… painful.
“You should try to sleep,” Duncan said. “It’s another half hour to Wappenham at least.”