Chapter 22 #2
I steeled myself, flexing my fingers at my sides, and sucked in a deep, fortifying breath. I knew speaking of Silas Boon would bring Danne Pellan. All I had to do was stick with Silas. That was it, only Silas. I dipped my head. “Ask away.”
“Do you know Silas Boon?”
“No.” I lifted a finger right as Graysen opened his mouth. “Just to clarify. I don’t know him. I’ve only met him.”
“You’re going to make this really hard on me, aren’t you?”
I grinned. A flash of genuine amusement, something bright and shiny and pure. “Always, Crowther.”
Surprise flared in his eyes, and something else too. A pleased, warm feeling washed over his handsome features before he quickly shuttered it away, dropping his gaze to the floor. My eyes narrowed and nose scrunched. I had no idea what I’d said to please him.
Ignoring him, I rounded the bed and pulled and straightened the sheets, tucking the other side in. My gaze shot up in startlement when Graysen growled, “What the fuck is that?” He jerked his chin toward the end of the mattress.
I frowned, moving over and half-bending to see what had disturbed him about my bed-making skills. I couldn’t see anything wrong.
He uncrossed his ankles and pushed off the wall, stalking into my room to fling up a palm at the bed end. “A hospital tuck, for fuck’s sake, Wychthorn.”
I stared back, wide-eyed and mouth slack. I had no idea what a hospital had to do with making a bed.
He shoved me off-balance and out of the way with a nudge of his lean hips.
I righted myself, scowling, but then took an interest in what he was doing.
He untucked my sheets, shooting me an annoyed look.
“It’s like this.” With a quick tuck, fold, and tuck, he made quick work of my bed corners.
Straightening to his full height, he pointed down at the bed.
Admittedly, it looked really professional.
“It’s neat and tidy and it won’t come undone when you’re having…
” The words drifted apart. He ran a hand through his raven-black hair, grimacing slightly, looking as if he wished he had said nothing.
“Having what…?” I asked, cocking my head and staring up at him suspiciously.
He dropped his hand to his hip, his gaze sliding sideways. “A nightmare.”
I frowned. “I don’t remember…”
“No, well, that’s good then,” he said quickly, snatching up my pillow to fluff it.
I blinked. I didn’t remember having any nightmares because he was here, awake, almost always awake. Had he been doing the same thing I had done for him last night? He’d have heard me tossing and turning, fretful, screaming.
How many nights had I been dreaming of darkness?
Dreaming of…
I forced that thought away, that horrid man away.
And Graysen had come in here to soothe me, keep me calm enough to fall into a deep, restful sleep, I was sure of it.
I watched him re-smooth the sheets, that apparently I hadn’t done as well as he would’ve, then flick the soft blanket over top.
Pinching and flattening the wrinkles away and rearranging it so it lay perfectly and hung the right height off the floor, exactly five inches, all the way around the bed.
He even did a trick where he tucked the long ends of the blanket beneath the mattress so it draped nicely.
There was something so ridiculously boyish and charming about this man who wielded blades, who seemingly couldn’t handle anything out of place in his personal domain.
I snorted, shaking my head at him. So fucking ridiculous.
“What?” he asked, glancing up with a slight frown as he placed my pillow at the head of the bed.
“Nothing,” I replied innocently, twining my fingers together. “Nothing at all.”
With my tidying duties over, I left the bedroom and headed for the kitchen.
As I’d suspected, there was a full glass of water already poured and waiting for me on the countertop.
Picking up the cool glass with condensation running down the sides, I sipped, enjoying refreshing water spilling down my throat, noting that with the sun descending low and the deep apricot hues flooding the sky and gilding the clouds, we’d obviously spent a long time wrapped up in each other’s arms on the tower’s landing.
I turned around and leaned my hip against the granite countertop, finishing the water in one hit.
Sage wandered over, dropping beside me, and began gnawing at the tennis ball.
Glass chinked against metal when I placed my empty glass into the kitchen sink beside the breakfast plate I’d eaten my daily croissant from this morning.
However, still parched, I turned the tap and refilled it.
I supposed later I’d need to do the dishes, and my gaze roamed over the drawers looking for the dishwasher.
I opened up a few cupboards…and couldn’t find one.
My heart sped up and my eyes grew round to think that I’d actually have to wash them manually, with my own two hands.
When I swiveled wide, shocked, pointing at the dishes in the sink because my voice was paralyzed, Graysen let out a huff of laughter.
He’d gone back to his bed, where he’d placed a basket of regathered clothes.
Halfway through shaking open a shirt, he tipped his head to the side, giving me a look of commiseration.
His low, gravelly voice rumbled, “It’s not actually that hard. ”
My shoulders fell as well as the corners of my mouth. I wasn’t so sure about that.
Sage nudged my bare foot with his cool muzzle, making a plaintive whine, one paw batting the chewed tennis ball. He bounded excitedly aside when I drew my foot back, feeling churlish, and kicked hard, aiming at Graysen.
The ball flew, and Graysen’s heightened speed had him moving impossibly fast to avoid being hit.
One blink he was there—the next he was on the other side of his bed.
My brows nudged together as I stared at him.
He’d moved faster than I’d been able to detect. In fact, it was as if he was there one second and then vanished. Something tugged at the back of my mind.
Across the bed, Graysen shot a dark glare at me.
I returned a cheeky smirk.
Sage, barking and wagging his tail, chased the ball that had rebounded off one of the lacquered pieces of wood that curved over Graysen’s bed and bounced lazily toward the large leather armchair.
Graysen kept a close eye on me as he reached for another shirt to fold.
Holding a hand across my mouth, I hid the wide-ass grin.
What he didn’t realize was that I’d marked almost every single shirt he owned with the invisible pen I’d found in his arts and crafts box.
At some point, as he had with ‘Meet Mr. Limp Dick’, he’d discover the other messages I’d scrawled over his clothes.
The brand-new-yet-old bedside tables—because from the look of them, they were antiques from a variety of time periods and cultures—he’d already moved into place beside the birdcage bed of his.
My finger made a dull sound as I absentmindedly tapped it against the glass. I had numerous questions. Which one first? Tabitha. “How do you know your mother is still alive? It’s been twelve years.”
Graysen stopped folding, straightening, but his gaze had gone distant in thought, and something warred on his expression as if he were hesitant at how much he could divulge.
He took so long in answering, I wasn’t sure if he was going to.
Finally, his dark eyes sharpened. “There’s a connection between us. We know she’s still alive.”
I frowned, tilting my head. A connection?
“We can feel that she is still alive,” he elaborated.
“How?”
“When she’s in pain, we can feel it.”
I pushed off the gentle curve of the countertop, taking a couple of steps across the sunbaked tiles. “We? You all feel it?”
“One of us.” Glancing at the shirt in his hands, he kneaded it uneasily. “A shadow, if you like. A sort of echo. A reverberation. Specifically pain…whenever she feels it…” He swallowed thickly before saying in a rush, “Whoever or whatever holds her captive has been hurting her.”
Dipping my head, I lowered my gaze to the glass in my hands, rotating it around as guilt stung the back of my throat.
Gods. Twelve long years she’d been gone…
And that shadow, the reverberation of her pain, meant one of the brothers was connected to Tabitha. I was sure of it. Graysen—no. I thought with all the time we’d spent together I’d have known.
“My mother’s been hurt badly over the years. That’s how we know she still lives,” Graysen said quietly, putting the t-shirt on top of those he’d already folded before picking up a pair of jeans from the basket.
I looked at him beneath my lashes, my breath tight in my chest, feeling awful. “Does it hurt her when she steals pain?” How does her other ability work?
“She’s a conduit, so she channels the pain into something else, like an object, a rock, something inanimate. It still hurts her, but not as intensely as if she doesn’t have something to channel it into.”
“So maybe her being in pain is just that. Her stealing someone else’s pain?”
His gaze turned flinty. A tick in his jaw. “It goes on for too long. Someone’s forcing her, using her, hurting her.”
Heaviness plunged through my entire body, as though a chain had been wound around my ankle and the earth was tugging at it, trying to swallow me whole.
“And you have no idea who has her?” I rasped, briefly squeezing my eyes shut.
“None.”
Just the redheaded Horned God, who I assumed could have kept Tabitha. Or she’d given the Crowthers’ mother away. And if they couldn’t hunt down this Horned God in all these years, then indeed, their only hope was at the Witches Ball.
Right this moment, I didn’t know who I felt more sorry for—Tabitha or myself.