Chapter 38
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
SELENE
The wind moved low across the lake, ruffling the surface into narrow bands of gray and silver. Behind us, the castle loomed on its rise of dark stone and old silence. Ahead of us, the shoreline curved away beneath a pale sky, the water steady and indifferent in a way I found oddly reassuring.
Bren had stopped speaking shortly after he’d released my hand, and so had I. We both fell into our thoughts, and I suspected he had several things to work through too.
The truths he’d laid out between us remained where they were, too large to step around and too stubborn for me to push aside any longer. The Veil and the breaches. The monster in the grove.
That I had somehow closed a tear and that he had looked at me as though that alone had changed the shape of the world.
I folded my arms tighter against the breeze and stared at the rippling water. After a moment, I released a deep sigh. “How does one be a witch? Let’s say I accept that I might have some level of power. I don’t know how to access it. The things I’ve done occurred automatically, without thinking.”
I turned my gaze to him. “Sitting around waiting for the next time doesn’t seem like a good way to manage it.”
Bren agreed with a solemn nod and then focused his dark eyes on me. “Your family did you no service by hiding this from you.”
I winced at that and tried to understand. “I suspect they were trying to protect me. To protect themselves too.”
“Likely. Perhaps if you’d never come to Ireland.” He shook his head once as he stared at me. And then shook it again. “What’s done can’t be undone.”
Something in his tone set me on edge. “You make it sound like being a witch is a bad thing.”
“Latent power is vulnerable and can be exploited.” He dropped his gaze to the ground. “You were trying something before I arrived, weren’t you? I sensed it.”
I snorted and glanced down at the flat stone near my boots, still damp from where I had tried and failed to move it. “I wanted to move that rock with my mind and failed miserably. I’m surprised you noticed anything at all.”
Amusement flickered in his eyes. “I notice a great many things about you that you likely don’t realize.”
That concerned me. “Like what?”
The corner of his mouth quirked, and he waved away my question. “Tell me more about what you were trying to do?”
I huffed. “I was attempting to become the sort of woman who could command rocks with her mind. Maybe I should have held tight to my good luck charm.”
He raised his brows as if I’d impressed him. “You have one of those, do you?”
I patted my chest where my necklace rested beneath my sweater and smiled. “Something my aunt gave me, but it probably wouldn’t have made a difference. It has no real magic.”
Bren’s eyes crinkled at the corners as he returned my smile. “Unfortunate.”
I huffed out something that might have been a laugh, then sobered again almost at once. “I think I may have communicated with the circle inlay, though.”
His attention sharpened. “In the hall?”
“Yes.” I hesitated for only a moment. “I had the strangest feeling that it reacted when I stepped farther into the room. So I touched it, and I swore the vibration changed. Just slightly.”
I recalled what now seemed like an absurd conversation. “I spoke to it. I said hello, as silly as that sounds.” But then wonder replaced my embarrassment. “Bren, I think it understood me. I told it I was there to help, and I swore I heard an echo of whispered words.”
He stared at me for the longest moment. “An echo from the past, then.”
I drew my brows together. “Is that a thing?”
“It can be. For some. Though I’ve never heard a voice in there.”
The moment had grown uncomfortably heavy. “Maybe it was just the wind echoing through the castle.” I shook my head. “That sounds ridiculous when I say it out loud.”
“Do not say such things.”
The serious timbre of his voice sent a tiny shock through me. “Why?”
He met my gaze and held it. “You don’t know if it’s true or not, and when you deny your magic, you dim it. It’s like putting shackles on it.”
I swallowed, wondering if that’s what I’d been doing all along. Maybe it manifested only when I let my guard down.
His eyes held mine for a beat longer, cool and steady. “Walk with me.”
He turned toward the shore without waiting to see if I followed.
I hesitated only a second before I hurried after him.
The ground sloped gently downward before leveling near the water, where wet grass gave way to patches of dark earth and scattered stones worn smooth by time and weather.
We moved in silence for several yards. I kept my attention on the shoreline, the pressure of what had been revealed in the last half hour shifting inside me with every step.
Bren stopped beside a narrow stretch where the water reached farther inland than it did elsewhere. Nothing about it looked remarkable. There were only a few half-buried stones, small branches, and bent reeds.
He glanced at me and tipped his head toward our feet. “Do not tell me what you think. Tell me what you notice.”
I stared at him for a second and then lowered my gaze.
The wind moved across the lake, causing water to lap softly at the shore. Somewhere behind us, a gull cried once and fell silent.
At first, I noticed nothing.
Then, after another breath, something in the air to my left pressed faintly against my skin.
It wasn’t a temperature change. Not exactly.
More like the sensation of standing near a wall before seeing it.
A subtle tension. A place where the openness of the shore felt interrupted by something I could not name.
I stopped and shook my head in amazement. “I found it.”
His attention moved at once to the spot I had not pointed to yet.
I looked at him. “You already knew?”
“I sense things, too, though I suspect not in the same way you do.” He gestured toward the place that rippled with tension. “Tell me more.”
I took two slow steps closer to the area that felt wrong. “Like what?”
Bren remained rooted. “You tell me.”
The sensation sharpened. Not in a painful or even strong way. It was just present enough that my body registered it before my mind could explain it. “The air feels thinner.” I swallowed as my sense of it seemed to expand. “No. Not thinner. Misaligned.”
He nodded once. “A weak seam runs beneath that stretch.”
I studied the ground. There was nothing visibly unusual. Only damp earth, low grass, and one flat stone tilted at an angle beside a trapped branch. “That’s ridiculous. I can’t sense such things. A misplaced chair or the wrong shade of paint, yes. But a seam between this and another reality?”
I shifted my gaze to him, shaking my head. “That’s not possible.”
He shrugged. “And yet it’s the truth.”
I crouched slowly near the edge. The sensation increased as I lowered myself, pressing against my chest and the backs of my arms like the faintest outward push.
The image of the creature that had come through a weak seam rushed at me, and I stood, stumbling back. “If it’s really a seam between worlds, I shouldn’t mess with it. What if I accidentally open it?”
Bren moved closer until he stood next to me. “It’s not that easy, but I’m here if you do.”
Uncertainty covered my body with goosebumps, and I shook my head. He placed a warm hand on my back. “There’s nothing to fear.”
I lifted my hand between us as a tremor rolled through me. “Wait. Are you saying that every time I’ve felt that something was off, it was really a weakness in the Veil?”
He wrapped his fingers around mine and drew my hand downward, giving it a little squeeze before he released me. “I wasn’t there, so I can’t say. But likely not. It wouldn’t seem right that all your experiences are tied to the Veil, now would it?”
I considered his suggestion, and it held its weight. A fraction of my tension eased. “You’re probably right.”
He gestured with a tilt of his head. “Give it a try.”
I reached toward the water and made a fist to keep my hand from shaking.
“Slowly,” he said in a low voice, as though he knew exactly what I’d find. “Open your fingers to it. Don’t be afraid.”
I glanced up at him once and then lightly placed my fingertips into the shallow water.
Cold moved over my skin first. Then I sensed something beneath it. A faint hum. Not in the water itself, exactly, but through it. Through the land under it.
A directional pull seemed to catch at my hand and draw my awareness sideways toward the flat stone and broken branch beside it.
I drew in a breath and lifted my hand at once. “There’s a heaviness. It’s not strong like in the castle. It’s as if the energy keeps catching on something.”
His gaze slid toward the half-submerged branch. “On that?”
I studied his gaze, looking for but not finding any trace of a condemning smirk. “It seems so silly that a stick could do that.”
Bren arched his brow. “And yet?”
I gave him a firm nod. “And yet, it is. Sometimes, it’s the simplest things.”
Without him asking me to, I reached again, more certain this time. The wrongness gathered low in the same place. I drew my gaze along the branch wedged between two stones and the larger flat rock that was tilted awkwardly beside them.
I reached for the branch and pulled it free. Immediately, the pressure eased, though not entirely.
I knew this.
I knew these feelings, both the stuck energy and the release that would follow once I’d fully corrected things. I put my palm against the larger, tilted stone and pushed.
The rock shifted only an inch and then settled flatter against the mud.
The air loosened, followed by the unmistakable release of tension from a place I’d only just realized was holding it. Warmth flooded my veins, making me feel whole.
It was the feeling I lived for.
I sat back on my heels and looked up at Bren with a smile.
His expression did not mirror mine. “You did it again.”
A chill moved through me that had nothing to do with the water. “I did.”
The words sat between us with more weight than they should have. “Is that okay?”
He curved his lips into a smile that I saw more than felt. “Of course. It’s what you were born to do.”
It was.
But what did that mean? I had thought I understood, but the world I’d used my powers in before was nothing like the one I faced now.
I looked back toward the shore, needing a moment to process my thoughts. The wind moved across the water and through the reeds that were as tall as my knees. On the surface, life still looked the same.
Other than sensing a wrongness and correcting it, I still had no idea what else I might affect. Maybe nothing. Maybe far more than I wanted to know.
I rose slowly and brushed damp earth from my palms. It took me a moment before I could speak. “You told me the creature might have come to the grove because I was in the clearing.”
His silence confirmed it before he spoke. “Not solely for you, but it may have been a factor.”
“So when you said it might not have mattered who was there with you, you don’t really believe that, do you?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “I truly have no clue.”
I swallowed and spoke what had been churning deep in my thoughts since we’d talked of it earlier. “Do you think it sensed what I can do?”
His gaze sharpened into something that frightened me. “I’ve wondered.”
Oh, gods. I buried my face in my hands, unsure if I could ever process that.
Bren touched my arm, and I lifted my head to face him. Concern and tenderness mingled in his eyes. “It’ll be okay. I won’t let anything hurt you.”
I sensed the sincerity in his words, but I also recalled he’d been losing ground when I’d inadvertently toppled the tree on the thorn wraith. But I couldn’t toss that in his face. Not now. “What if you’re not there? What if you’re in Dublin or somewhere else?”
His gaze turned fierce. “I will always feel the disturbance. I will always be there.”
The certainty in his voice hit me low and hard.
It should have sounded impossible. Maybe it was.
But standing there with the castle at our backs and the memory of moonlight still lodged somewhere under my skin, I believed him because he meant it.
That was not the same as safety.
But it was dangerously close.
The realization settled quietly inside me and blossomed into something I couldn’t name.
I looked out over the lake again. The surface held the color of old metal beneath the cloud-thinned light. Near the shallows, the reeds rustled in the breeze with a dry whisper, and my thoughts shifted to something safer. “I’m still angry with you.”
He did not appear surprised. “For the secrecy? I know.”
I huffed lightly. “That and for still trying to withhold information even after the world crashed in.”
His mouth moved again at the corner. “That’s fair.”
I arched a stern brow at him. “Not to mention kissing me in a moonlit grove after promising me you’d behave.”
A smile fully curved his lips then. “You kissed me first.”
I stared at him until my resolve faded and heat crept in. I focused on the cool breeze caressing my face and cleared my throat. “There are a few things regarding the restoration that we need to discuss.”
Humor sparkled in his eyes. “We’re back to regular business, then?”
I gave him a firm nod. “You said I should focus on the castle.”
“That I did.” He jutted his chin toward the tower house. “You go first. I need to clear my head for a moment.”
I softened my expression into an understanding smile. “Okay. I’ll see you in a bit.”
The breeze shifted again as I strode away, bringing with it the scent of wet grass and the faint mineral edge of the lake. The castle stood silent on the rise, dark stone holding its impossible secrets.
Somewhere beyond the trees, the grove waited.
I glanced back at Bren to find him staring up at the pale sky. I still wasn’t entirely sure what he was.
A guardian? Definitely a mystery and a weapon.
Underneath it all was a man. One with needs and desires like the rest of us.
And whatever I was, whatever had stirred beneath my fingertips in the inlay and helped close a breach in the sky that should have swallowed us whole, I sensed I belonged to the same world he did.
That realization slowly settled into me.
I had not imagined the things I’d witnessed. And nothing would go back to the way it had been.
Still, I sensed I had not stepped into a stranger’s life by accident.
What I knew deep in my heart was that I had stepped into my own.