CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX #2
‘—how much I love you? Huh? Any idea? No. You don’t know what I did to protect you and her.
The things I did to keep you safe. You have no clue and I’m glad for it, but to hear you whine about how inconvenient it is to have your make-believe world interrupted by some fucking reality is truly something, kid.
’ He laughs, bitter and bewildered. ‘Fuck me, all I have ever done is protect you and all you ever did was punish me for it! I loved you then and I love you now, no matter what, but fucking hell, it’s hard to love you sometimes and it was never like that with her.
She didn’t hate me for caring. She didn’t resent me for making you both safe! ’
‘BECAUSE SHE DIDN’T KNOW ANY BETTER!’
Kade’s voice echoes around the slowly darkening woods.
He regrets the words as soon as they come out of his mouth, but he can’t take it back. It feels wrong. Cruel.
Lachlan stares ahead at the boundary Kade feared to approach for years.
‘You’re right,’ he agrees quietly. ‘And I didn’t mean to, but I messed up your life here, you’re right about that too.
’ Dead behind the eyes, Kade knows it all too well.
Shut down, shut off, shut it behind steel and lock it away.
Pain can be disconnected, all kinds. ‘I’m sorry.
Let me give you the book and I’ll leave. ’
‘Oh, fuck off. Don’t sulk!’
‘I’m not. You’re right.’
‘I’m just angry, OK? Don’t pull this moody, self-deprecating—’
Lachlan walks away.
Kade is a mess of crossed-wire confusion.
Despite everything, he follows Lachlan through the trees, slows when he reaches what he senses was the boundary but pushes on and lets relief do what it can to repair the damage done over the years.
Dread and fear have to come apart one brick at a time.
No sickness, no dizziness, no inner ear agony.
Lachlan gave him that at least.
‘Wait up,’ he calls out, but Lachlan doesn’t. The trees thicken, leading downhill, steep and thorny, until Kade sees a small backroad and a dark van parked further down. ‘Bodyguard!’
Lachlan opens the rear doors and climbs inside while Kade hangs back, unsure of himself. It’s a horrible feeling he hasn’t had much experience with. His life has always been certain, solid, master of his own fate, the best.
‘Is this the famous van, then?’ he tries, aiming for levity but Lachlan doesn’t answer. He’s rifling around inside before he emerges, holding a thick, black book. ‘Look, you don’t have to—’
‘Here.’
Lachlan holds it out with one hand, passively expectant.
Kade is this close to saying some shit like, well I don’t even want it now, but he knows they need this, his boss needs it at the very least.
You don’t fuck with Lee, everyone knows that.
He takes it, surprised that it feels like a normal book. No rush of energy, no gleaming light, no visible magic, or whatever.
‘Thanks.’ Lachlan closes the door with a hard slam and then heads around to the driver’s side. Kade’s insides are wringing and writhing. ‘So that’s it?’
No answer.
No fucking answer, how dare he?
‘You’re just gonna do all this damage and leave?’
‘Seems to be my speciality.’
Lachlan closes the driver’s door and starts the engine.
Kade pulls the door open again.
‘You can’t come into my life, tell me all this insane shit and then leave just as I start to accept it!’ Kade tells him, worryingly wobbly, heart aching.
‘You have everything you need.’
‘No, I fucking don’t!’
Lachlan tries to close the door, but Kade forces it open even wider, almost breaks it clean off, childish and stupid, he can’t let him leave, he just… can’t.
‘Let go,’ Lachlan bids gently, hasn’t looked Kade in the eye since they argued and Kade misses it, how stupid is that?
‘No.’
‘Kade—’
‘Say his name.’
Lachlan closes his eyes.
‘I always fuck it up with you no matter what. I just find different ways of doing it. Let go now, Kade. Give the book to your boss. It’ll all be OK.’
‘Call me by his name.’
‘You’re not him.’
‘No? I thought I was a selfish brat just like you said he was!’
‘He was a frustrated, desperate kid who went through hell. I’m the selfish one. Me. I wanted you to be him but you’re not and I’ve brought your world down around you trying to make you remember. Your boss is right.’ Lachlan swallows, staring at the road. ‘Jules Penhalyx is dead.’
‘Look at me.’
‘Let go of the door.’
‘Look at me, Bodyguard!’
Kade tastes salt from his own tears.
Please, look, just look, see me, see him, see more than I ever knew was there!
‘I always end up hurting you.’
‘Lachlan, please. Please look at me.’
Kade has the distinct feeling Lachlan’s debating kicking him in the chest just so he could close the door and drive off.
But then he does something worse.
‘You’re not my business,’ the bodyguard says, clipped.
Kade lets go.
Lachlan closes the door.
The van disappears down the road.
And the sun sets on another dark day.
?
Kade has never felt so lost.
He’s always known the way, the path, North.
The tattoo on his wrist meant home, safety, Iron Star.
Now he doesn’t know what it means. Maybe Lachlan’s right and there was once something else there. A moon, not a star. With the book in hand, he trudges back to the Tower through the surrounding woods. This path leads to Riley, back to some semblance of normality.
In time, Kade could shrug this off, let distance and disconnect blunt the edges of this encounter, like wave-kissed sea glass worn over time until it’s vague enough that he could call it whatever he wants, lock it up in a box forever. In time, he could dismiss what he saw, heard and felt.
But he doesn’t want to.
He wants Lachlan to come back and keep telling him things because it hurts when he does but it fills a space inside Kade he never knew was there.
Lachlan fills him with strange pieces of disjointed information that sink in and settle, make a home unexpectedly and Kade thinks he was starting to know himself better than he ever has.
Sullen, he walks without needing to look up, would know how to get to the Tower from anywhere, which is why he doesn’t see her until she speaks.
‘Hello, Jules.’
Kade stops dead and zeroes in on the new voice.
A woman slightly taller than Lee leans up against a large oak tree cast almost entirely in shadow. He’s not sure he’d have seen her even if he was looking, only sees her now because she’s moving.
The moon above is creeping towards full, so when she steps out from beneath the oak, Kade can make out a few details, like waist length jet black hair, wavy with small braids interspersed, pale skin not unlike the milky orb above.
Her skirt is long and flowy, dressed in shades of dark grey and bronze.
Around her neck sits a chain with a small, glinting green gem.
‘Blaire?’ he guesses.
‘How you’ve grown,’ she observes, her accent faintly French, gaze moving over him from head to toe. ‘Boys don’t typically get taller past twenty, but I see that you’re the exception. No surprise, you always were.’
‘If you’re looking for my boss—’
‘I am not.’
Kade waits but she says nothing.
His instincts are coiling tight.
‘What do you want then?’ Her eyes drop to the book. ‘I can’t give you this.’
‘It’s not yours, darling.’
‘Don’t call me that. I don’t know you.’
‘I would like the book back, please.’
‘Lachlan gave it to me.’
‘It was not his to give.’
‘It’s Lee’s book, and she wants it back.’
‘Yes, I’m sure she does.’ Blaire rolls her eyes, oddly similar to how Lachlan does it. ‘The misalignment of siblings is a hard thing to bear.’
‘You’re not getting it. Is this why you came?’
‘I was asked to come.’
‘By Lachlan to meet with my boss. He’s the one who wants to see you.’
‘I have no intention of meeting with Riley Harker,’ she tells him, fingers flexing gracefully by her side. ‘He was Céliane’s pet project, not mine.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘You were my interest, darling. You and your beautiful sister. Besides, what Riley seeks to find is not in there. The book is of no use to him.’ She extends her hand, palm covered with faded tattoos, an eye right in the centre and rings on every finger, more than one.
Kade shifts his stance. ‘You want it, come and get it.’
‘Still vying for a fight,’ she comments offhand, coming closer.
‘The mind reclothes but the muscles remember, don’t they?
Eight swords in earth till eight bells clear.
’ The air seems to vibrate just slightly.
Kade feels static building, a dense clicking in his ears.
‘Despite the warning I gave him, I doubt that Lachlan read his page fully. He was never one for poetry. This book is a powerful artefact. I cannot allow misuse.’
‘There won’t be any misuse. It’s Lee’s book. You stole it from her.’
‘And she from Penhalyx and he from another. It has been stolen time and again for centuries.’
‘Then I’m keeping up a grand tradition,’ Kade says with a sarcastic smile.
‘I was called here by Riley. Did he really not consider I would try to take the book back?’ Blaire cocks her head consideringly. ‘Or perhaps he is more like my sister than I thought.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Perhaps he intended to offer me the book in exchange for information.’
‘He wouldn’t do that.’
‘What about you, darling Julian? Do you not want information? You always did so despise having things kept from you.’
‘I trust my boss to tell me the truth.’
‘Your boss,’ she echoes with disdain, ‘is hiding a great many things from you and some things he has no way of revealing even if he wished to.’
‘You mean his… curse?’
Her green eyes sparkle, watching him closely. ‘If you have questions Riley Harker cannot answer, I will consider that fair exchange for the safe return of my book.’
Kade looks around, clocking location. They’re not close enough to the Tower to be seen but he has his earpiece in his pocket. He could—
‘Yes or no, Julian? We may trade if you wish but decide quickly. My patience, despite the love I still hold for you, has thinned these last few days.’
‘You’ll let me ask something in exchange for the book?’
‘I will explain whatever you ask, yes.’
Kade thinks fast, decides to stall for now.