Chapter Nineteen
I woke in the dead of night to the strange, muffled quiet of a room that didn't have a single real window in it.
No wind against glass, no distant sound of the town settling into sleep.
Just Amber's breathing beside me, and Orias's low, even snoring on her other side, and the faint, watchful hum of the Sanctum itself, always there under everything if I let myself listen for it.
I lay still a while, Amber's back pressed against my chest, one of her hands loosely curled around mine where I'd wrapped my arm over her sometime in the night.
My mind wouldn't settle. Too much had happened in one day — Cian, Yakob, the trap we'd walked ourselves into, the thing I still hadn't told her, sitting heavier in my chest with every hour I let it go unsaid.
She stirred a few minutes later, shifting against me, and I felt the exact moment she woke up properly. Her breathing changed. Her hand tightened briefly around mine.
"You're awake," she murmured, voice thick with sleep.
"Couldn't switch my brain off."
"Same." She rolled over to face me, careful not to jostle Orias, her eyes catching what little light the room offered. "Too much happened today. Too much to just sleep through."
"Yeah."
She studied my face a moment, something searching in her expression. "You look like you're carrying something that makes you want to scream the word fuck really loud."
I didn't answer right away. She took that as answer enough, apparently, because she slipped out from under the blanket, careful and quiet, and held her hand out to me.
"Come shower with me. I need to actually wake up properly if we're going to talk about whatever this is."
I followed her without argument, easing off the bed slow enough not to disturb Orias, who barely stirred beyond a soft grumble and a shift deeper into the pillow.
The bathroom was small, tiled in warm amber tones that matched everything else in this strange place, and the water came on hot the second Amber turned the tap, like the Sanctum had been waiting to provide exactly that too.
She stepped under the spray first, and I followed a moment later, the small space forcing us close together in a way neither of us minded.
I reached for the soap before she could, working up a lather between my palms, and started at her shoulders, working slow circles into skin that had gone tense with everything the day had put her through.
She sighed, head tipping back slightly, letting me work down her arms, her back, taking my time with it in a way that had nothing to do with anything except wanting to take care of her properly, for once, without an audience or an agenda.
"That feels incredible," she murmured, eyes closed.
"Good."
I kept going, careful and unhurried, until the tension in her shoulders had mostly melted out under my hands.
When I finally turned her to face me, water running down between us, I couldn't help myself.
I kissed her, soft this time, nothing like the desperate thing from earlier.
Just her mouth against mine, steady, grounding.
She pulled back first, studying my face again with that same searching look from before. "Talk to me, Rowan. Whatever it is."
I exhaled, long and slow, water running down my face while I tried to figure out where to actually start.
"I need to go back to the day I left town," I said. "You never got the real reason. Only the version I gave you the first time, and that wasn't the whole truth."
She stayed quiet, waiting, patient in a way that made the rest of it easier to get out.
"Standing at our mums' funeral, I felt something lock into place.
Between us. I'd researched mate bonds once, years earlier, some school project neither of us would remember.
I knew exactly what I was feeling the second it hit me, and I knew it wasn't going away.
" My throat tightened around the next part.
"In the same breath, I knew Orias loved you.
Had for years, since before either of us understood what that even meant.
You loved him back, or I believed you did.
I wasn't about to stand there, freshly bonded to the one person my brother wanted more than anything else, and let that be the thing that finally broke what was left of our family.
So I left. Told myself distance would fix it. "
"Did it?"
"No."
Her breath caught, audible even over the running water. "You've known for years. Not just since you got back to town. This whole time."
"Yes."
"And you never said anything. Not when you first showed up in the woods. Not in that clearing." Hurt sharpened her voice now, quick and immediate. "Does Orias know?"
I hesitated, and the hesitation answered before my mouth caught up. "He worked it out on his own, I think. A while back. He never brought it up either. Or I'm wrong and he has no clue and I think he's smarter than he is."
"You've both known." She shoved a hand back through her wet hair, something raw flickering behind her eyes. "You both decided that was information I didn't get to have. About my own life. About whatever this is that's I... I feel."
"I know it wasn't fair."
"It wasn't." She held my gaze, chest rising fast. "I have every right to be furious about this, Rowan. Both of you keeping something this size from me."
"You do," I agreed, because pretending otherwise would only have made it worse.
She stood there a long moment, water running between us, jaw working like she was cycling through several reactions at once and hadn't landed on the right one. Slowly, some of the anger in her expression started giving way to something else entirely.
"It's also—" A short, disbelieving laugh escaped her. "God, it's also kind of amazing, isn't it? A mate bond. That's not small, Rowan."
"No. It's not."
"And I actually get it. The reasoning." Her voice softened, the fury banking down into something more considered.
"If you genuinely believed I loved Orias, and you'd just found out we were bonded, right there at your own mum's funeral of all places — choosing to protect his feelings instead of claiming me for yourself, that's not the worst thing you could've done with that information.
It's actually kind of decent, in a stupid, self-sacrificing way I'm still annoyed about. "
"I'm sorry," I said, meaning it as completely as I'd ever meant anything. "For leaving. For staying quiet the second I came back."
"I know." She reached up, cupping my jaw the way I'd done to her a dozen times over the last few days.
"If we were back home right now, I'd probably still be mad at you for another few days at least. Properly mad.
Silent treatment, dramatic sighing, all of it.
" A small, tired smile broke through. "But we're trapped in a magic tree with my dad and your brother, and I think we've got slightly bigger things to focus on than being mad at you for a secret that came from a decent place.
So I'm putting a pin in it. Not letting you off the hook. Just postponing."
"That's fair."
"It's extremely fair. You should be thanking me." She snarked.
"Thank you," I said, and meant that too, relief loosening something in my chest that had stayed wound tight for years.
She let out a breath, tension finally draining from her shoulders, and I leaned in and pressed a soft kiss to her cheek instead of her mouth, grateful in a way I couldn't fully put into words yet.
"You being mad at him," Orias's voice called through the bathroom door, muffled and clearly still half-asleep, "is about as terrifying as a cupcake with fangs on it. Just so you both know I can hear every word of this through the wall. And also... I'm sorry too, little witch."
Amber's head snapped toward the door, eyes narrowing into a glare aimed squarely at the wood between us and my brother.
I caught her eye instead, a grin pulling at my mouth that had nothing to do with the conversation we'd just had and everything to do with years of sibling instinct kicking back in at exactly the wrong — or right — moment.
I winked, let a thread of wind gather low and quiet in my palm, and sent it straight through the gap under the door.
A beat of silence.
Then a startled yelp, followed by the unmistakable thud of a body hitting the floor.
Amber burst out laughing, the sound bouncing off the tile, bright and completely unguarded in a way I hadn't heard from her all day.
I laughed too, harder than I had in longer than I wanted to admit, the two of us leaning into each other under the water while Orias's muffled cursing carried through the wall, indignant and entirely unsurprised.
"That's for eavesdropping," I called out.
"I live here! Well — currently trapped-here! Same difference! You could've warned me before launching me off a bed, you absolute—"
Amber pressed her face against my chest, still laughing, and I wrapped my arms around her properly for the first time since telling her the truth, feeling lighter than I had in years despite everything still waiting for us on the other side of that Sanctum door.