Chapter 30
CHAPTER THIRTY
ARKEN
From the moment Kieran walked through the door, I’d felt it.
Something was wrong tonight.
Very, very wrong.
At first, I’d been ecstatic to hear the gentle hum of my wards releasing, followed by the soft click of the lock announcing his arrival.
Immediately, I’d leapt up off the floor where I’d been lounging in a comfortable nest of blankets and pillows.
He was running late, and I had spent the last several hours waiting up as I sipped on over-steeped tea and read through yet another novel I’d nicked from his library.
A reckless blend of excitement and relief was coursing through my veins.
It had been such a long day. Kieran had left for work before dawn, and I had four back-to-back lectures, followed by an exam.
We had both been so busy that for once, there hadn’t even been a single mail sprite exchanged between us, and I was aching to be back in his presence, enveloped by that man and his Shadows.
But the Shadows following Kieran as he entered the room tonight felt unfamiliar, shrouding him in an ominous, foreboding energy.
I couldn’t explain it, not entirely. It was something in the way his eyes seemed blank, the tension in his spine wound so tight that his normally fluid and feline gait seemed stiff…
mechanical, even. It was in the way he didn’t even look at me when he first walked in, shrugging off his coat and hanging it on the hook by the door.
In the way he hardly even seemed to notice as I approached.
“Hey, you,” I said softly, tentatively, as I tried to catch his gaze.
When Kieran’s hands remained at his sides, I reached out, slipping a hand around his waist and beneath his shirt to stroke his back—a casual habit I’d been forming as of late. I was craving the reassurance I always found in the warmth of his bare skin against my own.
He didn’t say anything.
And though Kieran still bent down as usual, allowing me to rise to my tiptoes and welcome him home with a gentle kiss…he didn’t escalate. He wasn’t kissing me back. He wasn’t even touching me.
Fuck.
“Is…Is everything alright, Kieran?”
A discomforting wave of panic was rising from the very worst recesses of my mind, quickly intensifying as the silence between us continued to extend.
It’s happening, I thought miserably. He’s finally realized that this was a mistake. He’s going to tell me we should stop. That we need to go back to being…friends. Just friends.
That inevitable decision, however responsible it may be, made me want to burst into tears. And he still hadn’t said anything.
“…Kieran?”
Despite my efforts to disguise my rising panic, my voice cracked halfway through his name—and that, at least, drew some form of reaction. It brought just a touch of focus back into his gaze, his eyes searching my face with dazed intensity as he reached out to cup my cheek.
As he stroked my jaw with a calloused thumb, I leaned into his touch, clinging to the affection. Hoping like all Hel that this wasn’t the end.
Please don’t let this be the end.
“Kieran, I—” Fuck. The tears were already beginning to form, and I sniffed, attempting to keep them from falling before he could notice.
He noticed.
Finally, a flash of the man I knew seemed to return.
“Fuck, baby, no—I—fuck,” Kieran swore, pulling me into his arms immediately, a hand finding the back of my head and cradling it against his chest. The other began to run up and down my back in a familiar, soothing pattern.
Did he just call me baby?
“Arken, I’m sorry,” he whispered, his voice weary and ragged. “Gods, I’m so fucking sorry. I really thought I would be okay by the time I got here. I missed you so fucking bad, I just…I had a really bad day at work.”
“Oh,” I said softly, not entirely sure what else to say.
I had never seen him like this before. I had never seen anyone like this before. I didn’t know what to do, outside of letting him hold me and breathing in his familiar scent.
“Gods, I’m such a jackass. I’m sorry, Arken. I didn’t mean to scare you like that. Please don’t cry. I’m okay. We’re okay.”
Are we really? Are you?
“Do you want to talk about it?” I asked instead.
“I can’t,” he rasped. “I wish I could, but I…I’m sorry, Ark. I just—I can’t.”
His expression was pained as I withdrew from his arms, searching his face for answers to the thousands of unanswered questions shooting through my head in rapid succession.
I’ve never seen you like this. What happened?
What’s wrong? What does a “really bad day” mean in your line of work, Kieran?
What the Hel could possibly leave you, the strongest man I’ve ever known, in this state?
Are you sure this isn’t about me? About us?
And if it isn’t—what can I do? How can I help? Let me in. Gods, please just let me in.
“Okay,” I said, swallowing the rest.
Give him space, Arken. He doesn’t owe you answers. He doesn’t owe you anything.
“I…I should probably just go home, Arken,” Kieran said, forlorn. “This isn’t fair. You shouldn’t have to see me like this.”
Let him go.
I didn’t have it in me to listen to the voice of reason. I was too selfish.
“Please don’t,” I begged. “Please? You’re allowed to have bad days, Kieran. Whatever it is, it’s fine. Just…Please don’t go.”
He ran a hand through his hair, shaking his head as if to try to clear it out before looking back at me, eyes glistening with something indecipherable.
“I don’t deserve you,” he murmured. “Fuck, I really don’t. But if you want me to stay, yeah. Of course, I’ll stay. It’s going to take me a little bit of time to unfuck myself, I think, but I can stay if you really want me to.”
Please.
“Of course,” I said gently, taking his hand and tugging him toward the kitchen. I needed water, or tea, or something to ease the aching dryness in my mouth and throat. “Take all the time you need.”
As I poured myself a glass of iced water from the carafe on the counter, Kieran pulled up a chair at the breakfast nook. After a quick quenching gulp, I followed him like a hesitant shadow—a satellite moon adrift in his tides, forever tugged toward his center of gravity.
I still felt somewhat skittish, but the urge to soothe him was so much stronger, and so I ran my hands over his shoulder blades, kneading at the tension. A layer of anxiety was immediately assuaged by the soft groan of pleasure that escaped his mouth and the way he leaned back into my touch.
Thank fuck.
If this really wasn’t about me—about us—that was both a welcome relief and a fresh concern.
Because he’d said it was a bad day at work, so this was something related to his job.
And what, exactly, that meant for the tiny spatter of dried blood I noticed on the cuff of his coat before he’d taken it off…
Of that, I could not be certain. But I had some semblance of an idea.
Oh, Kier.
“Can I get you anything?”
“Honestly? Liquor. I’ll take whatever you have.”
I blinked in surprise.
Kieran never drank. If he had some wine or ale with a meal at the taverns, he’d rarely even finish it. He didn’t like getting drunk, he’d once explained. He hated the way it slowed him down and dulled his senses, especially after having lost vision in his right eye.
I was shocked by his request, but I understood. I understood all too well what it felt like to have fractured edges in your mind that were far too sharp to exist without being blunted, somehow.
“Yeah, of course. I’ve got honey whiskey and gin.”
“Gin’s fine.”
“Okay,” I murmured, kissing his temple before stepping back around the counter to go hunt down a pair of tumblers, ice, and both bottles I kept stashed in the cupboards above the sink.
I wasn’t about to let him drink alone, but whiskey was my drink of choice when I chose to indulge—which, I supposed, was often enough these days.
I wasn’t a lush, but I wasn’t like Kieran.
I enjoyed the slow and lazy buzz that alcohol provided.
It was my buffer, my balm against social anxiety that allowed me to actually enjoy time out with friends—letting Laurel and Sia dress me up and drag me out with them to various gatherings and soirées when the mood struck.
Before coming to Sophrosyne, I had largely avoided alcohol for fear of accidentally revealing my hidden Resonances while inebriated, but over the last year or so, I had learned my limits well enough.
“This one’s pretty heavy on the botanical side, apologies in advance,” I said, pouring several knuckles of clear liquor into his glass.
“It’s some fancy infusion I got suckered into buying by an overly charismatic vendor in the Arts District.
I had only stopped because he had all these interesting plants and rare herbs at his stall, but I guess that’s how they getcha. ”
I was doing that thing again. The unprompted over-explanation that seemed to irritate or bore most people. But Kier never seemed to mind.
“You and your plants,” he murmured now, dipping his head graciously as he accepted the glass I offered from across the counter, and then proceeded to pour myself a glass of whiskey.
I smiled at him behind my first sip, savoring the sweetness and warmth as it covered my tongue. Meanwhile, Kieran knocked half of his glass back with one swallow.
“Fucking Hel, alright,” I said, stunned when he didn’t even flinch.
When Kieran shrugged, I laughed awkwardly before sliding the bottle across the countertop—which he caught in one hand with ease.
“Thanks,” he replied, finishing the glass in another quick gulp before uncorking the blue-green bottle and pouring himself another.
“Am I about to see you drunk for the first time, Captain?”
“That depends,” Kieran replied, his voice still low, but a touch less brittle than before.
“On?”
His eyes met mine in earnest. “On whether or not that would make you uncomfortable.”
Oh. Considering the day he’d just had, I was surprised it even mattered right now—though, perhaps I shouldn’t have been. Kieran had always prioritized my comfort and my consent.
“No,” I answered honestly. “It wouldn’t make me uncomfortable at all.”
“Then yes, Little Conduit,” Kieran rasped, the nickname feeling like a caress. “You may very well get to see me drunk tonight. I don’t get belligerent or anything, I promise. Just a bit stupid. And probably very handsy, later.”
I quite like the sound of that.
“But in the meantime,” he continued. “Distract me, please. Tell me about your day.”
For the next half hour or so, Kieran and I sat at my breakfast nook and drank together while I told him about my day, answering his questions about all the inane details—the subjects of my lectures, what I had for lunch, what, exactly, Sia and Laurel had said when they’d managed to corner me in between classes for a mild interrogation over where the fuck I’d been lately.
“Yeaaahhh,” Kieran said, finally starting to smile a bit. “Pretty sure I’m overdue for one of those with Hans and Jer as well. Obviously, there were some other priorities today, but…Yeah. It’ll happen.”
“Apparently, Laurel already tried to grill Hans for information the other day,” I informed him. “Naturally, he gave nothing away.”
“Don’t you dare give him any credit for that,” Kieran snorted, now on his third glass of gin. “He would’ve run his mouth if he knew anything about it, you know godsdamn well the man’s a worse gossip than Ansari.”
I laughed rather hard at the accurate observation, and when Kieran joined me, the familiar sound of rolling thunder in his chest had me pressing my thighs together.
I was only on my second glass of whiskey, but I was a bit of a lightweight. I could already feel the enjoyable effects of the liquor as it loosened my limbs, freeing so much of my pent-up tension and anxiety and simply releasing it into the aether. My body began to feel warm, and free, and…
“Fuck. You can’t keep looking at me like that, Little Conduit,” Kieran said, his gaze darkening behind another long sip of gin.
“Mmmm, and what way is that?” I stepped off the barstool in search of some kind of quick snack.
“You know godsdamn well.”
I cocked my head and shrugged, nibbling on a stray scone. The pastry had nothing on Kieran’s cooking, but it would do.
“Do I?” I asked, attempting to feign innocence while also struggling not to stare at his mouth and the way his tongue glided over his lower lip.
Kieran just stared back at me, holding my gaze as he took another slow sip of his drink. Craving his closeness, I tossed the scone aside and joined him on the other side of the nook, standing behind where he sat and running my hands over his shoulders again.
When he set his empty glass down on the counter, it felt like an invitation.
Emboldened by whiskey and desire, I threaded my fingers through his hair and tugged so that his neck bent back over the cresting rail, his face upside down as mine hovered above.
I caught a flash of fangs as he sucked in a surprised breath.
“Can I look at you like this?” I breathed, leaning down and offering what was, at first, a chaste but lingering kiss.
The placement of his mouth against mine in reverse felt both foreign and familiar as I ran the tip of my tongue ever so slowly across the seam of his lips.
I could taste fire and juniper as they parted, but my wicked side had come out to play, and I pulled back until my lips were just out of reach—taunting him.
Attempting to tease the Kieran I knew, my Kieran, back to the surface now that his daemons had time to settle.
And I knew I’d been at least partially successful when an irritated snarl rumbled in his throat.
“I am going to fuck you up if you keep playing like that, Arken,” Kieran warned darkly. “Don’t test me right now.”
There seemed to be a legitimate undercurrent of warning in his words, but the heat pooling at my center only seemed to intensify. I ran my nails against his scalp, affectionately this time, before dropping my mouth next to the shell of his ear.
“Is that a promise, or a threat, Captain?” I crooned.
The way he forced a heavy exhale through his nostrils, his mouth remaining set in a thin, hard line as he kept an iron grip on the countertop and his empty glass of gin…
Fuck me. It was both. It was definitely both.
Reaching past him, I took another sip of my whiskey with a cocked brow, awaiting his response.
“You already know the answer to that, Little Conduit.”
That low, rasping growl of his had a touch more bite to it this time, sending a shiver up my spine.
Lucky me.