Chapter Twenty-Eight
I woke the next morning and reached across the bed before my eyes opened, searching for someone who wasn't there. The pillow beside me was smooth, with no indents. I sat up, my heart already beginning an anxious climb into my throat.
“áedán?”
Silence. The room was gray with early morning light, the kind that comes just before dawn breaks properly. I checked the bathroom. Empty. I pulled on yesterday's jeans and opened the door to the hallway. There was no sign of him.
When I turned and went back into the room, I noticed a paper on the nightstand. It was a piece of cream-colored stationery with the Velasca's subtle watermark. My hands shook as I picked it up.
Ethan,
I'm sorry. I know what you'll think when you read this, but please understand—this isn't about you.
Not in the way you think. It's about what I'm becoming.
After Caelum destroyed the book, I felt better.
But I'm still fading. I feel it. And I can't do that in front of you.
I won't let you watch me fade as I did my brother.
I'm going deep into the Highlands where there's nothing but mountains and water. Don't follow me. Please. You deserve a normal life. You deserve someone who can remember your birthday, who won't forget the sound of your voice, who won't wake up one morning and look at you as if you're a stranger.
Thank you for everything you've done for me,
áedán
I crumpled the paper in my fist, absently noting that áedán lost his Scottish slang when writing.
Then I was running, with no other thought in my mind other than reaching áedán.
Down the hallway I went, my bare feet slapping against hardwood.
I passed startled Velascans emerging from their rooms. Then I went down the staircase, taking the steps two at a time.
“Ethan?” someone called after me. I didn't stop.
The front door was unlocked. I burst out into the chilly morning air, sprinting down the path and then around the main hall. The parking area was just past it. My lungs burned. My feet were already tender, but I didn't care. Then I came to a stop.
áedán's Land Rover was gone.
“No. No, no, no.” I spun in a circle, looking around helplessly.
“Ethan!”
I turned. Rory was jogging toward me from around the main hall, his ginger hair sticking up at odd angles, still in pajama bottoms and an oversized jumper. He took one look at my face, and his expression shifted from confusion to alarm.
“What's wrong?”
“áedán left. He thinks—” My voice cracked. “He thinks he's going to fade, so he's gone to isolate himself somewhere in the Highlands. I have to—I need to—”
“My car.” Rory pulled a set of keys from his pocket and tossed them to me. “It's the blue Fiesta. Take it.”
“Thank you!” I ran for the car.
“You're welcome!” he shouted after me. “I'll tell Julian. Just go get áedán.”
I ran for the blue car. The Fiesta was small, old, and smelled of energy drinks and crisps.
I didn't care. I yanked on the seatbelt, started the engine, and spun the car around.
Then I floored it down the driveway. The gate was already opening.
Someone in the main house must have seen me leaving.
Or maybe the darn thing was magical. It wouldn't surprise me.
The roads were empty—another blessing. I pushed the car as fast as it would go, heading the way áedán always took to go home. He would go back to Loch Lomond first—he wouldn't be able to help himself. He'd need to see it one more time before he disappeared into the mountains.
My phone rang. Julian.
I answered with, “I'm going after áedán.”
“I know. Rory told me.” Julian's voice was steady. “How far ahead is he?”
“I don't know. An hour. Maybe two.”
“We put a tracker on the Land Rover. I'm sending you the coordinates now.”
My phone buzzed with a text message. I lowered it and thumbed open the text while half-focusing on the road. I tapped the link, and a map appeared with a blue dot further down the road I was on. áedán wasn't that far from me, maybe a couple of miles.
“Thank you.”
“Ethan.” Julian paused. “Bring him back.”
“I will.” I hung up and propped the phone on the dashboard.
The sun rose properly as I drove, turning the sky from gray to pale gold. Then I saw him. I accelerated, pulled ahead of the Land Rover, and stopped the Fiesta sideways across the road.
áedán stopped his car and stared at me through the windshield.
I pointed at the side of the road. He closed his eyes a moment and then pulled over.
I reversed the car off the road and parked in front of his.
As I unbuckled my seatbelt, áedán got out of the Land Rover.
He was wearing the same clothes from the night before.
His hair hung loose around his shoulders, and his shoulders slumped.
I got out of the car and strode toward him.
“Ethan.” His voice carried across the space between us. “You shouldnae-a followed me.”
“You left a note?” I was shaking from adrenaline, fear, and rage. “You left a bloody note like some tragic hero in a bad film, and you thought I'd just let you ride off into the sunset?”
“It's dawn.”
“Sunrise, whatever! It's a saying.”
“Fine.” He took a step toward me. “And aye, I thought you'd let me go because you're smart enough to know this is the right thing.”
“The right thing?” I laughed, and it came out harsh. “The right thing is running away to die alone in the mountains?”
“I'm not running away. I'm protecting you. I thought if they saved me, I could come back.”
“What are you trying to protect me from?”
“From me!” The words exploded out of him. “Damn it, Ethan! I watched my family fade. All of them. I held my brother in my arms while he disappeared. It haunts me. I dinnae want that for you.”
“So you'll just disappear by yourself? You'll fade away where no one can see you, and that's supposed to be better?”
“Aye.” His jaw was tight. “You deserve a normal life. You deserve someone who wullnae forget your face, who wullnae wake up one morning and not ken who you are. You deserve—”
“Yeah, I read the fucking note. You don't have to regurgitate it! A normal life? I'm in the Velasca, you idiot! And you don't get to tell me what I deserve.” I closed the distance between us. “You don't get to make that choice for me.”
“I'm trying to protect you.”
“You've spent six hundred years protecting strangers.” My voice broke. “You've guarded the loch, saved children, and kept people safe even when they forgot you existed, even when your myth turned monstrous, and they believed it. It's time for someone to protect you.”
“That Forgotten who attacked me was my brother, Ethan. What if he was warning me?” áedán's voice dropped to barely above a whisper. “What if he was showing me what I'm aboot to become? What if—”
“Stop the what-ifs.” I grabbed him by his upper arms. “Stop it. You're not going to become that.”
“You dinnae ken that.”
“Yes, I do, because you're not alone. The Velasca is fighting for you. I am fighting for you. Caelum says that one person loving a myth is stronger than a thousand who just believe in it. And I love you, áedán.” The confession came out rough, with none of the polish I hoped to give it.
“I love you, and I believe in you. You. The man who fights with machines and fixes bridges.
The man who's been alone for years and still believes people are worth protecting.
I love you, and I'm not letting you disappear into the Highlands to die alone because you think that's what's best for me. I assure you, it is not.”
The silence that followed was enormous.
áedán stared at me. His mouth opened. Closed. His eyes twitched and filled with hope. “You shouldna said that.”
“Why not?”
“Because I love you too.”
The world tilted.
“I've loved you since that first night at the Velasca Estate, when you kept working even though you were exhausted. You kept working for me. And I looked at you and thought, he's finally here. The one I've been waiting for.”
I kissed him.
áedán made a sound against my mouth—surprise or surrender, I couldn't tell.
Then his hands were in my hair, and he was kissing me back with all the love he'd finally admitted to feeling.
I pulled him tighter against me. We ground our bodies together, groaning and grasping.
On the side of the road. I eased back as that thought occurred to me, and we stood there, panting as we stared at each other.
“I've lived a long time, Ethan. I'm okay with dying. I just dinnae want you to see me like that.”
I cupped his face in my hands. “It's too late now. You told me you loved me. So, you don't get to run away. You don't get to decide you're not worth fighting for. Not anymore.”
“Ethan—”
“No! I'm going to protect you now. And you can just fucking deal with it!”
He closed his eyes. When he opened them again, they were wet. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Okay.” He kissed me again, softer this time.
We stood there on the side of the road as the sun climbed higher, holding each other as if no one else existed.
áedán eased back to look at me. “I love you. Even when I forget everything else, I'll remember that.”
“I know, because I'm going to make damn sure that you remember me.”
He laughed. “I'm holding you to that.”
We got back into our vehicles and drove back to the estate together, his Land Rover in front of me the whole way.