Chapter Fifteen
Her city was falling apart again, but sure, let’s celebrate a sushi joint.
The inside looked like any other dive in the city—a mix of dilapidated tables and booths, a long glass bar with sushi on display, and an array of frazzled waiters.
Most of the noon crowd had already left, leaving the place in a state of undress, with bus boys rushing to clear space for new arrivals.
The closer she got to Hell’s Kitchen and one o’clock, the more the bond turned back on, as if a radar under her skin led her without needing any sort of directions.
She’d never been here before, but she could have found it with her eyes closed.
The scent alone was nearly overpowering—ocean waves, sunshine, spring.
Lorcan came to his feet with one of his genuine Hollywood smiles as she approached the cracked red booth at the back of the shop. He was in khaki trousers and a sky-blue polo that matched his cerulean eyes. His hair had recently been shorn, and it didn’t quite fall forward into his face.
Her heart skipped a beat to the rhythm of his. She could almost feel exactly how he felt about seeing her, and that she was here of her own volition. She pushed those feelings aside. They didn’t belong to her. They didn’t matter to her.
She sat across from him without so much as a hello. “You have twenty minutes.”
He remained standing for a beat too long. As if he couldn’t quite help himself wanting to reach for her. Finally, he took his seat. “Sure. Right. I ordered for us.”
“You don’t even know what I like.”
He shrugged. “I guessed.”
At that moment, a starry-eyed waiter appeared with a plate full of sushi. Kierse eyed it suspiciously, but unfortunately…her favorites were already there.
They reached for the rainbow roll at the same time. Their hands brushed, and she jerked back.
“You can have it.”
“They’re my favorite, too,” he said, splitting it down the middle and depositing half of it onto her plate. “Wasabi?”
She stared at it, suddenly nauseated. She was usually an extra wasabi person. Were even her sushi preferences out of her control? It showed how little she knew of this so-called “soulmate” business.
“I’ve suddenly lost my appetite,” she said, pushing it away. “Tell me what you know so we can end this.”
Lorcan’s eyes were still on the sushi he’d put on her plate. “You need to eat.”
“What I need is literally none of your concern.”
He dumped the other half of the roll on her plate as well. “Have the whole thing, then.”
“If you’re going to be difficult, I can go.” She shifted to leave, and he held up a hand.
“Wait,” he said with something like desperation in his voice. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to run you off. I just…” He paused as if he had to collect himself. She faced him and he opened his eyes, regret in those blue irises. His next words were more of a plea. “Don’t leave. Stay. Eat.”
She counted to three slowly in her head. The sound of him asking her to stay had something like persuasion in it, and magic didn’t work on her. Which meant that it was the bond that was urging her to stay. A serpent’s tongue sliding insidiously down her back.
She slid back to her seat and reached for a sushi roll. “Only because you did what you said.”
“I didn’t realize the bond was causing you to be…unwell.”
She met his gaze with annoyance. “The bond I didn’t want? You’re shocked that my free will being destroyed causes me discomfort?”
“Yes,” he said sincerely with a wince. “It shouldn’t be anything but a balm.”
“Maybe it would be,” she said, leaning forward dangerously, “if I had wanted it. If you’d given me the time to come around to you. If you’d been the hero you masquerade as. Instead, we’re here.” She gestured between them. “And this is all it will ever be.”
“If he’d stayed out of your head,” he snarled, as if the thought of Graves could bring his anger back to the surface, “we wouldn’t be here right now.”
“Hypocrite.”
“I’m not destroying your mind, Kierse.”
“You’re still entering my mind without my consent.”
He rocked back into the booth and then ran a hand down his face. “Okay.” The cocky persona slipped for a minute. “You’re right. I shouldn’t enter your mind unless you ask.”
She was shocked into silence for a moment. She’d been prepared for him to argue the sanctity of the bond.
“I won’t again,” he said like a promise. “Unless you’re in danger.”
“And you can sense when I’m in danger?”
He paused and then nodded. “Yes. Is that sufficient?”
“Hardly a concession. You should give me my powers back, too.”
He ground his teeth together. “I fear we’re at an impasse about that. You don’t think you need protection. You wouldn’t have seen what I did as to your benefit until you were nearly brain dead.” And his defensive wall came right back up.
“And you refuse to accept that I’d rather take help from your enemy than from you.”
“You’re right. I would never accept that,” he agreed.
Kierse pushed her plate away. “You think that you’re protecting me. Meanwhile, you’re leaving me defenseless.”
“I couldn’t imagine you ever being defenseless. You survived in this world for years without knowing you had magic. And as you said, you were very safe last night behind my enemy’s wards.”
She had a clear vision of her jumping across the table with her chopsticks and digging them into his eyeballs. She let out a slow breath and pushed her hair back from her ears. “And this? I didn’t have these before.”
Lorcan’s eyes flicked to her pointed ears. “No, I suppose you didn’t.”
“And the Fae are dead. You know that personally, don’t you?”
He nodded, his eyes glossy and lost. “Intimately.”
“The Fae Killer is still out there, and you leave me with these?” She pointed to her ears again.
“Fine.” He stood from his seat and came around the table. She leaned way back when he slid into the booth at her side.
“What are you doing?”
“Hiding your ears.” He held his hands up. “May I touch you?”
She was so shocked that she nodded mutely.
His hand slid to her ear, and her entire body stilled as if she were frozen into a statue.
God, just him touching her. It was dangerous.
So dangerous. His hand came to the other ear, and they were so close that they were practically sharing breath.
Her dark eyes met his blue ones. The need so evident a pain hit the pit of her stomach at her resistance.
For a second she stopped breathing entirely, trying to suppress the raging emotions that hit her at his nearness.
“There.”
Kierse touched her ears, which felt the same as he retreated reluctantly to the other side of the table. She pulled out her cell phone and looked in the camera only to see that her ears looked round and human like they had before. Her heart lurched.
“How?” she asked.
“Power sharing,” he said as he returned to his side of the booth.
She wanted to hate him for not giving her magic back. For not giving her the opportunity to do her own glamours. But she saw on his face that this was more than he’d planned to offer.
“Why are you still doing this?” she asked. “You forced the bond. You got what you wanted. Graves can’t get into my mind. What do you even think is happening here?”
The flash of something like pain crossed his face again. “Because I care about you.”
A bark of a laugh escaped her. “That isn’t good enough. I’m with Graves. I choose Graves.”
“I know that,” he snarled before he could compose himself.
He straightened again as if she hadn’t meant to see that he was fraying at the edges.
Then he leaned forward, his arms crossed on the table.
“I lost everything, Kierse. I lost my wife and my kids, and I survived. I spent a hundred years putting everything I was into the Druids. I remember when Declan first came to the city from Ireland. He was my second-in-command for years and Graves just…”
Lorcan trailed off, and Kierse saw the pain etched into his features at the memory of Graves killing Declan. It was a mirror of what Kierse felt about losing Nate. Her heart ached, and she didn’t want to share this pain with him, but she couldn’t deny it, either.
Lorcan cleared his throat. “My people, my lands, my throne. For a hundred years, that was all I cared about, and I like to think I was a pretty good ruler. And now everything I care about is gone.” Then his eyes lifted. “Except you. I can’t lose you, too.”
She stilled at the words. Feeling tugged on her chest despite herself. She didn’t want to feel anything for Lorcan. She didn’t want to feel bad for him. He’d done this to himself. But…
“I’ve been on this earth for more than five hundred years, and I was told that soulmates only happen once. For it to happen to me twice, how could you expect me to ignore that?”
Kierse pulled her hands into her lap to keep them from shaking. “If you had respected my choices from the beginning, then I wouldn’t have expected you to.”
He nodded once, straightening into the Oak King once more. “Perhaps. I hurt you. I can understand why you’re upset with me. If I had felt like I had any other choice, I would have taken it. I would see my people and my throne restored to me and you at my side.”
It was a fantasy, of course. He’d lost the Druids. He’d lost his place. And he’d never even had her.
But she couldn’t discount his pain. Even if she was still furious with him. She checked the time on her phone. They needed to talk about something else.
“Tell me about the door, Lorcan.”
“What do you know about ash trees?”
She shrugged. “Besides the fact that the one we created in Brooklyn is made out of ash, literally nothing.”
“Ash trees feature in a lot of historical accounts in the Celtic tradition but also all around the world,” Lorcan explained.
“In the Norse religion, they had Yggdrasil, the world tree, which connects the nine realms. Vikings and Celts were closely tied through much of early history, and we had a similar association with the ash tree.” He fiddled with the sushi on his plate, arranging it into the shape of a tree.
“The tree of life had branches reaching for the heavens, a trunk representing the physical earthly plane, and the roots reaching to the underrealm. The tree itself was a bridge between the realms.”
“Okay,” Kierse said carefully. “Is this supposed to be…metaphorical?”
Lorcan shrugged. “Sometimes. I am the Oak King figuratively and literally. I am connected to the Druids and the oak trees and robins and control the coming of spring. I am the physical manifestation of a natural phenomenon.”
“Not to toot your own horn.”
He grinned at her. “Folklore as most people see this is supposed to explain parts of the world around us that had no explanation. Before there was science, for the explanations we had magic and religion. Why the sun rises and falls, why the trees grow, where the rivers flow. The natural world needed explanation, and those explanations are as valid as the modern scientific explanations. They were grounded in their own reality, and they still ground our reality to those who believe in them.”
“So you’re saying that the tree I created in my triskel is another physical manifestation of the Celtic religion?” she asked, trying to process what exactly he was saying.
“I’m saying that your ash tree is the tree of life.”
Kierse’s eyebrows rose. “What?”
“And when we linked in Scotland and you drained that warlock, we connected to the tree and created the door.”
Kierse sat back hard. “But…”
She almost told him about her portaling. That it had to be because she’d been drawing doors. That she had been trying to use the magic he didn’t know about or could leash. Except she didn’t want him to know about that.
“What other explanation is there?”
“I have no idea. I thought it was just a thing that sacred trees do?”
“No,” Lorcan said. “I’ve never heard of this happening.”
“So you don’t know that it’s our connection that did this.”
“I’m not certain. We’d have to try again.”
“Ah,” she said with a slow nod. She slid toward the end of the booth and stood up. “You’re trying to find a way into my life. You’re making shit up that fits your narrative so we have to work together.”
“That is not what I’m doing.”
She leaned forward on the table and dangled his wallet from her hand. “I’ve been a thief a long time. I can tell a con artist when I see one.”
“I’ll let you take that,” he said with an easy smile. “It’s yours if you want it. Everything I have is yours.”
“No thanks.” She tossed it back on the table. “Your time is up.”
Then she turned on her heel and walked out of the sushi place.
Unfortunately, he followed. “Can you open the door?”
“Leave me alone.”
He grasped her wrist and pulled her to a stop in the middle of the busy street. “Can you open it?”
“No,” she spat, jerking away from him. “Stop touching me.”
“All right. I shouldn’t have touched you.” His hands went up in surrender. “This isn’t even about you and me. I’m not trying to force you to work with me. I’m suggesting that we’re what created the door, so we might be able to open it. That’s it.”
“You don’t know that.”
“And you don’t know, either. So we should try.”
She didn’t want to consider it. The last thing she wanted was to work with Lorcan. Not after what he’d done to her. Still, he might have a point.
“Only as a last-case scenario,” she told him with a sneer. “Once again, your time is up.”
She moved away from him, blending into the crowd like she’d done as a thief a million times. She jogged to the subway, tossing a twenty at the slumbering troll, slipped through the doors to the train, and felt it pull away.
And even as she got farther from him, it didn’t feel as if there were any distance between them. But one good thing had come out of that conversation—he was no longer in her head.