The Swan (The Orphium Maere #2)

Chapter 1

RHIANNON

OLEANDER COTTAGE. SIX WEEKS AFTER THE HEIST TO REGAIN THE ORPHIUM MAERE’S SWORDS.

Oleander Cottage was ravenous for new blood. It would devour us whole, and we would feed ourselves willingly to its gaping maw. The rose print of the wallpaper in the kitchen was a hedge maze of hunger and rage.

And I was lost in its depths. These days, there was nothing I wanted more than to stay in bed and never get out, but here I was, staring at angry vintage wallpaper in the middle of the night. Again.

A deep voice distracted me from trying to work out if the floral pattern went somewhere, or if it simply repeated endlessly.

“I don’t…” he paused. I glanced sidelong at Eryx Necroline, whose arms were tucked tightly around his bulky chest. He flicked his fingers at the wall. “...like the wallpaper.”

“No?” I asked, trying not to gawk at his chest.

His Pizza Queen t-shirt fit snugly, showing off hard-earned muscles. Eryx had a body that did things. I knew he went to the gym. But those muscles were from years of enacting violence as much as workouts—just like mine.

He shook his head, and his messy dark waves shifted into his pale green eyes. “It reminds me of that story about the fiends. Did you know that one as a child?”

I shook my head, rocking back on my heels. It would be easy to claim I didn’t remember. It had been centuries since I was a child, in either of my lifetimes. But I did remember, all too well.

No one told me stories as a child.

My biological mother never had time for that—she’d been too busy being the ruler of our island nation to perform such mundane tasks. And when I was reborn… well, I’d done my best to forget my human family.

It helped that they’d been dead for thousands of years.

I barely remembered their faces now. The bruises they’d left on me, the fear that remained when someone I trusted showed even the slightest sign that they might betray me were a different story altogether.

It turned out that having two fucked up families of origin left a mark whether I remembered the finer details or not.

Eryx stared at the wallpaper. “The fiends come out of the walls at night, rising up from the depths of the underworld to eat naughty children. You can smell them coming, according to the story. This wallpaper looks like a monster might crawl out of it.”

I grimaced a bit. “That’s an awful story to tell a child.”

He shrugged. “Necromancer mothers are a different sort, I guess.”

My phone buzzed. When we’d ended up here before, my phone hadn’t worked.

The whispers would begin and the EMF, I presumed, was too strong to get service.

Tonight, for some reason, it was different.

It buzzed again. I slid it out of my pocket and glanced down at the text message, smiling as my fingers flew over the keyboard in response.

“Who are you texting?” Eryx asked, an eyebrow arched with incredulity.

“Sera,” I responded. “She wants to know the mystery pen name of her favorite romance author.”

Eryx’s arms tightened across his chest, as his frown deepened. “A simple internet search would yield that information. It’s the middle of the night.”

Irritation flashed through me, and surprisingly, it wasn’t with him, but with the fact that he was right. Why couldn’t she just ask the internet like everyone else?

I slid my phone back in my pocket, not liking how easily he’d changed my feelings about the text.

The fact that Sera was texting me was proof that she wasn’t angry at me.

It was proof that the horrible things I said to myself weren’t true.

It was a competing narrative with the one that said that I had ruined the Maere’s lives.

I needed those texts.

Eryx didn’t understand. He was so well liked—he and his best friend, Avaline Reyes.

They were the necromancers the entire city was terrified of and fascinated with.

Ares, the leader of the Necroline Dynasty, was simply feared.

But they were adored. Of course, he couldn’t comprehend the things someone like me had to do to be liked.

To be loved was another level altogether. One I certainly couldn’t achieve these days. He wouldn’t understand that. Heat rose in my chest, and a distinct feeling of flailing that made me want to scream into the wallpaper. Everything was too hard, too sad, too complicated.

As he uncrossed his arms, moonlight caught the waves of his dark hair, and I drew another sharp breath in.

There was no use in getting flustered by Eryx Necroline.

He’d made himself painfully clear about where we stood.

Or at least I thought he had. I frowned.

The night of the heist was hazy in my memory, all of a sudden.

What had he said that made me so sure he wasn’t interested in me?

I couldn’t remember. Things were blurry now, here in the cottage. My head felt fuzzy, but I knew he’d rejected me—hadn’t he? I was still embarrassed that he’d turned down my suggestion to share a bed in celebration of reclaiming our swords. That much I knew.

What I’d really needed was someone to prove to me that I was still worthy of attention, still worthy of even the basest form of love. After learning of my mother’s betrayal, her complete lack of confidence in me, all I’d wanted was some scrap of proof that—well, it wasn’t worth pondering.

He’d said no, and from what I could remember through this infernal haze, I’d continued to want him.

A deeper irritation bloomed under the surface of my thoughts.

It didn’t matter that I was thousands of years old, couldn’t die for shit, and should have known better.

I was as weak as any of the other moths the necromancer drew to his flame.

Especially with the odd reverence he had for me, combined with the fact that I was currently sure he would never sleep with me.

At first, I thought it was just professional respect.

I was the Maere’s assassin, and he was the Necroline Dynasty’s primary enforcer.

It made sense that he’d admire my prowess in our trade.

Not everyone dealt death with the efficacy we did.

I had assumed that once the Maere regained our stolen swords, we’d both move on with our lives, and the silent infatuation I’d let fester while we’d planned the heist would fade.

But the two of us kept ending up in this eldritch hovel.

I glanced at Eryx again. He was still staring at the hypnotic maze of flowers in the wallpaper. I got why he kept ending up here. He was a necromancer, and Oleander Cottage was one of the most haunted places in Orphium.

But why was I pulled here nearly every night alongside him?

“Your phone goes off at all times of the day—and you always answer right away. Why?” Even at a whisper, his voice was deep, resonating through me with the most pleasurable of vibrations.

I opened my mouth to answer, but no words came out. Nothing I thought made any sense.

He leaned towards me, his eyes hooded and serious. “It seems like it wears you out.”

That was why I ended up here every night. That look. The way he noticed everything about me. The way he saw me. I liked it.

I liked the way his eyes skimmed over me, with just enough desire to push the boundaries of being respectful, without actually going past them. It didn’t really matter, though. Whatever spark might have flickered between us was snuffed out already.

I was certain he’d already told me everything I needed to know about him—and suddenly the fuzziness in my head cleared.

Whatever it was the cottage did to me when it drew me in like this was either giving me a reprieve or torturing me further.

My mind flickered back to the night we got the swords back.

The first night we’d ended up here, in this very kitchen.

The night he didn’t seem to remember.

The night he’d rejected me twice.

I’m not the kind of man people should have relationships with, he’d said, that handsome face so grim. I’m not good for anyone.

Not that I’d asked him to have one. I’d only asked him if he was seeing anyone because he’d acted so damn interested in me and then didn’t understand that I’d been suggesting we sleep together. I shoved down the humiliation I still felt about his declaration. About the obvious rejection.

“How do we keep ending up here?” I breathed, not expecting him to answer.

“Fairly certain we both walk across the garden and come inside,” he replied, his tone so dry I couldn’t gauge its meaning.

His blithe tone was warranted. I asked every time we came here.

He shook his head as he turned, bending a little to peer out the window above the deep farmhouse sink.

“It’s the middle of the night. I was asleep, I think. ”

I followed his gaze. The night was clear, the moon a sliver.

I frowned at the sky. Had it been clear when I walked across the garden?

I still couldn’t remember. In my peripheral vision, Eryx shifted his weight, crossing his heavy arms over his chest again.

He hadn’t answered my question, not really. But he was right.

It was the middle of the night and I was exhausted, so I went with the easiest answer. “I suppose.”

I moved to leave, but Eryx moved with me—graceful as a dancer—blocking the back door to the kitchen. “Don’t you want to know why we keep ending up here?”

His voice was low, sultry in a way that heated my skin almost instantaneously. A trick. It was always tricks with men like Eryx Necroline. Too handsome for their own good. So many lovers that no one was special. Always someone eager to get on their knees. What must that be like?

“I think I just asked you that,” I snapped.

“No,” he snapped back. “You asked how we keep ending up here, and I told you.”

Pedantic. In my limited experience with him, that was unusual.

We were both on edge. I looked away from him, moving slowly towards the little alcove with a table surrounded by a banquette upholstered with a fabric that nearly matched the kitchen’s rose wallpaper.

The cottage was called “Oleander” and I had to wonder why roses were the primary floral theme.

They were everywhere in the tiny cottage.

“I don’t care about why we keep ending up here,” I muttered, bitterness clouding my voice. My eyes followed the maze within the roses once more. “I just want it to stop. Ember can’t ward this place off fast enough, in my opinion.”

He stared at me for a long moment, as though something about what I’d said bothered him. Finally, he sighed, moving out of the doorway. “Then go back to bed.”

Eryx made a sweeping motion with his arm, stalking back to stand at the sink. He closed his eyes, and took a deep breath, as though there were a thousand things he might say, but I wasn’t worth saying them to.

I wasn’t sure why he was so annoyed with me, but I was annoyed with him too. He turned as I passed him, our fingers brushing, electricity crackling between us. It was nothing more than static, but time seemed to slow, our eyes meeting as we both attempted to snatch our hands back from touching.

“I thought you were going to bed,” he snapped.

“I am,” I shot back, but I didn’t move.

I couldn’t move. I was trying, but it was as though my mind and body wouldn’t connect. And then my feet were moving. I was out the door, in the garden. Running for the house.

Running away from Eryx Necroline.