Chapter 2
RHIANNON
OLEANDER COTTAGE. THREE DAYS LATER.
This place was cursed, but I knew that. Panic nearly overtook rational thought. I haven’t been sleeping, I reminded myself. That’s all this is.
The explanation was threadbare at this point.
Oleander Cottage was a menace. It had been affecting all of us, since the night we’d arrived on the property, but it seemed to be hitting Eryx and I the worst, because here we were again.
Maybe this was punishment for the fact that I’d been foolish enough to suggest that Ember buy Oleander Cottage and Hemlock House.
Back when Orphium was still ruled by the Necroline Dynasty, this little compound had been their seat of power in the city, but eventually Roman Necroline had sold it.
After that, the cottage had become unlivable, the spirit activity here so intense, so violent that even the city’s best necromancers couldn’t remedy the problem.
Though, aside from the strange way Eryx and I kept ending up here, I hadn’t seen much evidence of the haunting.
But Eryx was a clairsentient. Spirits could speak through him, and I assumed he sensed them differently than the rest of us.
Necromancers could see ghosts all the time, but the ways they interacted with them varied.
I knew from the heist that Eryx could channel difficult spirits, that they trusted him more than other necromancers, but not much else about his power.
We were back in the kitchen, seemingly unable to leave or to go into any other room in the cottage. In the real world, the daytime world, I barely remembered being here. It was almost like a dream. But then night fell and the house drew us in.
“Do you see them?” I asked. “The ghosts?”
“Not right now.” He shook his head, frowning as if there were something wrong with that.
As if he expected something horrible to happen.
The mere thought of that sent a chill down my spine.
Necromancers rarely feared the dead. They were used to them.
When he spoke again, his eyelids drooped with worry, as though the burden of what he knew and I did not was too much to bear. “I hear them, though. The whispers.”
I had been trying, only somewhat successfully, to ignore the whispers. Come to think of it, they were quieter when we were inside the cottage. In my room in Hemlock House, they kept me from sleeping or even resting, and I needed to rest. Badly. “Do you know what they’re saying?”
Eryx’s eyes darkened. “Some.”
I let out a huff of frustration. Everything about this man was irritating. Why couldn’t he just be straightforward with me? “Are you going to tell me?”
He was in front of me in an instant, so close I could feel the heat from his body.
I turned, backing up against the kitchen sink, the cold porcelain leaching through my thin silk robe.
His arms caged my body. For a moment, I felt small.
Delicate. Nothing more than a rush of blood and a fluttering heart, as heat pooled between my legs.
How had things gotten so intense, so fast?
Eryx’s head bent towards mine. “No.”
“No… what?” I asked, all thoughts having disappeared with his proximity.
“No, I’m not going to tell you what they’re saying.” His eyes blazed with an intensity that stirred something deep within me. “It doesn’t make any sense, and...”
Eryx trailed off, his breath catching as our eyes met in the moonlight.
He had that same look on his face he’d had the night of the heist. He looked at me like I’d hung the stars, like I was something special, not the reason for all my loved ones’ unhappiness.
That look was a balm I didn’t deserve, in a world that only ever hurt, but it was also confusing.
How could he look at me like that, but not want me?
Emotion clawed at my throat. I didn’t have relationships either.
I didn’t do one-night stands. For years, I’d refused affection so sternly that I wasn’t sure how to even begin a bid for it now.
And Eryx was a poor choice of partner. There were so many reasons we shouldn’t be here alone together. That we shouldn’t be standing so close.
Maybe he was right to reject me.
Despite that thought, my back arched away from the sink, as my mind swept all those reasons aside.
Some terrifying part of me was done with the iron grip I’d kept on my control.
My body hungered to press against his, to wind myself around him and forget the chaos in my mind.
It would feel so good to let him drive deep within me, to push out everything but the pleasure and pain of the moment.
To let him use me the way he used all his other playthings.
To use him right back might feel good too.
Something so ill-conceived wasn’t like me, but visions of us in bed together—upstairs, our damp skin sliding against one another in the summer heat—filled my mind. Yes. That was what I wanted. The bedroom. The heat. The rough feeling of him covering me with that impressive bulk, making me forget.
His fingers gripped my chin. I arched into him, sliding my thigh between his legs as I wound my arms around his neck. My skin beaded with sweat. It was so hot in here. So damn hot. The hottest summer on record.
“Rhiannon,” he rasped out. Why was he saying that word? He repeated it, “Rhiannon.”
Was that my name?
Of course it was.
My skin went cold, then hot again as I looked around, blinking back shock as I realized the position I was in. Why was I touching him like this? My heart beat so fast my chest ached. “Eryx?”
He nodded, standing so still I was sure he’d stopped breathing.
“Saints,” I swore as I tried to push away from him, to escape the cage of his arms. “I…”
He hugged me to him. “Stop,” he cautioned. There was no sultry edge to his voice now. Just slow, measured, even safety. “This place feeds off our distress, off strong emotions, remember?”
I didn’t remember. That was the problem. I struggled to remember the conversation we had the first time we ended up here. Hadn’t I just been thinking of it? What had he told me? I’m not the kind of man people should have relationships with. I’m not good for anyone.
The memory was fuzzy already, but I clung to it. Something was wrong. This place was wrong. Movement caught my eye out the window, snow falling in big puffy flakes. Drifts of snow filled the garden. The moon was gone. The night was cloudy with storms, not clear and still.
“It’s winter?”
“Yes,” Eryx reassured me as he gestured at the windows. “Record snowfall and everything.”
Something vibrated in my pocket. My phone. It was my phone. For some reason that was odd, anachronous, though I couldn’t say why. Eryx kept a tight hold on my arm, but allowed me to draw it out of my pocket. “Is it one of the Maere?” he asked.
I shook my head, and it cleared a little. It was the home office. The Consulate. They never stopped calling. Reality washed back in.
Returning to Orphium, and the pain of reuniting with the Maere.
The heist that returned my sword to me. The truth that my mother had sold me out to prove her moral purity.
The never-ending bad news mixed with victories that were barely enough to keep our heads above water.
The ways I’d failed to keep my sistren safe. The way I was a danger to them all.
My thoughts morphed slowly into a riot of voices, all of them conflicting with one another, but only in ways that proved that I was the cause of so much suffering. On that, all voices, including my own, agreed.
The truth was overwhelming.
I pinched the bridge of my nose as my phone stilled. Then, almost immediately, it rang again. The same number as always. I answered, not waiting for so much as a hello. “Stop. Calling. Me.”
The voice on the other end rushed to ask me not to hang up, reminding me that I had a job to do.
An important position at the Consulate. Eryx held my eyes with his, his grip on me firmer now than ever before.
His fingers pressed into the plush flesh of my hips. It felt like support, like solidarity.
“I said stop calling,” I interrupted, not pausing to contemplate why the Necroline Dynasty’s enforcer might want to support me. “My place is here, with the Maere. Don’t call this number again.”
I hung up, my body stilling as I tried to breathe normally.
Eryx’s grip on me didn’t falter, but neither did he move closer.
Because I noticed such things, it was obvious when the cadence of his breath matched mine.
When my lungs sought to match the slowing pace of inhalation and exhalation that he set, surprise glimmered within me.
But my phone sat in my grip, cold and heavy with the weight of the Consulate’s call. I wanted to believe my own words.
For nearly my entire immortal life, I’d believed that our sisterhood of immortal warriors was the key to bridging the divide between the mundane human world and an ancient past that held all the secrets to magic.
I’d stayed the course. I’d done my duty over and over, and it had all come to nothing.
Yes, we had our swords back, and with them, access to the full well of our power, but our own people had stolen them.
My mother, my queen, had believed it was better to test my sistren for hundreds of years, to keep them without the full range of our power, to prove that allowing me to come to Orphium with Ember and the others hadn’t been nepotism.
As though my devotion wasn’t enough. As though my unwavering commitment to the island didn’t matter.
Despite Eryx’s grip, and his calming effect on me, I sank deeper into myself, into the spiral within me that led down, down, down into the dark.
Nothing mattered anymore.
Not the Consulate.
Not the island.
Not my mother.
Not the Maere.
And certainly not me.
Eryx watched me closely, his eyes narrowing as he shook his head. It was as though he could read my mind. He finally stepped away from me, though he slid a hand to my forearm, keeping a tight grip on me. “They won’t stop calling, and we won’t stop ending up here, Rhiannon. We’re on a path.”
I had no idea what he meant. He pulled me across the kitchen, keeping his grip on me gentle but firm. Some part of me fought him, even though I wanted to leave. My eyes locked back on that wallpaper.
“I’ve always loved roses.” The words slipped out of me, wistful and discordant with my thoughts.
Eryx looked back at me. “Roses? What do you mean?”
I pointed to the wallpaper. “Roses. The hedge maze.”
He shook his head. “Rhiannon, those are oleander, not roses.”
I blinked a few times before I saw what he meant. The entire room was decorated with the cottage’s namesake flower. I blinked a few times, as though it might bring the roses back. I shook my head. This was all too much.
I stalked towards the mudroom, Eryx close behind. Snow fell, heavy and wet in the garden. I was going to need a bath to warm up by the time I got back to my bedroom in Hemlock House.
“I can’t do this,” I murmured, wrenching myself out of his grip, out of his magnetic orbit.
I was resentful of the comfort he lent me. It wasn’t real, and it certainly wasn’t for me to keep. Better not to get accustomed to such things, only to have them ripped away later. I’d had enough of that for six lifetimes. “I have to rest.”
He nodded, letting me go. “Go get some sleep.”