Chapter 23
ERYX
It was difficult not to chastise myself.
I’d seen this coming, but she’d been better when we were alone.
Rhiannon Bronte was burned the fuck out—and returning to Hemlock House and the realm of cell phones and constant communication had overloaded her fragile healing process.
It was easy to forget because she was so damn capable that she was not, in fact, a goddess.
She might not be mortal, but Rhiannon was still fallible, still vulnerable.
And despite the fact that everyone badly needed her help, she was worn out.
If she didn’t rest, none of us were going to make it through this.
Anyone was free to argue with me about it, but I was sure of that fact.
So, I took her to the only place I knew she might get the quiet she needed. Oleander Cottage.
Cassandra had known when we arrived that what Rhiannon needed most was sleep.
For some reason, she was invested in her wellbeing.
When I had Rhiannon tucked safely into our bed, I found Cassandra waiting on the stairs.
She was dressed in the white linen dressing gown she’d died in, and had barely a wisp of corporeality.
As I walked towards her, she gazed past me, looking at Rhiannon, I assumed.
She pressed a finger to her lips, motioning for me to follow her downstairs.
When we got to the kitchen, she pointed to the garden, where Lara Achilles and Ember Verona sat in the wrought-iron chairs, waiting for me. I would deal with them in a moment.
For now, I had a question for my uncle’s bride. “Who are you, really?”
Cassandra shook her head. “That is a conversation I am only willing to have with her and I will have it in my own time.”
Fair enough. The woman had been through more than her share of being forced to do things by Necroline men. Still, I needed her help. “If I go out there and talk to them, what will happen here?” I was, I had to admit, a little afraid that Cassandra might not let me back into the Cottage.
She placed a ghostly hand on my shoulder. “She is safe with me, Eryx. I will deepen her rest, make it more effective. You should have let me help her more before.”
My hands clenched into fists at my side. For Rhiannon to be truly safe, she needed more than just promises. “Please don’t possess her again. Don’t frighten her with whatever you’re keeping from me.”
Cassandra nodded. “It has been a long time since there was any hope at all. I made mistakes when she first arrived, when you came with her. I… wasn’t myself.” I already knew that. Tortured spirits lost who they were in their grief and pain. “She will rest now. Will you help her?”
The question was so tentative all my irritation bled away, remembering what Cassandra had endured in life. And now she had to deal with the fact that she had caused irreparable harm with her rage in death. “Yes,” I promised.
Cassandra nodded then, fading away, then reappearing on the kitchen stairs, where she sat down, a sentinel between Rhiannon and the rest of the world. “Make them go away,” she said. “They’ll only bother her. They want too much.”
The way she said it had an odd quality to it. She spoke as if she knew the Maere personally. I shook my head. “We need help for what’s next. You have to let them help.”
Cassandra shook her head, a mirror of my movements. “Not until I talk to Rhiannon. Not until I know they are safe for her—that they won’t betray her, like my family betrayed me.”
Now we were getting to the heart of it. There was no record of Cassandra Necroline before the year she prophesied the tsunami. The family she’d claimed sold her to the Necroline Dynasty was nowhere to be found. Ares and I had looked through the dynasty’s records, but there was nothing there.
My hope was that she might just tell me. “Safe? In what way?”
The answer was a determined set to Cassandra’s jaw. She’d said she would only talk to Rhiannon and apparently, she meant it. I sighed, walking out through the mudroom and into the garden.
Lara’s eyes were wide and worried. “I didn’t mean to upset her so much.”
A third chair appeared. For me. Ember made a vicious noise at the sight of it. “Magic,” she hissed. “How?”
I believed Rhiannon was safe with Cassandra, or I wouldn’t have left her. But there was something about her story that didn’t add up. “When Magnus and Cassandra were married, did you know her?”
Lara and Ember both shrugged, but it was Ember who answered me. “They weren’t married for very long.”
“Five years,” I countered.
She and Lara both laughed. Five years was merely a blink of an eye to most of us, but to them—who would live forever—five years must have seemed completely inconsequential.
Lara’s laugh died away. “Truth be told, we were busy renovating the house.”
“You know,” Ember added, “The one you burned down.”
I blew out a huff of air, feeling razzed. “Everyone has apologized for that several times.”
She shrugged, flipping her hair over her shoulder. “I don’t think there’s a limit on being sorry for arson.”
Lara snorted, and I realized they were teasing me. And suddenly, it felt good to be teased. It felt like I belonged with them, that they’d accepted me into their realm. My shoulders came down from around my ears, as I sank into the chair the Cottage had offered me.
“I need to know something, and I know you’re not supposed to tell me.
” Lara and Ember exchanged glances, but I continued.
I wasn’t sure why I felt the need for such secrecy, but this moment felt a little like when we’d been lost in the unreality of the underworld, like if we didn’t move delicately, the whole thing might fall apart.
“I need to know the way your immortality works. Why can’t you die? ”
Ember blew out a breath. There was an odd quality to the air, all the magic being used, I assumed. Perhaps she was familiar with what it signified and understood even better than I did why exercising caution might be wise. “It would be better to show him.”
Lara nodded. They were on some wavelength I couldn’t see or understand. “I’ll stay here—with her.”
Ember nodded. “I think that would be best. She needs a shield while she rests.”
“Cassandra won’t let you into the house,” I cautioned.
Lara grinned at me, then stood. “Guess I’ll have to climb onto the roof, then.” She clapped a hand on my shoulder. “Gotta protect my girl.”
I swallowed hard, something awful shaking loose inside me.
Jealousy. The way Lara said, “my girl” nearly drove me to my knees.
All the history between them, the love. It wasn’t that I was worried Rhiannon might fall for Lara again.
I knew her well enough to know that when she was finished with something, someone, she was done.
I wasn’t jealous of their friendship. I admired that.
The problem was that Rhiannon wasn’t mine.
“Come on,” Ember said, placing her hand on my arm. “Let’s get a cab. I don’t want to deal with parking downtown.”
The cab ride had been quiet. I got the feeling I was being inducted into some deeper aspect of the Maere’s lives, and that Ember wasn’t altogether comfortable being the one to show me.
She hadn’t bothered changing clothes before we left, and neither had I, so we were both wearing sweats to the very formal Library of Amarante.
The woman who worked the front desk pursed her crimson lips at our casual dress, but said nothing when Ember checked us both in.
The Library was private, members only, and had the air of a place where secrets were buried.
I followed Ember through white marbled hallways, up a stately set of stairs, and into a hallway where brass animals marked each door. Ember stopped in front of a door with two intertwining snakes, each consuming the other’s tail.
“So,” she said as she pushed the door open. “You’ll stick your hands on that stone plinth and it’s gonna try its best to consume you.”
I raised an eyebrow, and she shrugged. The room was empty but for the plinth. We’d come for this?
“It’s old magic. And as such, it requires a price,” she explained. “It’s a doorway to the island.”
I knew there was an island the Maere hailed from. It was legend, after all. But not much else was known about where they came from, or why there were only fifteen of them. Ember opened a nearly-invisible panel on the wall, revealing a white, corded phone.
She picked it up and spoke softly to someone. “Eryx Necroline. Mission critical to our alliance with the Necroline Dynasty,” she said in response to what was obviously a question. “I’ll take him to the lyceum and that is all.”
There was a long pause, and then Ember hung up without saying goodbye. Her mouth pressed into a tight line. None of the Orphium Maere were on particularly good terms with their higher-ups, currently. I was a little surprised she was willing to do this for me. “Your visit has been approved.”
I nodded. “So, I just put my hands on the plinth?”
“Yep,” she replied. “The trick is getting them off it when we’re done. But you’ll figure something out. You can talk to Rhi about what you’ve seen, any of us, but Briony… And Ares. He’s seen it too. No one else, though, or bad shit will happen to your brain. Got it?”
“What kind of bad shit?” I asked.
Ember looked down at the plinth for a long moment. “We were told that the worst would be that we’d forget the island… and none of us want that… but once, long ago, I had a contact—a Duke that I needed to question, and I, er…”
I raised an eyebrow, wondering if this was part of the story about the Duke of Westborough Rhiannon had told me at Delicia’s. “Killed him?”
Ember smiled. “So you’ve heard. Well, it turned out that he wasn’t precisely dead. Just very injured, and I needed more information from him. So I brought him to the island. When he was returned, he promptly tried to tell the Authority where he’d been.”