Chapter 50
Rafe
The silence around the table is haunting.
Lina sits so still I can’t tell if she’s breathing.
She stares into nothing, refusing to talk to me via her book and quill.
I place a small cup with a few drops of linking serum in front of her, giving Sam a pleading look to help me out here.
He rubs his forehead, then rakes a hand through his hair.
It was hard to convince her to come with me, back to my cabin, to sit and talk this out. I pleaded with her. Begged. Got on my knees and shoved my face into her stomach and sobbed.
I fucking sobbed.
I can’t lose her.
Memories are still foggy as sixty years of new ones insert themselves; all my memories of Lina are there, unscathed, thank the fucking gods.
“Thea,” Sam starts, reaching a tentative hand to her forearm. “Please, let me explain.”
Her reaction is instant. A reddening face of fury, gripping Sam by the collar of his tunic. Her eyes speaking a thousand words to him I can’t hear, and neither can he, but as he hangs his head in what appears to be shame, he heard loud and clear.
“I had no choice.” His voice wavers, and something rotten stirs in my gut.
I slam my palm against the wood, plates and cups rattling as my chair scrapes against the wooden floor. I lean over the table.
“Someone, anyone, explain to me how the fuck this happened?” I lift my hand, my ring finger, the silver band that belongs to Ava, not Lina, mocking me, making me want to take a rusty saw to the tainted digit and cut through flesh and bone if only to undo what’s been done.
I feel sick.
I feel broken.
I feel guilty. Ashamed. Ungrateful I get to have my brother again, but in turn, lose Lina.
Again.
The fire crackles low in the hearth, more embers than flame, throwing a dim orange light across the cabin walls.
The place smells of old timber, spilled whiskey, and orange oil.
It always smells like this. Always too quiet, and too big for one man.
Until Lina filled the space with her beautiful aura. And now… my brother.
Gods, my brother.
Now, two glasses of amber sit on the scarred table. And a man across from me who’s both a stranger and my oldest memory.
Sam leans back in my battered old chair, one leg hooked over the other, nursing his drink like no time’s passed at all. The scar on his jaw catches the firelight when he moves. I don’t remember it. I remember a different face. One I buried sixty years ago.
Though the memory fades as the hours go by.
I risk a glance at Lina, who’s still in a silent, catatonic state, and drain my glass, only to pour another.
She doesn’t touch the linking serum; I took a swig the moment I stepped through my portal, hoping she’d do the same, but we still sit here, unlinked, unconnected, the silence tearing us further apart.
Sam tips his head back, eyes closing for a moment like he’s weighing the words. Like he’s been rehearsing them for decades and still doesn’t know how to start.
“I didn’t die.”
“No shit.”
“I mean… I almost did. Should’ve. But I made a promise.” He looks to Lina, who doesn’t meet his eyes, but the twitch in her temple tells me she heard him.
I wait. I’ve learned how to wait. Sixty years teaches a man patience, even when every bone in his body’s begging to shake the truth loose.
“Get to it, my head’s not gonna hold much more.”
Sam huffs, leans forward, elbows on his knees.
“830. You had mail on your desk. One from the monarchy…”
“Conscription, I know that part. You enlisted under my name.”
“Knew you wouldn’t fight for them. I didn’t want you being hanged for objecting.”
“I gathered.”
“Right. The night before I had to report for duty, a stubborn woman approached me.”
“Lina,” I whisper her name like something sacred. Because she is.
Sam nods. “Though I call her Thea. She told me the name Lina was reserved for one person only.” He winks at me, his grin crooked, and my heart squeezes that Lina did that, like her own way of claiming me.
He elbows her arm, but his attempt to lighten the dense air falls flat, though I don’t miss the blush on her cheeks.
“Thea told me I die saving Maxim Stow. Was hard to hear, because Max is my friend. And we were to serve together.”
Fuck. I never knew it was his friend.
“So, after a bit of a tavern brawl,” he side-eyes Lina. “… linking serum, and getting to know the woman who, quite annoyingly, claimed my brother as hers…”
Lina turns her passive face to glare at Sam, slowly, so slowly she appears predatory and my heart stops hearing those words come from his mouth—claimed me as hers.
He clears his throat, shifting in his seat.
“… we decided to break Maxim’s leg.” There’s guilt in his tone, though a wicked grin tugs at the corner of his mouth like it was a genius plan he and Lina concocted.
“To take him out the battle completely. I couldn’t choose between you or him, Rafe. I’m sorry. So, I chose you both.”
I’m not angry. I have no right to be. Not when I didn’t have the balls to go back to re-write the past.
“I went into the battle with nothing but survival in my heart. To get back to you and fulfil a promise.”
“Promise?”
“I…” He pulls in a deep breath, his fist resting on the table clenching. “… promised Thea when the time came, I’d help you remember. I’d go into the echo left behind and help you remember her.”
But you didn’t Sam, is what Lina’s eyes scream.
All air is sucked from my lungs.
Oh, Lina.
Sam keeps talking, like if he stops now, we’ll both drown in the quiet.
“Battle of Sovo was awful. Cruel. But I got out. I like soldiering so took an opportunity to kill ‘Rafe’ off after my unit was incinerated by a Fire mage. Came home and enlisted under my name this time.”
“Kill me off?”
“So you can never be conscripted again. I made you a ghost.” He smiles. Full of teeth. Punching me in my bicep.
I don’t dare tell him how that could mess my business accounts up. I guess I’ll figure it out.
Sixty years.
“My mind is blown right now.”
“How you think I feel, I’ve been with you for the last sixty years, making memories, but I always knew this day was coming.
Keeping quiet for sixty years was hard. Living normally with you being none the wiser.
Knowing at some point Thea would come into your life.
Yeah… it’s weird. Helped being in the military on long deployments though.
Gave me space from you, and this secret I’ve been carrying around. ”
My throat tightens. The grief’s still there, gnawing at my insides like someone’s shoved rats down my gullet. But it’s not as lonely now.
There’s just one more person, woman, I need to make me complete.
Lina taps on the table. Her fingernail incessantly raps against the wood, her head tilted, glaring at Sam.
“I’m getting to it,” he grits, jaw ticking.
“You had… er… relations, with Ava. But Ava always wanted more. And, uh… she blackmailed me.”
Both mine and Lina’s head swivel to Sam.
Blackmail?
“She found out I wasn’t documented.”
I scrub a palm down my face. Fuck!
Sam grabs Lina’s hand, and I’m pleased to see she doesn’t pull away like he carries some contagious disease—something she keeps doing with me.
“Please, Thea, you must understand, I was scared, she threatened more than my sorry arse. I had no Taka to go back and change it. She threatened to tell the authorities, ruin my military career; Telling them I haven’t declared my ability or lineage.”
Best case, he would’ve been thrown in a prison chamber. Worst case; executed. Bile froths in my gut.
Lina takes back her hand and paces the small area in my kitchen. The urge to go to her strong, but I stay rooted in my seat, elbows resting on my knees, watching her through my top lashes.
All I want to do is grab her, kiss her, ask to start over from where we became lost. Her smell fills my cabin once again and the thought of her scent fading has the back of my eyes stinging.
“She said her mouth would be kept shut if I encouraged Rafe to settle with her.” His sigh is heavy. “So, I did.”
“No woman has ever made me want to settle… not until,” I take a peek at Lina, who avoids me but bites her lip in a way she understood. “How… how did she…”
“There may have been a tonic involved to make you feel things that were otherwise not there.”
Betrayed. That’s what I feel right now.
I don’t think, I react, jumping over the table and crashing into Sam, straddling him, one hand fisting his tunic, the other raised in the air ready to pummel his face, but the flicker of sorrow in his eyes, and the warm dainty hand on my shoulder stops me.
A hand I’ve yearned for since I first laid eyes on her. I spin, gripping her hips and yank her to me, my face finding sanctuary in the swell of her soft stomach I love so much.
“Please, Lina, baby, please! Forgive me, I would have never. My body, my heart, my soul, would’ve never settled. I always knew inside I was waiting for something. You.”
Her eyes become glassy as she fights her tears, her throat bobs and her fingers tremble as they brush against my jaw. It fucking kills me to see her like this. Because of me. Of Sam. Because of our fucking ability. There’s always a sacrifice to what we want, but I refuse it to be her.
A faint hum comes from behind Lina, the telltale sound of the portal I kept open from my office. My body stiffens, knowing who it is, and I jerk up and away from Lina. Her heart breaking all over her face once again in front of me.
‘Forgive me.’ I mouth. The clacking of heels over my wooden floor has my brain cells spasming. If Ava is as wretched as my body tells me she is, it’s wise I don’t let her know how much Lina means to me, so I busy myself in the kitchen, organising a platter of fruits, meats and cheese.
“Wonderful, hon, I’m starving.” Her voice cuts through me like a thousand blades. “Are you feeling better?”
My body pivots from her touch. “Much, thank you.”
“Who’s this then? Anyone going to introduce me?”
My body stiffens, my gaze pleading with Sam once more. He flings an arm around Lina’s shoulders and tugs her swaying body into his side. The image of him holding her is gutting, threatening bile to spill but I force it down, placing the platter in the middle of the table.
“Ava, this is Thea. My girl.”
“Excuse me,” I say, shoving out the door to grip the wooden rail and suck in a breath till my lungs burn. My chest cracks open, his words have flayed me, and despite knowing he’s playing the game alongside me, I ache to launch at him again, rearrange his face and bellow into the world she’s mine.
She’s mine!
She’s my fucking girl!
I suck in another breath, hold it till it hurts, till the sun blurs and my vision swims.
This isn’t over. Not by a long shot.
This isn’t how we fucking end.
She’s mine. Lina. Is. Mine.
And when I fix this, everyone will fucking know it.