Chapter Seventy-Four
Blair
Blair sat motionless in a copper tub. Steam rolled across the water, kissing her exposed shoulders with warmth.
Outside, rain pattered against the room’s window.
Droplets raced down the glass, and she found reprieve in following their paths instead of lingering on the ache spreading through her chest.
If she fidgeted amongst the honeysuckle-scented suds, a piercing pain lodged near her heart.
When she winced and closed her eyes, Blair witnessed the life extinguish from her sister’s eyes over and over.
Despite the hot water scalding her skin, Blair remained still.
For minutes, hours, days. She had no concept of time as grief gripped her.
Occasionally, the winds howled through the coastal town, hauntingly like Emmet’s bellow when Mirella had died.
All because Blair’s shadows had manifested, and they’d killed Mirella.
She’d killed her sister.
The door to the room clicked open.
In the window’s reflection, she spied Lorkan. Rain had matted his hair and soaked his clothes, but he held a tray of food. Soup. Bread. Tea. Tucked under one arm, he’d arrived with fresh clothes, and in the other, a large, weathered book.
Neither spoke as he set the items down.
Blair focused back on the suds, counting the various colors wavering in the bubbles. If she could dunk under the water and not resurface, she would, but by Lorkan’s fierce hold on her as he carried her through the danu, she had a sense the Drengr scholar wouldn’t let her go any time soon.
Lorkan’s boots thudded against the wooden floorboards. He pulled up a stool and sat, rolling up his sleeves. Still, they said nothing, and Blair appreciated that he leaned into the quiet and allowed Blair to sit in it.
He grabbed the small sponge and soap next and dipped his hand into the tub to pull Blair’s arm free. She swallowed as he busied himself with washing her skin clean. Shoulder to elbow to wrist and back up. Not in a sensual manner, but in a tender sort of way.
The gesture threatened to unleash Blair’s tears building up.
“Aren’t you angry with me?” Her first words in hours burned in her dry throat.
Lorkan didn’t stop washing her, moving the stool so he was positioned behind her. She leaned forward, and he rubbed the sponge tentatively down her spine and followed the lines of her muscles.
“Why should I be?” he asked, voice far too gentle.
Blair sucked in a shuddering breath. For not only had she killed her sister, but she’d also revealed her darkest secret.
“Because I kept something from you all these years. I’d not be surprised if you thought me a hypocrite—”
“That is the farthest from what I think of you, Blair,” he whispered, resting his hands on the edge of the tub.
Blair peered over her shoulder at him. “How can you be so certain?”
“Because I love you,” he said, honey stare pinning her in place.
She didn’t doubt him for a second. He’d held her since Mirella had died.
Been by her side. He’d carried her through the danu to Callum, abandoning his duty at Vísdómr and risking his own secret traveling so far from home.
He’d chosen her above it all, and his presence and actions spoke louder than his four words.
“It’s what I planned to tell you at the docks, but then—”
“I killed Mirella,” Blair said, voice breaking on her sister’s name.
“No.” Lorkan shut his eyes and shook his head.
His shoulders tensed. His jaw ticked. When his eyes sprang open again, a sharpness burned in them, as if his predatorial side lay just below the surface.
“Circe killed your sister. I smelled the dark magic that witch used. She manipulated your shadows.”
“You don’t know that—”
“Lean back, Blair,” he whispered.
She swallowed. Obeyed. Her head rested against Lorkan’s chest, and he grasped her hand holding the edge of the tub.
“Draw your shadows forth,” he said into the shell of her ear.
“What?” Blair lurched forward, but Lorkan’s arm clasped across her chest, holding her in place. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You won’t. I trust you. There’s not an ounce of darkness inside of you, Blair.”
She shook her head, unable to fight the tears any longer. “You don’t know that. The Blood Goddess visited me when Evelyn visited the Otherworld. Bloodstones burn my flesh. I don’t know what I am or why—”
“We’ll figure it out,” Lorkan whispered, voice slightly different. “Blair, look at me.”
She turned, slowly, in the tub.
The scholar seated behind her, the man she loved, had released his fangs.
Slightly thicker than a normal vampyr, they jutted over his bottom lip.
Black spidery veins ringed his eyes, making their honey color gleam more like gold.
Something sharper than fingers brushed across Blair’s knuckles.
She turned to their touching hands and didn’t balk at Lorkan’s talons hovering over her pebbled flesh.
Lorkan abandoned his stool and kneeled at the side of the rub, peering up at her.
“You’re not afraid of me?” he asked, his words barely a question at all but full of knowing.
“Of course not,” she breathed. How could she be when he’d chosen her in these last difficult and harrowing hours?
He raised a brow. “Why?”
Blair swallowed. Shook her head. Tears stung the edges of her eyes, and gods knew her heart ached, but something else—mighty and pure—beat inside it.
“Because I love you.”
Lorkan’s lips twitched into an almost smile.
Slowly, hesitantly, he placed a taloned hand on her cheek, cupping her face with the gentleness of falling snow.
Blair placed her hand atop Lorkan’s, encouraging and welcoming his touch.
She gripped his hand like her life depended on it; as if she didn’t sit on solid ground and his touch anchored her in the present.
“Show me your power,” he whispered.
Blair shut her eyes. An old, stubborn streak in her roared in retaliation.
Don’t step out of line, it screamed. Yet, Blair already had.
She’d conjured her shadows in her home city.
Shown her coven, sister, and Lorkan. Perhaps it was inevitable she’d one day reveal them, for they were a part of her. Could she truly outrun what she was?
She called upon them. The power sang in her blood like a whistling wind. Cold caressed her fingertips.
Lorkan sucked in a breath. Not of fear but of wonder.
Blair opened her eyes, and below, in the water’s reflection, she witnessed her shadows tangling themselves between Lorkan’s talons. Curious. Gentle. Like smoky wisps at the end of a storm.
“See?” Lorkan whispered. “Beautiful.”
He shifted back to his scholarly form, all evidence of vampyrism gone. Blair drew back her shadows and stood out of the tub. Lorkan helped wrap her in towels and blankets, carrying her to the bed. Once dressed in an oversize sweater, she nibbled on sourdough dunked in soup.
“Thank you, Lorkan,” she said in their comforting silence. “For coming with me and being by my side.”
He ran a hand through his damp hair. “When I was seventeen, I let fear control me. Believed Sorin wasn’t ready for what I was—perhaps they still aren’t—but I was a fool to think you were amongst them.
Your anger when you discovered I was a vampyr makes even more sense.
Our otherness brought us together long ago.
Your shadows, my latent wolf. I see now that keeping that I was a vampyr from you must’ve hurt because it confirmed your fears about your own power.
I’ll not abandon you like I did all those years ago; I’m with you in this. Forever and always.”
Forever and always, Blair repeated to herself.
Lorkan’s declaration was mighty and soothing all at once.
Blair and Lorkan entangled themselves in the bed’s quilts.
She fell flush against his back, sitting between his legs as his arms draped over her.
A steaming cup of tea wafted between them, and Lorkan opened the book he’d borrowed from the innkeeper, Faeries & Their Tales, and the old spine creaked over the constant rain.
Lorkan read to her late into the night. His storytelling tone calmed Blair’s aching heart.
She still thought of her sister, but she managed the pain better in Lorkan’s arms. He spoke of monsters and creatures tucked into the green hills, recited limericks, and began the longest tale: a faerie king who sacrificed it all.
The moment brought her back to their hiding place inside the Drengr Library. So similar, yet also different. They were still two tender hearts drawn together by otherness, but they’d revealed their secrets. It made the comfort all the more real.
Eventually, sleep found Blair. She didn’t dream amongst smoke and moss encompassing her, but soon hours passed, and a knock resounded on their door.
Day had arrived, and it was time they traveled to the Gray Wood.