I opened my arms and was thrust back into my body, my powers rapidly shutting down. I’d never, ever had anything like that happen before. Aidan kissed my cheek. I’d fallen backward and he’d caught me. That must have been what happened, even though I couldn’t remember him doing it. “You okay?”
I nodded. “How long was I in her head?”
“An hour.” Noah handed me a glass of water. “Her color is better. Whatever you did…”
“It felt like a second. No more. She’s lost. On a dark path. Somehow, we have to get her out of there.”
Thaddeus sat on the floor to my right. “Where are her guards?”
“Maybe she never had her real ones. Or, maybe, like you, they think she’s dead.” I looked across the room at Krystal. “We need answers.”
Tomorrow, we would follow the raven.
I lay in the bed, Eric on one side of me, Thaddeus on the other. They’d been doing research and come to the conclusion that what they’d heard from Anne’s guards was correct, I needed two of them with me to either sleep or heal at any time. I was exhausted from my walk in Mika’s mind but also wide-awake. It was a strange, disconcerting moment that made my head hurt. I rolled over for the fifth time in half an hour. This time, Thaddeus pulled me up against him, and Eric shoved his leg over the bottom half of my body. I wasn’t going anywhere, that much was clear.
Neither one of them spoke. In the darkness, they both appeared asleep. Almost as soon as we’d settled, they’d both conked out.
Eric had woken up in the middle of the battle and handled the entire nightmare of the poor boy the demons had killed. Thaddeus tended to sleep every second he could because there were so many times he got no rest at all.
He sucked in his breath, and his eye flew open, one hand flying to the patch that covered the eye socket that had been stitched closed. His heart rate, which had been slow and steady, skyrocketed to a fast pitch.
I touched the side of his face. “Are you okay?”
“Did I wake you?” He adjusted his position, his arm staying around my waist.
I shook my head. “I can’t sleep. What’s going on?”
“Sometimes it hurts—like a phantom pain—and it woke me tonight. My eye, I mean. I’m sorry, love.”
Behind me, Eric murmured something unintelligible but otherwise didn’t seem to wake up at all. I stroked my hand over the patch. Thaddeus took my hand and kissed my palm. “Thank you for caring, Teagan. It goes such a long way.”
“Take it off.” It couldn’t be comfortable for him to always have the thing on.
He scrunched up his nose. “It’s not pretty.”
“I’ve seen it before. And I’m not afraid of scars. I have a few of my own, if you haven’t already noticed.” The ones on my back and wrists would always be there. I refused to be ashamed of them. “They’re evidence we survived something.”
He snorted. “It’s evidence I let someone get the jump on me.”
Still, he took the patch off and set it aside. I ran my fingers over the skin beneath the scar. “You don’t have to wear the patch, ever.”
He sucked in a long breath. “I don’t want to scare little children.”
My mind couldn’t help but travel to the thought of the little one we buried. “There isn’t a child left in this world who hasn’t seen evidence of demons. From the moment we’re born we know about them. A stitched up eye? It’s nothing.”
Behind me, Eric kissed my neck. “Besides, it makes you seem so tough and scary.”
Thaddeus snorted, and I laughed aloud at the same time. “I thought you were asleep.” I patted the leg he had me pinned down with.
“I was, but you two are being chatty.” He yawned. “Thought maybe I should see if all was okay.”
Thaddeus brushed my hair off my forehead. “She wasn’t sleeping. I didn’t wake her.”
Eric pressed his nose against the back of my neck again. I closed my eyes. I’d forgotten, what it felt like to just have affection whenever I needed it. “You need to rest, Teagan.” Eric’s fingers drew a circle over my stomach. “You have to fight tomorrow.”
I breathed in the moment. “We don’t know if we’re going to fight. We’re following ravens.”
Thaddeus kissed my forehead. “When have you ever left the safety of wherever you lived and not ended up fighting?”
Sadness wafted through me. I’d been in my official home when I’d been taken in the middle of the night and locked away from the world in the mines.
Both Eric and Thaddeus moved closer. I opened my lids. I had to remember they could feel what I did, sometimes see my memories. In the room next door, Aidan, Noah, and Brody could taste my sadness, too. If I faltered, the shadow could reach them.
I shook my head. “Sorry.”
Thaddeus met my gaze in the darkness. I’d never have seen it if not for the moon. When had it gotten full? I used to pay attention to those things, but I didn’t anymore. I’d stopped caring.
“We’re all going to be sad sometimes, Teagan. It isn’t your job to protect us from it. Or to take away our pain if we feel any.”
He was referring to Eric and the sadness earlier. “I can’t help that. I need to fix things, and when I have to—I’m not in control.”
“Fair enough,” Eric added. “Don’t try not to feel things. Let us feel them with you.”
Okay. I swallowed. “For years, I thought I’d cost you all your lives. I couldn’t live with it. And… I ran away from it. I didn’t know how else to survive. Still, when I think about that time, you’re dead. Even though you’re not. The pain I had, it was awful. But losing you? That was worse. How could that not be my fault? I fell in love with all of you. I should have kept my mouth shut. Then you wouldn’t have died.”
There. I had said it. They’d been my responsibility, my guards. Part of my job was to keep them alive till they were old enough that they were released from the Sisterhood with gold to start their lives. That was why they’d all signed up. If I didn’t kill them, I was, at the very least, responsible for them losing their dreams.
Thaddeus pressed his forehead to mine. “We were responsible for you. Not the other way around. Even if we had died, that wasn’t on you. That was failure on our part.”
“No,” I shook my head. “It goes both ways. You keep me safe when I’m fighting, and I make sure to never place you in a situation where you have too much of a chance of getting killed.”
Eric made a sound in the back of his throat. They were both silent for a second, and then Thaddeus spoke. “You are our whole life. Without you, there is just existence. I understand your pain and sadness. I have it, too.”
And then I was flooded with his. And Eric’s too. They’d been holding back, the same way I had. I cried out and lost all of my ability to shield them from anything I felt. It was like a wall came down in mind, and I couldn’t block out anything. Both Eric and Thaddeus shouted in pain. Sadness dripped into my bloodstream. It was overpowering. Not just the two with me, but then the door swung open, and my other three piled into the room.
Noah was first to reach me. He threw his body on top of mine as though blocking me from assault. “What is going on?”
Bodies were squished together, and soon I had all five of them touching me at the same time. Their physical presence was… comforting. The despair began to lift like a dissipating fog.
“Were you trying to kill her?” Aidan was mad. There was a certain timbre to his voice; a lowering of the way he spoke that always told me he was angry. If I’d sought to check, I could probably feel it through our link, too. But my head was too full right then to go poking around.
I’d have to practice in a calmer moment.
“I’m okay. Are you all okay?” I tried to sit up, but Noah hadn’t moved yet. He was still blocking me like someone might come through the door wielding a knife and he wanted to be stabbed instead.
Aidan leaned on the wall near the door. “Thaddeus, you of all people, need to do better than that.”
My One threw his hands in the air and was out of the bed seconds later. Noah rolled off me, and I could finally move around.
“You want to lead, Aidan? Have at it.”
Two shook his head. “We both know I can’t lead.”
He wasn’t wrong. Aidan was strong and smart, but he charged into situations where perhaps going around them might be the best course of action. The Sisterhood had been many things, but stupid wasn’t one of them. They’d picked the right one of my guys to be the leader. In the case of my guys, since they all started together and were the same age, there would never have been retirement. Unless one of them died, they were keeping their numbers until they all left.
I stood. “Everyone stop. We just had a very traumatic thing happen to us. Oh, forget it. That wasn’t the trauma. The years apart were the problem. This wasn’t Thaddeus’ fault. I don’t know that the co-joining would have worked if we hadn’t had that happen.”
A thought dawned on me. “Go get mattresses and drag them in here. We’re all staying together tonight.”
I needed them, and right then, they needed me, too. Brody nodded. He patted Aidan on the shoulder, and together, they scooted from the room, presumably to do as I asked. I took a deep breath.
I touched Thaddeus on the chest, grabbing onto his shirt. “Go lie down. We’re all getting sleep.”
Noah scooted off the bed, grabbing the end of a mattress Brody brought in the room. It took a little maneuvering but soon everyone was where they would spend the rest of the night. I settled between Eric and Thaddeus once more. Brody closed the door, bathing us in darkness. I’d felt great before, but somehow having all five of them there filled the room with a new sense of security.
In comfort, I listened to them breathe. Eric kissed my shoulder, and I knew what he was saying without words. I really did need to sleep. The ravens were waiting for us.
I closed my eyes. They were all there, in the midst of my mind. I wasn’t alone in the darkness, and it occurred to me right then and there that I would never be again. As long as we lived, I’d always be able to find them when I needed them.
9
The whip came down on my back. I groaned. My previous experience told me the pain would stop. At some point, I would go numb. But it hadn’t happened yet, and I was a long time from it. The person wielding the whip was the most masochistic of all my torturers. The woman had no ounce of compassion in her body. She raised the whip and...
Brody caught it in his hand, wrapping the leather around his wrist while he tugged it toward him. I gasped. What was he doing there?
He knelt in front of me. “This is a dream. A memory. That’s all.”
“What?” He lifted me into his arms. Brody was right. This had already happened. It wasn’t taking place now. “How are you here?”
He grinned, and my heart turned over. I’d always loved to make Brody grin. “We share a link now. You were having a bad dream, I followed it. Was fairly easy, actually.” He kissed my lips. “I love you, Teagan.”
I sat up in bed, the dream ending. Across the room, Brody did the same, grinning at me. That had really just happened. We’d been together... in my head. And he’d made the pain stop. The sun came in through the window. It was a new day.
* * *
The guys packed the carriage, and I stood with Anne, watching them. I wasn’t used to not pitching in and helping more, but my trying to lift bags had seemed to only get in their way.
Anne pulled me to her. “I can’t believe you’re doing this.”
“Despite my cowardice recently, I used to be quite brave. I’m capable.”
She sucked in an audible breath then let me go. “You were never a coward, and you continue to be the bravest person I know. No, I mean you’re going out there with no plan and no idea where you’re going.”
“We’ve got to follow the raven.” I knew it must sound crazy. Then again, I’d followed Anne to this place based on her guys’ assertion that the spirits had told them to build a Sisterhood. We did most of what we did on faith. How else were we to battle the demons? How else were we to make sense of the senseless? Otherwise, we were just crazy thinking we could help at all.
We’d all signed up for this life. That meant I had to, somehow, let go of my five years and move forward. That’s what this was about. Trusting the ravens to lead me where I was supposed to be would go a long way to healing.
Maybe.
Anne cleared her throat. “Here’s a question. What if the raven goes nowhere? It’s been circling this place for weeks. Maybe it isn’t going anywhere.”
I looked up at the bird and had to grin. My amusement must have caught the link because all five of my guys stopped what they were doing to smile at each other then me. “Then I guess we won’t get very far.”
I climbed onto the carriage in time to see Daniella exiting the house on her way to the courtyard. She put her arm around Anne and said something. Our Sister Superior nodded her head. They both watched as we pulled away. I wondered what they said to one another and why Anne appeared so pale...
Brody tugged me against him, and I let myself be moved. We were all on top of the carriage, which smooshed the roof. Still, we had to see the raven, and I wanted to be where I could view the bird and not just hear about it from inside the carriage.
“I really hate you up here,” Aidan called out over the noise of wheels on the once paved road below us. “I like you behind doors.”
I pinched his chin. “It’s a new day, darling. I want to ride with my face toward the sky.”
“I know.” He smiled back at me. “But I hate it.”
“Somehow, you’ll live.” He rolled his eyes, and I turned to find Noah regarding me silently. “What’s the matter?”
Noah turned his gaze toward the bird, which was flying as if he knew we followed. He probably did. “I miss you.”
“I’m right here.”
He leaned over to kiss me. “Don’t hate me for feeling like I really, really need to be inside of you. I’m not going to push. You always say who and when. But since you asked. I’m missing that connection. I’ll get over it.”
“Hey.” I took his hand in mine. “It’s not disinterest. Just lack of time, and we haven’t been alone.”
He kissed me gently, again. I sighed against him. “Tell me what you would have done, Noah, if things had gone normally. Like you hadn’t all lost your minds and decided to love this old woman. What would you have done when you left the guards?”
He shook his head before levity showed in his gaze. “Old woman? You’re thirty-one, right? Five years older than me. And you look like you’re eighteen so, yeah, don’t pull that.”
I leaned back, which put me in Brody’s lap. He wrapped his arms around me. “Seriously,” I called out for Noah and all of them to hear. “If I hadn’t tricked you into wanting to live this crazy life with me forever, what would you each have done?”
Noah stretched out his legs. “I just knew I never wanted to see that orphanage again. I never wanted to be reliant on anyone for food or water. I wanted to be able to say where I went and what I did.”
My heart fell into my stomach, and he sat up. “Why did that make you sad?”
“Because you’re absolutely not getting to say who, what, when, and where with me. We’re all taking orders.”
He shook his head. “Here’s the thing, my love. I’d go anywhere with you anytime. From the moment I met you that has been true. So, I never really thought about what after since I wanted to make the time with you last.”
My cheeks heated. The things he said to me... they were so perfectly Noah. He was here. They all were. We were following a bird into who knew where, but we were together.
Listen to me, Prophet.
A voice, crackled and old, rang into my head like a bell going off. I covered my ears.
“What is it?” Aidan called out, but I couldn’t answer him. Not when all of my attention was on making the pain in my ears stop.
W
e warned you not to come out here. We told you what would happen. As if to make the point, the darkness coated light flared to life within me. I didn’t even know what I was fighting against, but I sent a surge of my abilities into the air around us. With a pop, the hold of whatever demon assaulted my ears had disappeared. I sagged against Brody. My powers weren’t strong, not in that kind of fight.
“Could you hear what it said?” I asked them.
“No.” Thaddeus scooted over to me, leaving Eric to drive. “We could feel your pain. That’s it.”
“Threats. Shouldn’t be out here. It called me Prophet.”
Thaddeus and Aidan made eye contact before they both turned to Noah. For all I knew, they were silently leaving me out of a conversation with Brody and Eric, too. “Have something you’d like to share?”
“We think you’re probably the Prophet,” Brody supplied. “The birds, the connection to prophecy. That’s our best guess.”
I sat forward. “Other than the demons, I’m not hearing voices, I’m not seeing visions. I think Mika on her dark path is more likely to be the Prophet.”
Thaddeus shook his head. “We’ll see.”
Tiredness hit me like a rock, pounding. I cried out, and Brody called out to the others. “Eric, stop. I’m taking her down below.”
I didn’t know if I’d be safer behind closed doors, but I wasn’t going to argue. Not when a drum sounded in my head with no signs of stopping. What in the hell had that demon done to me?
The carriage swayed beneath us. I missed the feeling of the cool air and sunshine on my face. My head was in Brody’s lap. “Do you remember what I asked Noah earlier? What would you have done with the money after the guard?”
“I would have set myself up in business, teaching skills to people who wanted to be guards. And then I would have found a woman who was willing to take a chance on me and had ten kids.”
He spoke the words without hesitation, which made me smile. “I can picture you. A wife. Ten kids. Laughing. Yelling.”
Past Be Damned Page 11
