“Leave it be, Briana. That is all I can say on the matter.”
Bri scowled at the phone as it bleated out a dial tone.
What the hell?
She slammed the hunk of black plastic onto the hook so hard it bounced out and clattered to the floor. She picked it up and laid it gently in the cradle, then scrubbed her face with her hands.
So basically, she was doing everything wrong. They were all going to die, and she was just supposed to sit back and catalog it as it happened? She had counted on Geri being the one person she could turn to who would understand. The only other person who knew about the mirror. She needed advice now more than ever, and instead she got cryptic Oracle-speak for you’re on your own, kid.
Kean and Astrid chose that moment to come inside, and the panic she barely had under wraps spiraled into her throat again. Their expressions were shuttered, but she felt their anticipation and resentment like a physical blow to her gut. Geri had to be wrong. Nothing was certain. The future hadn’t happened yet. She still had time, she just had to figure out her next step. All by herself. Bri slinked to the sofa and curled into a ball in the corner. “I’m beginning to see why Oracles keep a bottle of whiskey handy.”
“How about coffee?” Astrid said, her tone careful.
“Fine,” Bri answered as Kean settled near the middle of the couch. He seemed calmer, his posture less tense as he reclined gingerly beside her. They sat in silence while Astrid fixed coffee, with the black kitten snuggled into the cushions behind them, and the dogs sniffing around their feet.
Astrid returned a moment later with a tray of three mugs, a steaming bowl of pungent tea, and a stack of washcloths. She passed out the coffee and squatted on the low table in front of Kean to tend to his still-oozing wounds. Bri shifted to give them more room, but Kean’s hand fell from the back of the couch to her shoulder and he squeezed gently, silently asking her to stay close.
“We need to know what’s going on, Bri.” Astrid’s voice was calm, matter-of-fact. She swabbed the caked blood from the knuckles of Kean’s hand with studious concentration.
Bri sighed, wishing she could just sink into the couch and disappear. Astrid’s interrogation style might be less direct than Kean’s, but the outcome was the same. There was no way to lie to her friends without sacrificing the fragile faith they had in her, and there was no way to tell them the complete truth. Things had gone too far, gotten too twisted up with dreams and visions, the past with the future. After a loaded pause, she said, “I wish there was something I could tell you.”
“You can start with your vision.” Kean stared at her, his eyes dark with warning. Everything he thought in that moment he poured into that look, as if he could will things to unfold how he wanted: Don’t lie. Don’t push me away.
Bri studied her hands as they curled around her knees. “I saw Eric’s death, but I thought I had changed it. I didn’t know anything about the fire, I swear. I would have told you, tried to…do something.”
Astrid’s brows scrunched, but she remained fixed on her task.
“Why didn’t you tell me, Bri?” Kean kept most of the bitterness out of his question, but it left him sounding hollow.
Bri puffed out her cheeks, and tears sprang from the corners of her eyes of their own accord. She hugged herself tighter. “I didn’t want to believe it was true. I didn’t want any of this to happen.”
“But it did happen,” Kean snapped back, shoving away Astrid’s hand near his face.
Astrid dropped her rag into the steaming bowl with a defeated sigh.
Kean’s normally warm hazel eyes took on a steely grey cast. “Damn it, Bri, all you have to do is be honest and trust us. Trust me. Is that so hard?”
“What? No.” She looked at Astrid in dismay, but found her best friend already battened-down against the inevitable shit-storm that was Kean in a temper.
“I don’t—” Bri started to say, but broke off when Kean’s fingers dug into the tender flesh of her arm. “Ow.”
“This is not a time to be keeping secrets, dammit!” He shook her. “Don’t you understand? Your life is on the line.”
“All our lives are on the line!” Bri yelled back. Kean flinched, obviously surprised by the heat in her voice. “I’m not as stupid and helpless as you seem to think. I don’t always need you to ride in and save the day. And if you would get off your high-and-mighty horse and take a look at things from this angle, you’d realize there are some things I can’t share. I’m an Oracle — secrets come with the territory.”
Even deadly ones.
Kean’s initial rebuttal died on his lips, which he pursed in thought before answering. “We’re supposed to be a coven.”
He let her go, and her fingers tingled as blood rushed back down her arm. She glanced at Astrid’s somber face. The fact that the most level-headed one of them chose to remain silent didn’t bode well. Either they were both making sense, or neither of them were. Bri scowled. “I know.”
“I don’t think you do.” Kean shook his head. “You seem hell-bent on keeping everyone at a safe distance. Even me.”
“No,” Bri implored, staring back and forth between the two of them — the only family she had left. The tears were flowing freely now, but she didn’t care how pathetic she looked. Didn’t they know how much she needed them? Could they really just give up on her? Please, she prayed silently. I can fix this. I will find a way.
Astrid laid a hand on Kean’s knee and he let out a shaky breath, spearing his fingers through his hair. Flakes of dried blood, soot, and dirt shook loose into his lap. When he spoke again, his tone was gentler. “You don’t have to bear this burden alone.”
She couldn’t be sure if it was with her Second Sight, but Bri saw a shadow of doubt hovering over her two best friends, a bank of shifting clouds blocking out the sun, casting everything that had happened in a different light. They weren’t standing by her because they believed in her. They only wanted to protect her.
Because they think you’re fragile and weak.
Bri’s breath hissed out, and a knot of anger un-spooled. Her will to prove them wrong pulled so tight it hummed like a piano string, summoning the dregs of her strength from a fathomless place within she’d never wanted to acknowledge. It came easily, filling her body with a languid internal warmth, lending power to her voice. “This is my burden to bear.”
Astrid huffed and crossed her arms over her chest. “That’s a bullshit cop-out.”
“What would you know about it?” Bri half-snarled. “You’re the one who begged me to See for you. I’m sorry if you can’t handle the truth.”
Twin pink blotches appeared high on Astrid’s cheeks. “What truth? You haven’t told us anything.”
Bri had to rub her arms against the sudden chill in the room. “Why should I, when you don’t trust me?” The argument was making Bri dizzy, but she was reeling from too many conflicting emotions to stop now. She had no foothold, nothing steady, until Kean leaned over and cupped her face in his large, capable hands. He stared into her eyes. She felt instantly more grounded. Warmer. Softer.
Weaker.
She turned away.
“Please, baby. How can I protect you if you don’t let me in?”
Bri shrugged off his soothing caress. She gave both Astrid and Kean a long look. “Maybe you’re not supposed to protect me from this.”
Kean clenched his jaw so hard Bri’s teeth ached in sympathy, but before any of them could do more damage, a chorus of barks and whines announced a visitor. A precise knock followed. Astrid sighed and climbed to her feet as Bri and Kean retreated to their separate corners of the sofa. The front door opened, letting in a gust of cold air and the pitter-pat of a light drizzle outside. An abnormally long silence followed, and she and Kean glanced up simultaneously.
Aldric Wright stood in Astrid’s doorway, wearing a black wool trench coat over a tailored suit, as if out for a rainy day stroll.
“What are you doing here?” Astrid asked.
; Kean leapt to his feet.
Bri followed, unsure whether she meant to hinder or help him. It depended on Kean’s intentions.
“I came when the Synod received notice of the Guild.” Aldric peered over Astrid’s head to lock gazes with Bri. “May I come in?”
“That depends,” Kean answered before anyone else could. “Are you here in an official capacity?”
If Aldric was at all offended by the shortness in Kean’s tone, he didn’t show it. He shook his head slowly, his eyes like ice-glazed steel. “Just as a concerned former coven member and father.”
Bri noted how he put coven member before father, but she must have sunk somewhere beyond numb, because the idea didn’t sting as much as it normally would have.
“Are you all right?” her father asked, looking only at her.
She nodded.
Though her face was pinched in consternation, Astrid moved out of the doorway. Kean hesitated for a charged moment before touching Aldric lightly on the shoulder, letting him pass through the crackling blue wards.
“You’re not here to interrogate me? Bind my powers?” Bri asked as her father shook out his coat and hung it on one of the hooks lining the hall.
Astrid retreated to the kitchen. Kean hovered, his expression wary, ready to spring into action. Aldric pointedly ignored him. He opened his arms wide as he approached, but Bri wasn’t sure if he wanted to hug or just usher her into the room. She took a step back. Her father frowned and dropped his arms. “Why? Has there been another incident, aside from the fire?”
Bri led him to the living room and sat down, trying not to look at Kean and draw attention to his bloodied state. As if reading her mind, Kean excused himself to shower. Astrid brought their unexpected visitor coffee and then also made herself scarce, under the guise of retrieving Kean’s dogs. Apparently Bri’s coven had made a majority decision that they were all bunking down at Astrid’s for the night. Having no vote grated against Bri’s already raw patience, but she couldn’t really protest. She felt safest wherever Kean was, and she certainly wasn’t stupid enough to stay somewhere else just to prove a point.
Astrid’s hasty retreat left Bri alone with her father, who scowled into his steaming mug but didn’t drink. “Did I interrupt something?”
Bri shrugged, suddenly short on words. Hadn’t they said them all? What was he doing here?
As if she’d spoken out loud, Aldric said, “Briana, I did not mean to let things end as they did between us the last time.”
Was she that transparent? She would have to work on that. She bit her lip, trying to discern if there was an apology in there somewhere. Nope. Regret, maybe. She couldn’t share the sentiment. “I’m surprised to see you.”
Aldric took a slow sip, biding his time. “I do not expect your forgiveness, but you need to understand I only have your best interest at heart.”
Bri squirmed, uncomfortable with the direction of the conversation. She wished she wasn’t already scraped bare by the day’s events and could handle this visit better. Wished to be dressed in her own clothes, with her hair and make-up done, so that she could face him with her mask firmly in place. Instead she had unruly curls, a pair of pinstriped strawberry pajamas, and confidence as flat as gum on a racetrack. Did she really need another person telling her she couldn’t handle this? “You need to understand that even if I could turn back — which I can’t — I wouldn’t want to.”
The muscles over Aldric’s high, fine cheekbones flexed as he swallowed. “Trust me, my dear, I understand that better than you think.”
Bri stared into his face, straining to call on her powers, to look beyond the deep, haunting blue of his eyes. His walls were impenetrable. She narrowed her eyes. “You know something, don’t you?”
Aldric pursed his lips. “Once a life is touched by a Legacy relic, it is never the same. It would have been unfair of your mother to bind herself to me without disclosing everything that bond entailed. As promised, it has cost me dearly.”
Whatever she’d expected him to say, it wasn’t that. She froze in a single inhalation of shock as her perception of past events un-reeled and then snapped back in a different order.
Legacy relic.
Her father, of all people, knew about the mirror. She blinked and studied the man across from her — practically a stranger — through a new lens. Maybe some of the anger she’d aimed at him over the years had been unfounded. Her mother had trusted him enough, loved him enough, to reveal what should have been her most guarded secret. And he’d carried that burden all these years. Alone. Distant. Probably because he was still hurting. Which was something Bri had to understand. She’d taken a page out of his book without even realizing it.
As if she didn’t have enough to make amends for already, she found herself wondering why she couldn’t ever allow him the benefit of the doubt before. What if now that he didn’t have to keep the largest part of his life secret, he could finally open up to her? This could be his ill-timed attempt to do just that.
The idea softened a petrified part of Bri’s heart she’d thought long decayed. He knew about the mirror. He might be able to shed some light on her dismal situation. He was the only other member of her family still standing. For the umpteenth time that day, tears wet her eyes. “Why didn’t you say something when I came to you before? How could you not tell me?”
Winged brows hugged together, forming a crease down the center of his face that showed his age. “I wanted to keep you safe.”
That was the very last thing she wanted to hear at the moment. The sound of her teeth grinding almost disguised the rest of his confession.
“I’m sorry I failed you.”
Bri shook her head, staring across the room at the growing puddle of rain on the floor beneath Aldric’s jacket, at the closed door to the bathroom. The sound of Kean’s shower hissed, and the wind picked up outside, howling against the rocky cliff. Her stomach did a slow roll and her mouth went dry. Her eyes too. “They’re all dead.”
Her father gave no reply. What could he say, after all? They both knew he’d failed her long before her powers had surfaced, drawing her back into this world. But it was not the time to tear open old wounds. She couldn’t dwell on death, which lingered close enough, a hunter stalking the dark edge of a clearing. She was just the clueless, vulnerable hare caught in the middle.
Or so everyone thought, except… Ce-Ce believed in her. Geri and Kean needed her. And now she remembered that once, in another life, she’d faced death without fear. Protected the mirror with unfaltering conviction. Like every woman in her family had done since. Like she was meant to do again.
Aldric cleared his throat, and her unfocused gaze settled on his bunched shoulders, his slender neck, the bob of his Adam’s apple as he swallowed another swig of coffee.
She shook her head. “I don’t know what to say.”
He set his cup down on the table. “As I said, I do not expect your forgiveness.”
Bri frowned and absently straightened the throw-pillow beside her, which the black kitten promptly pounced on and began to knead into a flattened lump of cotton. “Then what did you come here for?”
“To make sure you are all right. To offer my help. Your mother…” He paused, as if waiting for Bri to shut him down again. “Was a proud woman. Sometimes I believe if she had only let me help, things would be different.”
It was Aldric’s turn to look away. He gazed at the side-blown rain through the window behind her, lost in the land of what if.
The water in Astrid’s bathroom shut off, and the cozy house seemed suddenly smaller. Though he wouldn’t let her see the depth of it in his eyes, her father’s regret was palpable, and bordering far too close to her own feelings of late.
I can’t protect you if you don’t let me in, Kean had said, and she could imagine her father, a decade younger in body and perhaps eons younger in soul, saying the same thing to a headstrong Danielle.
Maybe she could face the demon all by herself. She’d done it
once before. She would do whatever it took to re-order Fate and prove that damn mirror wrong. The alternative was unimaginable. But just because she could, didn’t mean she had to.
Pride, she mentally chided herself, had been Vivianne’s most costly sin. Possibly her mother’s as well. Maybe it was time to take the lesson to heart. And yet…her instincts warred with that logic, digging into every alternative path, refusing to let her budge.
Protect the Legacy. Protect the secret.
Bri spiked her fingers into her hair and puffed out a frustrated breath when they met a snarl of tangles. “I don’t know that you can do anything.”
Something flickered in Aldric’s gaze but winked out too quickly for her to place it, like a lighthouse far off in the distance swallowed by rising blue-black waves. “I thought you might say that. May I offer a piece of advice, then?”
Bri nodded. More advice couldn’t hurt, even though she couldn’t use much of what she’d received lately.
“The vault should be returned to the Arcanum as soon as possible. It is not safe out in the open. I tried to stop you from taking it, but…”
She blinked, realizing that was true. Even if his approach had triggered every irrational response buried within her, he had tried to stop this. So had Lucas, for that matter. She had been warned, she’d just ignored all the signs. “I planned on returning it, but so much has happened.”
Aldric rubbed his long, pale hands up and down his slim thighs. “I only mention it because I could take it back with me.”
The bathroom door opened, and Kean stepped out in a swirl of minty steam, with an undertone of wet hickory. His hair still had a towel-dried tousle to it, and his fresh white T-shirt stuck to his body, stained red in a few places where blood still seeped through. He didn’t pretend he hadn’t been listening to the last part of their conversation. He propped himself in the doorway and crossed his arms over his chest, pinning Bri with an expectant look.
Her father rose, but he too stared at Bri, waiting for her verdict.
“I…” Bri frowned at Kean. Now he decided to be Mr. Magnanimous? Her gaze flitted between the two of them. “Yes. You’re right. That would help, but maybe tomorrow? It’s not here, and I don’t think I’m up to going anywhere just yet.”
Rain of Ash: Skydancer Book 1 (The Zyne Legacy) Page 22
