Court the Fire (Son of Rain #3)

by Michelle Irwin

  The pair was so physically close to one another it was easy to believe they were the couple. The fondness they held for one another was still evident in the way their moves echoed one another. My heart ached at the sight. Evie had said she never loved him, but I could see she’d been mistaken.

  She may never have been in love with him, but it was clear theirs was a strong friendship—no doubt at least in part born out of the pain I’d inflicted on her when I left her in Charlotte. It brought back all the doubt I’d felt since his reappearance in her life, and I couldn’t help feeling like Evie was betraying me with her nighttime wandering. She had chosen to face the cold and sit with the fae rather than staying at my side.

  She belongs with someone like him though.

  Doubt plagued me, filling my mind with fear and an overwhelming concern that I didn’t deserve her.

  He can offer her sanctuary. All I can offer is danger.

  I shook off my melancholy and pushed the door open, careful not to make a sound as I tried to listen to their conversation.

  “It really wasn’t us.”

  Evie leaned forward, staring out into the darkness as she took some unknown meaning from his words.

  “Clay needs to know this,” she said when she turned back to Aiden. “He needs to know the truth.”

  “What truth?” The words had escaped me long before I’d made the choice to speak.

  The fact that she wasn’t at my side when I woke from my haunting dream had stung.

  The reality that she was outside talking about me to someone she knew I couldn’t trust hit harder than a slap to the face. It reignited my doubts over . . . well, over everything. The lingering concern that she’d known more about the whole situation than she’d ever let on rushed back to the surface. I’d spent so many months supporting her through everything. For years, I’d defended her against the accusations of my family, and in the face of the intimate scene I’d interrupted, I had to wonder whether all that was wrong? Was someone playing some long game where I was just a pawn?

  Was Evie?

  She leapt up and was at my side before I could tell her to stop or to go away.

  “The truth about your family,” she murmured as she wrapped her body around mine. Her voice indicated there was so much she wasn’t sure of, and it set my instincts on edge. “The real story about Louise.”

  “What about her?” I pulled myself away from Evie. I couldn’t have her holding me, distracting and comforting me, until I knew everything she thought I needed to know, and not until I knew whether I could trust her or whether I was just part of a wicked game she’d designed with the fae.

  Aiden disappeared after making some excuse about needing to find his aunt.

  “What’s happening, Evie?” I wondered whether I’d been wrong to accept her denials so readily. What if this was all one big game for the two of them?

  Evie’s mouth twitched; it was easy to believe it was with amusement.

  “What new truth did you find out now?” I asked her continued silence. “Did you and your lover have a good laugh over this? It has to be some fucked up practical joke, right? Jokes on me, ha ha ha.”

  Hurt flickered on her features, and for a moment, I hated that I was responsible for it, but then I recalled the cozy reunion I’d interrupted. I pushed aside my guilt and waited silently for her “truth.”

  “I have to explain a few things first,” she said. “Can we please go inside?”

  If we went inside, I would fall under her spell. I would be unwilling and unable to hold tight to my anger and force her to tell me the truth. It would be too easy for her to bewitch me with her touch, and I would never learn what secrets she’d been keeping and only now deemed me worthy of knowing.

  “No.” My voice was harsh, but I couldn’t soften it. “Just tell me.”

  “When I was living with the fae, I spent a lot of time with the fledglings—their children. I used to go to the classrooms because it was such a vibrant atmosphere. All of the fae, every single one of them, were enamored by the fledglings in the court; their safety and happiness was always the utmost priority.”

  “What does that have to do with anything?” I cut her off, wondering what the hell her story had to do with her midnight rendezvous.

  “It has everything to do with it.” For half a second, the air on the porch blazed with the heat of her anger, but she kept it contained. It was the reminder I needed that she wasn’t human. Of course she would take their side—she was one of them, not one of us. She insisted we go inside, but a part of me wondered if she just wanted me in our tinderbox of a shack so that she could dispose of me.

  She was talking in circles, using delaying tactics, anything rather than telling me the truth. It made my stomach roil because there could only be one reason she didn’t want to tell me—I was right about there being something more sinister at work.

  Was I right that she and Aiden planned this? Logically, I knew it was unlikely, but neither my heart nor my head were working on logic’s side.

  “Now you’re even starting to sound like them.” My voice was a graveled growl. “Just spit it out already!”

  “Please promise me that you’ll stay calm,” she begged.

  She moved closer to me but stopped short of being close enough that I could feel her radiant warmth. Even though I wanted to deny it, deny her, the connection under my skin urged me to close the distance. My heart pounded, desperate to close the distance. Gritting my teeth, I ignored it.

  “Please?”

  “Just tell me.” I was sick of the game and needed it to be over.

  “Aiden was explaining his duties, the tasks he and the other protectors have to undertake.”

  “So?”

  “One of those is the placement of changelings.”

  My fingers curled into fists when I saw what she’d been stumbling over. Either he’d been the one to swap Lou for a changeling, or he knew the fucker who had. It was also obvious why she’d been reluctant to tell me that particular nugget of information. She knew as well as I did that I would kill that bastard with my bare hands.

  “That sick son of a bitch!” I roared, charging for the stairs.

  “No, you don’t understand.” Evie’s hand came to rest on my chest. Intentionally or not, the heat of her palm was a warning not to cross her.

  Regardless of the threat in her touch, I couldn’t let that bastard get away with what he’d done. The shit that Lou had gone through was too much—I would get my revenge for it if it was the last thing I did. If Evie chose to stand in my way . . . Well, I didn’t know what I would do, but I couldn’t let her stop me.

  I closed my eyes and chose my words carefully. “Evie, you said to me once that you hated ultimatums but that I would have to choose between you and my family. I made that choice; I chose you. I turned my back on them, on everything I knew. I did that for you. Can’t you do the same?”

  “This isn’t the same thing. I’m not taking their side; I’m trying to tell you the truth. I’m trying to tell you what you need to know. Louise isn’t a changeling!”

  I barked out a hard, mirthless laugh. “He’s sure got you fooled, doesn’t he?”

  “I haven’t been fooled by anyone.” Her voice wavered with barely suppressed emotion, and for a second, the hurt in her tone quelled my anger. “I’m speaking from my own experience.”

  The story she’d told me about the court leapt into my mind. It had been idyllic, perfect. There was no such thing as perfection. My breath calmed and my fingers released from the fists they’d been curled into. Even though I didn’t want her presence to calm me, even though I didn’t want to give in the way my heart desired to, the recollection of her story made me pause. I had to argue against it. “Well, they wouldn’t show you the worst parts of their life, would they?”

  “No, of course they wouldn’t. But I know what I saw while I was there, and because of that, I believe what Aiden has told me.”

  She was closer than she had been—as
if she was cornering me like an animal. The blood rushing through my head pounded so loudly I could barely hear a thing.

  “Which is?” I muttered over the noise. The heat of her body warmed me, and I wondered if her intention was to shatter me.

  “That Louise was never replaced. That Fiona is your mother. That Louise is—”

  “No.” I could see what she was going to say, and I couldn’t let her voice the words. If I let her speak them, they’d carry extra weight. If Fiona was my mother, I was fae. I couldn’t be. Lou . . . couldn’t be. “I don’t believe it.”

  “She was a fledgling,” Evie finished with a cautious tone. “If it’s true, then it changes everything you thought. It changes the meaning behind everything that was done to her, and who might have—”

  I wanted to block my ears and force out the words that she was saying, but it was useless. They’d already pierced the places that most resisted them. If Lou wasn’t taken by the fae as a baby, if she was fae, someone else had caused her injuries. Only one other group sprung to mind, an organization willing to force a formerly loyal soldier to endure weeks—months—of the worst torment imaginable for the simple mistake of loving the wrong species. Even having suffered through that, I couldn’t believe they’d subject a child to those sorts of tortures.

  Would they?

  They’d tried to kidnap Evie when she was four, the part of me that was completely loyal to Evie responded. What would they have done to her if she’d been captured?

  “No!” I shouted, trying to shake the image of that from my head as much as I tried to deny the thought that the Rain—that my own father—could have been responsible for Lou’s torture. When my angered cry sent Evie’s heat skyrocketing, I tried to calm myself. Having her set our little cabin on fire wouldn’t do anyone any good. “Dad wouldn’t have lied to us; it’s just not possible.”

  “Are you positive about that?” She closed the distance between us, placing her hand on my exposed chest, laying it across my scars as if to point out that each one of those was because of the life my heritage had forced my family into.

  “Evie, he’s my dad.” I didn’t want to believe he could do something so heartless, so vile, but example after example of his disgusting acts crept into my mind without consent.

  “If it wasn’t the fae who took Louise, there is only one other possibility.”

  “No, Dad couldn’t . . . He wouldn’t . . .” I couldn’t even finish my sentences, because they were untrue. Dad could . . . he would. He has. He’d forced me into retraining, lied to me about Lou’s death, and had spent years trying to ensure that I couldn’t have the life I wanted with Evie.

  “Are you sure? With everything he’s done, can you say with 100 percent certainty that he wouldn’t have hurt a fledgling?”

  “I . . . I . . .” I sighed and looked away. Of course, I had doubts. I doubted everything I’d ever heard about Louise’s kidnapping and torture and my father’s efforts to rescue her. But could I believe that my mother was actually fae? That Lou was? Defeat beat me when I said, “No, you know I can’t.”

  “Can you please just listen to the rest of Fiona’s story?” Evie asked. “If not for her, then do it for me. We need to know more about what we might be getting into if we agree to help rescue Mackenzie.”

  “Why do you care so much about them?” I was battling with the last of my anger, but I needed to fight for it because it was all I had left. The once bottomless well of emotion within me seemed to have run dry, leaving a blackened hole in its place. If I didn’t fight, I risked falling to the bottom and losing myself. “Do you love him?”

  “I don’t.” I wasn’t sure I believed her, but she seemed confident in the declaration. If nothing else, she didn’t believe that she did. That meant something “I care about you. I love you. If Fiona’s story is true, we need to know what that means for you.”

  “What could it possibly mean?” Nothing good.

  “Well, for starters, it means that you might, at least in part, be fae. That has to mean something, right? You can only work out how it will affect your life once you know everything.”

  “I’m nothing special, Evie.” How many times had that been proven to me over the years? More often than not, Evie seemed to be the only person who’d cared what I thought, who valued me for more than my ability to kill. And all I’d offered her in return was doubt and anger.

  “Don’t say that.” Her voice was filled with an unexplained sadness as she rested her head against my chest. The movement shattered the last of the fight in me and left me exhausted and broken, but her next words built me back up a little. “Because you are. You’re special to me.”

  I wrapped her up in my arms and said a silent thanks that she’d come into my life. I’d spent the better part of the last half an hour screaming at her and accusing her of terrible acts and betrayals, the majority of the day as a grumpy shit in general, but she was still telling me I was special to her. It made it easy to agree to her demands. If she wanted me to hear the fae out, I would. For her, I would do anything. I would face my personal demons, or I would battle the world. “Okay, I’ll listen . . . but only for you.”

  “Thank you.” The relief in her voice was palpable, and I hated that I’d ever doubted her or where her loyalties lay.

  Out of so many things that had gone wrong for us, I’d always supported her. Now, when I needed her most, I’d been almost willing to force her away. “Evie?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m sorry about what I said before. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

  “It’s been a crazy day.”

  “Crazy is one word for it. Fucked up is another.”

  She issued a hard, joyless laugh. “You can say that again.”

  Her arms tightened around me, and the warmth of her body brought the chill in the air starkly to my attention.

  “You want to head inside?” I asked as a violent shiver ran over my body.

  Evie didn’t respond to my question; instead, she just released her hold on my waist before grabbing my hand and pulling me back into the home we’d made together.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  “I THINK WE should pack,” I said with some reluctance. I’d loved the privacy that our little shack had offered us. The eight months we’d spent there would always be some of my fondest memories, but with everyone converging on the place, it didn’t seem wise to stay. “Regardless of what happens next, I think we need to move on from here.”

  Evie looked around with the same sense of loss I felt printed on her face. She moved over to the mantle that I’d crafted during our first few weeks and brushed her fingers along the surface. A sad little smile graced her lips when she turned back toward me. “I’m going to miss this place.”

  “Me too.”

  She looked away, something undefined in her expression.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “It’s just, well, it was nice while it lasted.”

  I wasn’t sure what she meant, and self-doubt began to creep in. She wasn’t planning on leaving alone, was she? Vague images of the dream I’d woken from, of my mother turning her back on me with promises of a better tomorrow, haunted me. I couldn’t take it if Evie did the same, not after everything we’d been through together. Not after everything we’d fought through. The blood drained from my body in response to the thought.

  Her eyes widened in response to something she saw on my features. “Oh, God, no, I didn’t mean it like that.”

  She covered the space between us in a heartbeat and kissed me hard.

  Willing to let myself get lost in her touch, I shifted my hands to caress her cheeks before sliding my fingers into her hair and drawing her closer still. She moaned against my mouth, and I broke off the kiss before it progressed further. As much as I would have loved to say good-bye to our love nest properly, we had no way of knowing how long it would be before the fae or the shadow turned up to spoil the fun.

  “It was just nice having a house again,” she ad
ded. “Being settled in one place, you know? Having a home with you.”

  She laid her head against my chest.

  In the huge swirl of issues we were facing, something so simple could be the cause of heartache for her.

  “One day, we’ll find somewhere like this again,” I promised.

  “I like the sound of that.” She didn’t believe me, that much was clear, but I was determined to do what I could to keep the promise, just as soon as we’d dealt with the issues we were facing.

  I turned and began packing up our two backpacks with all of our belongings. It had been almost four months since Evie had last ensured everything was packed and ready to go at an instant’s notice. It made me realize exactly how much the small house must have meant to her and strengthened my resolve to find somewhere we could stay that could offer a similar permanence as soon as I could.

  It was another hour before Aiden returned with Fiona in tow. We met them on the front stoop, but not before Evie explained that it looked like they wanted us to travel with them.

  “We were hoping you would agree to return to New York with us,” Fiona said. The questions that had been plaguing me all day and most of the night returned in force. Could she really be my mother? “If you wish to offer no further assistance once you have learned all of the details, I give my solemn oath to return you to here and attempt no further contact.”

  “You’re hoping that we will help though, aren’t you?” Evie asked.

  “I cannot deny that,” Fiona murmured. “The truth is the thought of my sweet Mackenzie at the mercy of that man—”

  Just when I was starting to come around to thinking the fae could be right, I was reminded why I shouldn’t trust them. “That man is my father,” I cut her off.