by Kayleigh Sky
He got away with whatever he wanted. Nothing stopped him from taking the map, but he hadn’t taken it. So would he cheat? Though maybe he wouldn’t think of it as cheating. He’d never promised Isaac anything, and Isaac had never asked for anything. He pretended being alone didn’t matter, that he was too tough to care, that he was used to his life, that none of it carried any real weight. Only Jessa knew the truth, and he didn’t know all of it. Isaac would go to the ends of the earth for Rune, but what would Rune do for him?
Nothing, the bastard.
Without a word, he broke across the lawn, burst into the house—glancing at Camiel, who sprawled on the couch, an arm over his eyes—and rushed upstairs. It was quiet. Not a sound, but the stillness had weight… like a secret.
His stomach fell fast and loose inside him as though dropped by a fist that had been holding it.
He still wanted to puke. Instead, he swallowed and strode to the corner room at the end of the hall. The door was cracked, but when he pushed it open, there was nobody inside. It was like the outer room of a suite. A second door across the room stood ajar, and a shadow moved on it, a rhythmic swaying. His breath came fast now, and he broke out in a sweat. What would he do if Rune decided he didn’t need him? Didn’t want him? Maybe Isaac was too much trouble. He wasn’t sure. His clients had liked him, but they didn’t know him. Maybe he was the kind that took too much. Obviously, he didn’t trust Rune. If he did, if he was the kind of guy who made a good boyfriend, he’d trust him. He wouldn’t make him prove anything. He’d give him the map and…
Never stand up for himself.
He took a breath and approached the door.
His gaze made a beeline for Clara, who gave him a tentative smile. She wasn’t exactly naked, but her blouse was open, most of her breasts exposed, and she was… beautiful. A pink blush covered all her skin. She was translucent, her hair as wispy pale as the dawn air. Her only visible garment was the open shirt, but she sat on a stool, so maybe she wore panties or something. But she looked bare. Bare and bewitching. She’d braced her feet on a rung, her knees high, bony but willowy, like his. I’m willowy.
He turned to Rune, who sat on a chair, wearing a pair of jeans and nothing else. His hair fell across his shoulders, and his eyes burned on Isaac’s face. He said nothing.
Isaac cleared his throat, tearing his gaze from Rune and… resting it on sketching paper. On an easel. Not an artist’s easel, but the kind Isaac had seen in offices before. It had a hard back, and the paper was taped to it. There was no color in a sketch so light the lines faded away as wispy as she was. But it… drew him across the floor. He stared at the drawing up close, following the marks and curves that somehow gave her life, revealing a luminosity that shouldn’t have shown up in paper and pencil.
He raised his gaze to Clara’s. She bit her lip, her cheeks flushing a brighter pink. She had a slight overbite that somehow made her more charming. “You’re beautiful.”
Happiness suffused her face. “I’m not. I have an extra tooth, but thank you.”
Rune chuckled, and Isaac turned to him. “This is beautiful.”
Rune narrowed his eyes, and with his smile, that somehow came off as a challenge. Everything inside him burned as though made of molten lava. His dark eyes glittered with flecks of gold and amber. His lips parted. “You next?”
Isaac gasped a laugh. “It would be a waste of time. I’m pretty common.”
The tears that stung his eyes made no sense to him, and he hurried from the room. Of course, Rune wanted to sketch somebody like her. Somebody with an extra tooth, for god’s sake.
Not somebody like Isaac. Somebody skinny who happened to have something Rune wanted. But Isaac wasn’t giving it up. That vampire had given it to him. It came to him for a reason, when none of the rest of his life had been special in any way. And he wanted to be special. Wanted Rune to think he was special.
He half tripped down the stairs, drawing up at the door to the front room. Removing his arm from his face, Camiel turned his head and gazed at him.
“You’re an idiot to let Anin get away from you,” Isaac said, before hurrying outside.
“Isaac!”
But he didn’t wait. He ran into the woods.
30
A Dinner Party
The sketch wasn’t his best.
Maybe he was rusty.
Maybe he was losing it. He sat on the stool in front of the easel and turned his gaze to the window.
Only the treetops were visible.
At least Isaac was back where he belonged. He’d only been gone fifteen minutes before running into Uriah and Yair, and when he’d returned he’d been angry. “What’s the fuss about? I went for a walk.”
Rune had growled at him, his fangs sliding from their aching sockets. “They are waiting.”
Isaac had leaned forward at the waist, eyes hot, face red. “Who is ‘they’?”
That was the question.
Who?
Otto had thought it was all the Adi ’el Lumi. Thought Rune was one of them. But somebody else was behind them because Solomon didn’t have the power that Rune sensed emanating from them. They had shown only the smallest tip of themselves.
He turned from the window to the sketch, bewildered as always at the life in the lines. How did it get there? Not from him.
Who gave the Adi their power?
He sighed and scrubbed his face.
Laughter and the clatter of kitchenware floated up from downstairs. The sounds wound around him like ties, tightening and holding him close.
He couldn’t shake his nerves. The normalcy was like a threat. Like somebody teasing him—look at what you will never have again. Look at what I’ll withhold and torment you with until the end of time.
Happiness. Family.
His memory returned to the castle in Celestine where Jessa had stolen the goodies Bettina had deliberately left out for him, and to the distant sounds from the plaza and the laughter on the veranda that had floated in through the windows. Every day vampires had gathered for time with the king. They’d never been alone.
Now it was Uriah’s deep, throaty laughter rising from below.
Cupping his knees in his hands, Rune pushed off the stool, straightening slowly. After he pulled on the T-shirt lying on the bed in the other room, he padded downstairs. The gloom of dusk filtered through the front window, and Camiel rose like a ghost from the couch as Rune looked in. He didn’t trust the damn witch. Not the little smile playing on his mouth or the strange watchfulness in his eyes. It was as though he waited for Rune to do something… or figure something out. See what sat smack in front of his face. But what? The vamp carried secrets, but so did everyone.
“Join us, Camiel. We are a family after a fashion.”
A family imprisoned in a dead human’s house, surrounded by enemies waiting for their chance to come for him.
Try me. I’ve waited my whole damn life for this.
For whatever was on its way, building like a storm, tingling in the air.
Gazes came round as he entered the dining room. Mal, Clara, Yair, and Uriah sat around the table. Yair bent his head low.
But it was Uriah who drew Rune’s gaze. Stiff in his chair, laughter silent now. Was it Yair who’d brought that laughter out? What an asshole you are. Yair had upset him with a confusing mix of rage, jealousy, and… shame… that had tied his tongue and routed his temper. Wouldn’t he have been justified if he’d exploded in anger? Uriah had brought an assassin into the house. But that was stupid. Yair was callow, spoiled, and juvenile. He’d been led. He wasn’t a danger, and Rune… wasn’t sure of his emotions. None but the shame anyway. He’d never forbidden Uriah from visiting his fated, but he hadn’t given him his blessing either. Better to wallow in resentment over the stupidity of a besotted boy. What had it been like for Yair to be in love with somebody who didn’t love him back?
The homey sounds in the kitchen, from Isaac, stirred regret and warmth inside him.
Rune could
n’t be Isaac’s fated, but he was supposed to be Uriah’s friend.
He circled the table, paused behind Yair, and touched his shoulder. The boy turned and fixed a fretful gaze on him, and Rune nodded before meeting Uriah’s slow smile with one of his own. Ignoring his chair for now, he followed the aromas of dinner into the kitchen.
Steam filmed the window over the sink. The refrigerator door stood open, Camiel popping up on the other side a moment later. He waved a bottle of wine over his head and grinned at Rune on his way to the dining room. “Everybody else, get your own!”
Rune shook his head then stared at Isaac, who set a pan he’d pulled from the oven on a trivet on the table.
“Smells good in here.”
Isaac tightened his lips in a semi smile. “I made roast beef and potatoes. No fresh vegetables, just green beans and corn.”
“It’ll be fine.”
“I love to cook. I wish I had vegetables.”
“We grow them at home. Well, Jessa and Betts do, anyway.”
“Jessa showed me his greenhouse. He said you made it for him.”
“I had it made. It comes in handy to grow your own things, though he uses it for flowers mostly.”
“You didn’t make it for vegetables.”
Rune was a bit surprised at Isaac for calling him out on that, but it was true. He’d made it because life was ugly, and for so long he’d thought he was going to lose his little brother. Flowers made Jessa happy. Like romances. Proof that suffering wasn’t all there was. Fuck, he was tired though. Every minute now was a fight against his worst thoughts and the strange things that kept falling into place, pointing him in a direction he didn’t want to go. He wanted to give up, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t lose.
Isaac kept his gaze fixed on him, a worried frown puckering his brow. Rune smiled. “I look forward to tasting this.”
He returned to the dining room, pulling the wine bottle from Camiel’s grasp as he went by. “Tell us a story, Cammy.”
He sat down and poured the wine into his glass.
“About what?”
He set the bottle on the table, picked up his drink, and settled back into his chair, smiling down the length of the table. “My mother.”
Camiel’s mouth parted, his expression softening with curiosity. Though what was this witch, famous for frivolity and empty pursuits, curious about? What was he hiding?
“So long ago, sire.”
Rune took a swallow of his wine. “I have confidence in your memory.”
“Ah,” said Camiel. “Our memory isn’t always what we imagine.”
“Tell me yours,” he insisted.
Camiel smiled and ran his finger along the rim of his glass. Mal cupped her chin on her hand, the light from the chandelier dancing in her eyes. She faced Camiel, but Rune knew he was the one in her sights. Isaac entered with the platter of meat and narrowed his eyes. The room was silent until Yair bounded up. “I’ll help you.”
Clara rose too.
Rune waited until Camiel sighed and let his finger slide from his glass. He sat back. “I most remember the first time I saw her, I think. I was…” He waved his hand. “Seven maybe. I don’t know. It was soon after we arrived in Kolnadia. She was a magnet, a force that drew others to her. Her people surrounded her. But the day I remember, I was in the plaza. Such a god-awful place.” He laughed. “But I didn’t know better. We had a trickster, a magician they say up here, who entertained us. He played games and pretended to be a witch, which he was not. I was sitting on the ground watching him. Only god knows what happened to my mother. My father died in the wars after his brothers. But my mother? I don’t know. Kolnadia had a way of making people disappear, and my uncle, who took care of me, maintained the rails, so I was alone. The trickster was named Sessa, if I remember. He was flipping coins, letting people guess how they’d land. Once in a while, he’d let somebody win. But I got it every time, though I didn’t say that out loud.” He laughed and picked up his wine glass. “I didn’t know it was supposed to be a trick. I was just watching the coin, seeing the head and the tail perfectly in my mind’s eye, flipping so slowly, turn after turn. I saw every detail. I saw the way it would land every time. The edge it fell on, the puffs of dust, what side faced up. Not because I guessed it. Because I saw it as though time had slowed to almost nothing. I imagined I could stand, walk over, and catch it before it got anywhere near the ground. When I got bored and stood up, I saw her standing in the center of the plaza, staring at me, her people all around her. I don’t know how long she’d been there. She was… bewitching. And I needed a mother. She was that to me, except when you came.” Camiel lifted his glass at him. “Then she hid me.”
“Were you with her when she died?”
“No.”
“Because she was not in Kolnadia?”
“That is only a rumor. Where would she go?”
“Home. Her body was found in Majallena.”
Camiel’s lips twisted. “I know nothing of that. You expect accuracy? The Upheaval tore the city apart. The plaza crumbled as though it had been made of honeycomb. The ceiling rained boulders on us, and the lower levels flooded. Nobody knows anything about that time but the struggle to get out. You know that Kolnadia was lower in elevation than anywhere but Celestine. Few of us survived. I hid under bodies, and somehow my uncle found me. I still don’t know how. He was injured though and died in the portal.”
“I’m sorry,” said Rune. “I saw many die. I lost my teacher.”
“Your teacher?”
“Protis. I told you about him. My father commissioned him to make many of the glass pieces in the castle. I saw him a few hours before the Upheaval and then never again. Of course, you know what happened to our mother.”
He directed his gaze to Mal and met a quizzical smile. But she said nothing. Isaac, Yair, and Clara returned with the other dishes.
Uriah gestured to the empty chair beside him, and Yair sat. Uriah’s face was still stony, and Yair bit his lip. None of Uriah’s lovers had gotten close to him—yet somehow Yair, on the far side of an icy distance, was still closer than any of the others. Fate.
Isaac sat on Clara’s other side, and they all waited until Rune nodded at the food. “Eat.”
He served himself as the bowls and plates circled the table. “Your friend taught you to cook all this?” Rune asked after he’d eaten a piece of the roast beef.
Isaac nodded. “He left me his binder. He wrote everything in it. His recipes. Where he was when he ate something. Who he made things for.”
“Where is it now?”
“With the king.”
Where Isaac should be. But the Wrythins had come for him—out of respect for contracts or disrespect to Zev. It was nothing but a needle prick but as distracting as Mal sitting at the same table with him. As Uriah and the others. Pricking and tormenting him with the family he didn’t have anymore, but this was… close. And he found himself wondering what Bettina could teach Isaac, and imagining Camiel regaling a crowd at a dinner party on the back patio with the smell of oak trees and Jessa’s flowers on the breeze. And that was dangerous. Letting his guard down was a luxury that might kill him.
He had to get rid of these people.
Camiel had lied. Abadi had fled the city. Probably right after Rune left her three days before the Upheaval. She’d had enough time to make it to Majallena if she’d somehow secured a train ride. Had she? From Camiel’s uncle? Few people had survived the destruction of Kolnadia.
And, as though every one of Rune’s thoughts floated to him on the air, Camiel tipped his head in Rune’s direction and smiled. “Your fated is an excellent cook.”
Rune inclined his head.
Isaac bounced. A tiny bounce, hardly a twitch, but his cheeks flushed, and his eyes brightened with his smile.
“We’ll have to make sure he learns how to make moon lace tarts,” said Mal.
“What are those?” Clara asked.
“Sweets. They taste like licorice.”
/> Clara’s nose wrinkled, and Mal laughed. “It’s good. I promise. As sweet as spun sugar.”
A sharp pain entered Rune’s chest and cut into his heart. Was he wrong? For twenty years he’d prepared for the moment barreling toward him now—whatever that moment was going to be—from the instant he’d refused to give Qudim his vow. A thousand years of tradition he’d rejected. He’d given everything else, and had lost everything too. Now here he was with the life of his dreams in front of him.
He stared at Isaac, who was carefully ignoring him.
His fated.
But his enemies were close too, watching the house, and drinking wine with him.
Camiel winked. His description of the Upheaval was picture perfect. It mirrored Rune’s own experience, except he’d taken shelter under a cart with someone else while the ceilings disintegrated above them. Some people still suffered from nightmares of that day, but he wasn’t one of them. He dreamed of portals that closed around him. Of plummeting into a bottomless pit, blind and alone, with the wind whistling past him, longing for an end that never came. It was as close to Qudim’s death as he could imagine, and he expected it to be his. And maybe from someone like Camiel.
Because Cammy was lying about something.
Anyone here could be an enemy. Mal would stop him from pushing on if she could. Uriah was loyal enough to risk Yair’s life, unless he never believed Yair was at risk. Would he turn against Rune to protect the boy? To stop this quest only Rune seemed to care about?
He needed to see Zev. No one else knew everything he knew. He was tired of hiding and holding onto his secrets.
He was going to slip.
Yair laughed and brought Rune’s attention back. Mal had her elbows on the table, leaning toward Clara, who whispered in her ear. Camiel had a deck of cards. He passed it to Isaac, who pushed his empty plate aside, set the deck down, and cut it. “Now what?”
