by Dessa Lux
His brother Mar sat there, dressed in black on the black sand. Waiting.
Lir fell to his knees, already shaking his head. “No. Mar, no, not Devon—”
“Not Devon,” Mar agreed, and that was enough to startle Lir into silence.
“He’s gone ashore,” Mar said simply. “He and Harry both. They couldn’t stay after what you did, Lir. But they’re safe.”
“Safe,” Lir echoed. “Ashore.”
He didn’t doubt his brother, but still he stretched out his awareness, reaching into every corner of his domain, only to know for himself that it was true. Devon was nowhere to be found, nowhere that Lir could reach him.
There was nothing alive on the island except himself and Mar and the plants, and...
Lir pushed himself to his feet and walked on unsteady legs to the house. Several shingles were missing from the roof, and it was obvious that water had gotten in through the windows. The little rosebushes that had just been starting to climb against the pale gray walls lay battered, the green stems broken, petals stripped away. A few lay pounded into the earth, tiny bright fragments of red and pink and yellow. Lir fell to his knees and touched his fingers to the carefully-tended soil they grew in. He could feel its depletion. The furious, lashing rain had saturated it beyond bearing, stripping away the fragile web of life in it.
Devon was gone, and Devon’s roses were destroyed. Because of him. Because of what he had done.
“I only wanted you to be happy,” Lir whispered, running his fingers over a shattered stem, thorns and all. “Sunlight, I only wanted you to stay.”
*
Their bed smelled like Devon, like slippery salty sex and the warm content scent of a pregnant werewolf sleeping. Lir curled up there and didn’t move for a long time, just breathing in the scent of Devon, his mate, his sunlight.
The rest of his domain could have frozen solid or been blown apart by a volcanic eruption, and Lir wouldn’t have cared as long as he could lie there with his eyes closed, breathing in Devon’s scent, remembering that just yesterday he had been here. Yesterday they had been happy.
*
After a time, the scent and the memory were no longer a comfort, and Lir felt the pull of the sea again. He belonged there, in his domain.
He didn’t know how much longer it would be his; surely, after this, Father North would never agree that Lir had learned anything at all about caring for land-dwellers. He had failed spectacularly, in fact. He might as well sink into the sea for whatever time he had left.
Still, it was habit to rise from the bed in his land-dweller shape, as he had on a hundred mornings while Devon slept. He walked out of the house, intent on going to the beach to sink into the water and never return, when something caught his eye just outside.
The shattered roses still lay there like mangled corpses, the sundered pieces turning brown and joining the soil. But a few broken stems were still attached to their roots, poking up only a few inches above the ground. Some of them were still green, and one had put out two new leaves. When Lir knelt to look closer, he saw that between them was the tiniest bump that would, in time, be a bud, and then a flower.
He touched it as gently as he could, just with the tip of his finger, imparting just a little extra water to help it along. The soil around it had dried out, and he had not brought the evening rain as he usually did, to water the island’s plants.
He remembered suddenly what Mar had said about Devon. He’s gone ashore. They’re safe.
Looking down at the little green life before him, Lir couldn’t help thinking that that meant something other than just he’s gone. Devon was alive. He was far away, but not infinitely far. Not entirely lost. Mar knew where he was, even if Lir did not.
He didn’t know if Mar would tell him. He didn’t know if Devon would ever come home, or even speak to him again. But Devon was alive in the world, and safe—and their baby was safe, and Harry was safe. And for everything Lir had done, everything he had broken and ruined... he hadn’t destroyed everything. There was life left yet.
Lir looked up at the sky, and a gentle rain began to fall.
*
He did go into the sea, after he’d had a walk around the island and set things right where he could. He discovered that he’d made a mess of things there, too, between the storm and all his playing with currents to keep the island afloat and to bring Harry down and every other thing. The ships that sailed through his domain were taking new paths, trying to work around the strange new currents and the weather patterns they’d brought, and the dolphins and whales were in altogether new locations. Everything from the floating tiny things to the largest had been disrupted.
Lir made adjustments where he could, nudging things back toward normal, diminishing a few of the new currents. Some things he would just have to leave alone; some changes wouldn’t easily be undone.
He found himself back in the vicinity of the island, and something drew him to the ridge that marked the western boundary of his domain, the highest point of the seafloor beneath his island. The island’s roots of plastic and coral stretched nearly that far down, now, but his attention was drawn to the ridge itself, and the hotspots along it. He had never brought Devon to see them, even though they were one of the most spectacular features of his domain.
He was floating near one of them, staring at it and wondering why, when all at once he remembered.
William.
William, who had called out to the sea for mercy, for life, when he was drowning. Lir had taken and kept him, hidden away down here in the dark. He had showed William a thousand beautiful things, and William had loved him. For a time.
Over the years, their love had turned cold and dark and crushing, and William had been so sad, so quiet and still. Lir had asked Caroline for advice, and she had told him that William must go back to land, but Lir had not wanted to let him go, had begged William to stay.
And William had stayed. After a fashion.
They are not meant to last forever, Caroline had told him before she left. You have already had a lifetime with him, by their standards. One way or another, you will have to let him go.
But Lir had clung to him, and William had sworn that he did love Lir still. But that love had remained cold, and dark, until... until William came here, and put everything to an end. No love. No William. Nothing.
No Lir himself.
It had been easy to lose himself. There had been no misery—or rather, a release of the misery that had already been haunting him for long years by then, knowing that he could not let William go, and that Caroline was not entirely wrong to say he must. He had tried to cheat, to keep William every way he could, but he had failed.
Lir looked up at the island he had built for Devon. He had done that much right. He had remembered that a land-dweller could not be happy without land to walk upon. But still, he had tried to cheat, to make Devon happy without allowing him to be free, to keep Devon only for himself and let no one else intrude who might tempt him away.
Lir looked down at the vent, at the heart of fire there. It could not destroy him as it had destroyed William, but a big eruption could destroy the island. Even Lir neglecting it too long, allowing a heavy storm to come, could destroy the island. Without the island he might forget Devon as he had forgotten William, and be carefree again.
But when he forgot William he had not only forgotten the loss of him. He had forgotten how it felt, what it meant, to respond to a call for help, to snatch a precious life back from death. He had forgotten William’s smile, and the touch of his hand, the warmth of him deep under the cold sea. He had forgotten the jokes they told each other, the stories William told him of the world on land. He had forgotten William’s tattoos and the color of his eyes and the touch of his hands.
If he forgot Devon, he would forget every good thing. He would forget that they had built an island together, that they had made a whole new life together between them. And if Devon, or their child, or their child’s child ever came looking for him, wantin
g to understand, he would have no place for them to come to. He would lose everything, forever.
If he kept the island, he kept that little thread of hope.
He reached out one hand toward the volcanic vent, and the thread of hope became a thread of fire, molten rock spinning out toward his hand. The strand was as fine as spider’s silk, as fine as the smallest root of the smallest plant. It curled around his finger, and he swam upward while it unspooled behind him, until he reached the lowest roots of the island. He unwound the thread from around his finger and wrapped it gently, carefully, around the tip of the island’s root instead. It cooled as soon as he released it, turning to black stone all down its length.
Lir swam back down for another thread, thicker this time, a satisfying cord he could grip, and brought it to another of the island’s roots. The stone that it formed as it cooled was still only the slimmest of pillars, still more symbolic than real.
Lir needed to make the island real.
He swam down again and again, visiting one vent after another, calling up ropes and cables of fire and winding them into the roots of the island, trailing solid stone after them. One after another after another, woven together intricately, and each one pulled and shaped and placed with his own hands, until they were a framework, the skeleton of a tower.
Then he called up a flow too great for human-shaped hands and arms to encompass, filling the framework with fire and light. The molten stone climbed up and up, until it nearly met the bottoms of the island’s questing roots. He stopped it there, leaving a gap where the tendrils and pillars and roots tangled together. The island would keep growing, and fill in its own structure with living things and once-living things. But it was real now, solidly anchored, strong enough to support itself through any storm, any current.
He would not forget. He would not destroy what traces remained of what he had done right. He would not lose the memories of Devon, if those were all that he could have now. For as long as this domain was his, he would hold fast to the island, and he would know what it meant.
*
He gathered up the fallen tent, carefully disassembling it. The nylon had torn in a few places, and he repaired it. The telescoping poles had bent, and one had snapped. These, too, he carefully repaired, until he was able to pack the tent away neatly in one of the crates in the house.
He cleaned up the house, repairing the damage that water had done inside, replacing the shingles that had fallen from the roof. He lay in the bed each night while the gentle rain fell, and dreamed of sunlight.
When the grasses and flowers and trees were growing as well as they could be expected to, and he had coaxed what was left of the rosebushes into a new attempt at life, there was only one thing left to make right.
He knew he should have done it first, but he had avoided it, for all that he hadn’t let himself avoid anything else. Perhaps he had had to do it that way, to build up the strength in mending things to mend this. But now the house and the island were back in good order, and there was still a cradle of dark, ancient wood in his—his and Devon’s—bedroom, waiting for a baby who would be born far from here, on the land.
Soft things were piled up in the cradle, sheets and baby clothes and diapers. Lir added to them a few things he had ordered without telling Devon: a blanket of soft sunny yellow, and two very small stuffed toys. One was a wolf, and the other—since Devon had come to rather like Lir’s tentacles when he had them—was an octopus.
He had ordered them for the baby, thinking that the little one would likely be a shifter, the same as himself and Devon. He thought it would probably have a wolf form, and at least one form shaped like a sea creature. He had meant to say that he didn’t mind which form the baby liked best, any more than he would mind whether it was a boy or a girl.
But he hadn’t given them to Devon; he had been saving them for... something. Some surprise. He couldn’t remember anymore.
He hadn’t been thinking of the baby much before then, and suddenly he couldn’t think of anything else. That was the first thing he’d done for Devon that Devon had really asked for, rather than just accepting. He had stayed with Devon all through his heat, and he had given him a baby. A piece of himself, to join with a piece of Devon and grow into someone altogether new.
Someone Lir might never see, because he had driven Devon away. But someone who would still exist, somewhere, alive and safe ashore. He hoped Devon wouldn’t mind, if the little one was like him, and needed the sea.
Devon had told him, when they first talked about it, that all a baby really needed was a roof over its head, something to eat, and something to wear. After all this time, Lir thought that Devon probably had all three of those things covered, but he thought... the baby ought to have these things. Even if Devon didn’t want to come back to the island, didn’t want to see Lir or speak to him or touch him... these things were for the baby. Devon ought to have them, for the baby.
And for Devon himself...? Lir looked around. He couldn’t give Devon the house, or the island, not wrapped up in a box. But he owed Devon an apology, if nothing else. An explanation, if he wanted one, for all that it would not make him think any better of Lir than he already did.
And Harry. Harry was also owed... probably more than Lir could give him. But perhaps not more than there was to give. There had been those other frozen bodies, other werewolves, not far from him...
Lir sat and thought about where to go first, but in the end it was hardly a question. Father would always be there in the north, waiting for him, and Lir’s time would run out soon enough, if it came to that.
But it had begun with Devon. It had begun with Devon giving Lir the gift of himself. Lir had to try to give Devon something to acknowledge that, and make a proper apology for the mess he’d made of things, before he tried to mend what he’d done to anyone else.
He was going to need a boat, and his brother’s help.
***
Chapter 20
Devon was surprised to discover that his parents really were willing to do whatever he asked. They hadn’t even made him go home, to the big suburban house where he’d grown up or to the pack’s hunting grounds, or even to America. He’d asked them to help him figure out how to stay in Ireland, not too far from where Mar had put them ashore, and his parents had found a little cottage near a lake, seven miles inland, and told him they’d taken care of it, and he could stay as long as he liked.
Seven miles seemed just right, somehow. Too far to hear or smell the sea, but not... too far. The baby wouldn’t like going farther than that, Devon thought.
He almost cried when he saw the cottage for the first time, with its white cob walls. It was a perfect little rectangular shape, every wall straight, every corner squared off, nothing like the series of soft gray-green curves that made up the house he had helped Lir build on the island. This was a house built on land.
It had two bedrooms, each with a double bed. His parents hadn’t pressed him about Harry, either. Devon hadn’t really explained—he didn’t know how much Harry would want people to know, so he only said, “He was rescued by the same alpha who rescued me, but Harry’s been gone a lot longer. We just want to stay together, at least for now.”
He could almost see the lurid things his parents were imagining, pack bonds forged through some terrible abuse, and it made him want to defend Lir. Then he remembered the storm, the look on Lir’s face when Harry got between them, and he didn’t know what to say. He had run away from Lir, gone miles inland from even Mar’s domain; that had to mean Devon had something to run away from, didn’t it?
But his parents didn’t ask any questions, or say anything, so Devon didn’t have to figure out what to say. He let his parents buy clothes and stock the kitchen and set up credit cards for him and for Harry on the pack account, let them hug and scent him, and luxuriated in the absence of questions, or suggestions, or pressure of any kind.
He didn’t think it would last—sooner or later, if nothing else, they would bring more o
f the pack to visit him, and he would face an inquisition of aunties and cousins. But for now they just kept telling him how glad they were that he was safe.
He couldn’t think of how to say it gracefully, so at some point he just waved at his belly and nodded, and they told him they’d find a local werewolf midwife. They offered to buy him things for the baby, but he said firmly, “Not yet, there’s plenty of time.”
They looked skeptical at that—and, honestly, Devon didn’t have any idea how much time he had. He did know that he’d been gone nearly five months, which meant he might not have much.
But they still didn’t argue. His father just said, “What else can we do, Devon? We—when you were gone, we talked and thought about this a lot. About why you might have gone into the water that night, alone. Was it an accident? The weather was calm, but... “
It was an out. He could say he’d slipped, fallen, that there had been a sudden gust of wind or a freak wave and he’d been leaning out over the railing. It would be easier, and then his parents wouldn’t worry about him, wouldn’t know.
But he had to stop doing things the easy way. “It wasn’t an accident,” Devon said quietly. “But I’m a lot better now. I’m going to be okay.”
But his parents just kept looking at him, worried and hopeful. Devon could feel himself wanting to crumple under those looks, to let them take charge, decide what was best, but he said, “What I really want...”
They both straightened up attentively.
Devon smiled a little. “I’d like you to go stay in a hotel. Not the little one down in town, in a city. I... I think I’d like it if you weren’t all the way on the other side of the ocean, at least for now, but I know you have things to do, and I... I just need some time to figure things out without you hovering over me.”
His parents both looked taken aback for a second, and Devon thought that was probably as clear and firm as he’d ever managed to be in his life in telling them what he wanted.
