Matthew took a bite of his apple and chewed as he watched Kaitlin smear creamy peanut butter on white bread with her index finger. Danger surrounded them; they could be captured or die at any moment. Stay or go, he had no idea, but here, now, he wanted to eat the peanut butter off her finger rather than the bread.
She finished the first sandwich, managing to tear the bread only a little bit, then licked her finger as, with the other hand, she passed him the sandwich.
He didn’t take it.
Kaitlin was suddenly aware of Matthew staring at her, and especially at the finger in her mouth. In that moment, it seemed, she became the mind reader, aware of what he wanted to do with that finger. He knows what I’ve been thinking. She recalled the night before, when she’d slowly given him water from her hands and he’d taken her finger into his mouth. Do it again, she thought. Please. I want you to do it again.
Slowly, Matthew scooted closer to Kaitlin, seated cross-legged on the floor. He mirrored her pose, letting his knees brush against hers as he pulled her finger from her mouth. It still contained the residue of peanut butter, but he didn’t care. That wasn’t the part that made her sweet.
Kaitlin shuddered, visibly. I shouldn’t want this. I shouldn’t. But please don’t stop. Please please please...
Matthew’s own body seemed to be echoing her pleas, but he continued to move slowly, giving her every chance to change her mind. She didn’t. She doubted her sanity once, but she wanted him to take her into his mouth. And maybe not just her finger.
Matthew closed his eyes as he drew the peanut butter-flavored index finger between his lips and sucked, hard, trapping it against the roof of his mouth.
I’m melting, Kaitlin thought. Or dreaming. Don’t wake me up.
The last thing Matthew wanted to do was wake her up, but he had no choice. His stomach chose that most embarrassing of moments to give a loud, angry growl, reminding him that he was less than healthy at the moment.
Reluctantly, Matthew drew Kaitlin’s finger away from his mouth. He placed a gentle kiss on the back of her hand before taking the sandwich from fingers that were close to dropping it in the straw.
I knew it was just a dream, Kaitlin thought. But she got busy making another sandwich, recognizing that he had other needs right now.
“So should we make a run for it?” Kaitlin asked in a patently transparent attempt to change the subject. “I mean, we know they’re out there looking. Jason has my blood. If we stay put we’re sitting ducks and –”
She stopped short when they heard the sound of the stable door opening. Fear shot through her – through them both. This was it. The only question now was: Alexander or Jason?
“Hey sweet girls,” crooned an old man. Matthew was momentarily confused until the voice continued. “Did Mary sneak you some apples last night while I wasn’t looking?”
Two horses neighed in response.
“Nice to see you too,” the old man continued. “Let me get you some oats and then I’ll let you run out in the pasture. ‘Fraid I can’t ride you today; my back’s still a mess. But Joan from down the road said she’d try to stop by this afternoon to give you a workout. You remember Joan? Sweet girl visiting her grandparents for the summer? She’s still a little horse shy, so go easy on her.”
The old man continued in that vein, his running monologue filling the silence between their pounding heartbeats. Neither Kaitlin nor Matthew said a word for what seemed like an hour, but was probably less than half that. Then, finally, the old man let the horses out into the pasture and left to take care of other chores.
“I thought it was Jason,” Kaitlin breathed when it was over.
“I thought it was Alexander,” Matthew replied.
“Why haven’t they found us yet?”
Matthew considered the question. They had crashed yesterday evening, and been on the run or hiding through the night. It had been at least fourteen, maybe fifteen hours. Matthew had hidden their tracks at first, but still...
“He doesn’t know I’m drained,” Matthew realized. “He’s probably got his men looking for mental tricks and wards.”
“So not being able to use magic might be a blessing in disguise?”
“I wouldn’t call it that.” Never. “God, I don’t know how you do it.”
“Do what?”
“Live like this all the time – without magic.”
Kaitlin shrugged. “Never had it. And unlike Cassie, I never thought I should.”
“I feel like I’ve lost an arm or... or...”
“Your eyes?” Kaitlin suggested, thinking of how it had felt to stumble around in the dark the night before.
“Yes.”
“Well then, we should definitely rest here today. Let you get your strength back. How long do you think it will take?”
“I don’t know,” Matthew said honestly. “I just don’t know.” He thought for a moment. “Yeah, we’ll stay here today. We’ll take it in turns to nap, get as much rest as possible. We’ll move tonight, under the cover of darkness.”
“Okay.” Kaitlin felt as unsure as he did of that plan, but hearing his confidence made her feel better. Matthew was glad he could make her feel that way; now, if only someone could do the same for him.
“Okay,” Matthew echoed. “How about another sandwich?”
They stared at one another, each remembering the experience of making the first.
Bad idea, Kaitlin. Bad idea. Because you might die, but you might live, and then he’ll know the truth about you and you can’t take it back.
Matthew almost asked her what truth she meant. He suddenly, desperately wanted to know what secrets she hid – all the secrets she hid. If he was at his full strength... no, it would never work with Kaitlin. He would never know her innermost secrets, not unless she somehow trusted him enough to tell him.
Trust. Now there was a concept. No one outside his family trusted him, not even his inner circle of the White Guard. And, apparently, that was why he was struggling.
Kaitlin started making another peanut butter sandwich, her mind focused on the most relevant question: Will we get out of this alive?
“We’ll be okay,” Matthew found himself lying smoothly. If only he could back up the statement with a bit of trust me.
“You don’t have to lie to me.”
“More like I can’t lie to you. It’s like talking to my father.” He chuckled and shook his head. “Fine, I have no idea if we’re going to be okay. We might die anytime now. Is that better?”
“No. Let’s talk about something else. Anything else. Let’s pretend like we’re just normal people for a little while.”
“Okay.” Matthew tried to find an ulterior motive inside her, but she genuinely seemed to want to get her mind off of her fear – and her lust. At least he wasn’t the only one suffering from that particular ailment. A part of him even thought, why not? If we might die, why not live for a while? But she’d withdrawn for the moment.
“So what do you like to do when you’re not infiltrating enemy strongholds in search of blood?” Kaitlin asked.
“I’ve never done that before. Running the White Guard has been a full-time job for a while, though. Bringing people together is hard; I can almost understand why Alexander resorted to blood magic.” Matthew could feel the vial of Evan’s blood he had stolen burning a hole in his pocket. He quickly brushed the thought aside.
“You’re not the same as him.”
“Hm?”
“I heard what he said to you, but I don’t think it’s true.”
“Are you sure? Ever since we met a few days ago, you’ve been thinking about what I did to your best friend. You don’t like me. You don’t trust me.”
“No, but how can I? You’ve never given me any reason to.”
“No, I haven’t. I didn’t e
ven manage to get you safely away from Alexander and the hunters.”
“That’s not what I mean and you know it.” Kaitlin’s mind flashed to Cassie. “Cassie doesn’t trust you, and she’s in your inner circle. I hope they don’t all feel the same way, or you’re in big trouble.”
Matthew looked away, wondering how she had managed to hit so close to the truth. She wasn’t a stupid girl, of course, but she also hadn’t been around lately. Was it that painfully obvious?
He looked back at her; she returned his stare, not flinching, mentally demanding answers he didn’t know if he could give. Who are you really? What do you want? Do you care about anyone but yourself?
“I think I need some more sleep,” he said. It was true, but also a cop-out. He had never felt so useless in his life. She was right there, but he couldn’t do anything to alter her perception of him.
“If you’re going to get huffy over my every stray thought, this is going to be a long, long day.”
Matthew quirked an eyebrow at her. “Huffy?”
“Yes, huffy. God, I don’t know the first thing about you and instead of telling me you try to roll over and go to sleep.”
“I need sleep.”
“You need a kick in the head! Do you have any real friends?”
He gaped at her. “Of course I do.”
“Really? I mean people who are friends because they want to be, and not because you manipulated them in any way?”
Matthew stammered. “I... my... I’m very close to my family.”
“I don’t think that counts.”
“Well, what about you?” Matthew fired back. “You’re hiding something pretty big. Does anyone know the truth? Even Cassie?”
“Do you know? Have you seen...?”
“No. You’ve kept it well hidden. But I know something’s there, and if you were anyone else I’d have it from you by now.”
Kaitlin reeled. Cassie warned me. I never listen.
“I’m going to sleep.” Matthew intentionally put space between them – twenty feet – so he couldn’t hear her thoughts any longer. Then he found a cleanish place in the straw and lay down on his stomach.
He didn’t fall asleep.
“I was in love with her, you know.”
“Who?” Kaitlin asked, her voice coming from across the loft, unaccompanied by the usual mix of background thoughts.
“Cassie.”
“Oh.”
“My grandmother was a seer.”
“I heard.”
“She told me Cassie would make me happy.”
“Did she tell you if you would make her happy?”
Matthew thought about it. “I-I don’t remember. I guess I thought it was all the same thing at the time. But she told me that years and years ago, long before Cassie would have been ready – or technically legal. She was sixteen, I think. And all through law school, while I flirted with and dated other girls, I had this ideal picture in my mind of what life was supposed to be like. They never measured up.”
“Did you let them? Or did you wipe their memories the second they got nervous that you could read their minds?”
Matthew ignored Kaitlin’s perceptiveness. “Anyway, when my grandmother told me it was time, I went after Cassie like she was already mine. But I didn’t... despite what Cassie thinks, I didn’t force her.”
“Really? That’s not what it looked like that last night.”
Matthew sighed, wondering why he was telling her all this. Confessions of a dying man, perhaps? But no, he didn’t think that was it. She’d asked if he had any real friends and the answer was no. He didn’t.
“At first the only mind magic I used on her was memory charms.” Matthew stared at the ceiling, keeping his eyes off of Kaitlin and on the distant past. “I approached her at a family picnic that I crashed. I got her alone in the woods and we started talking. Except it wasn’t that simple. I kept using memory wipes like do-overs. No, that didn’t work. Try again. Maybe she’ll go for this approach. She slapped me three times. All in all, I’m amazed that she didn’t notice how much time had passed once she returned to the picnic.”
“What finally worked?” Kaitlin asked.
“Hm?”
“The tenth or twentieth time or whatever. What finally worked?”
Matthew chuckled. “The truth.”
“I see.”
“You probably do. Better than I did, anyway. But do-overs were all I ever used until we got engaged. If she really, truly hadn’t wanted to marry me, I didn’t force her to say yes.”
“But you took advantage of her during a vulnerable moment in her life.”
“I didn’t say I was a saint.”
“What about after?” Kaitlin asked.
“That’s when it all went wrong. I think I pushed her too hard, too fast. My grandmother thought so, anyway. I was nervous about losing her. No, that’s not exactly the right word. I... I used a spell with her that I’d never used before. Haven’t used since for that matter. I let her read my mind.”
Kaitlin sucked in a breath. “Really? She never told me that.”
“I’m not surprised. I don’t tell many people I can do it.”
“Why’d you tell me?”
Matthew had no answer, so he ignored the question. “I cast the spell and let her see into my mind. I didn’t tell her that I loved her, I showed her. I let her see it for herself in a way that couldn’t be denied. Or so I thought. She tried to deny it, tried to say I manipulated her. God, I was a fool to think she’d overlook what I am in favor of who I am.”
“She was in love with Evan,” Kaitlin said softly.
Matthew laughed, this time without mirth. “Now there’s someone you should be questioning. He cast spells on her. Admitted it, even.”
“She loves him,” Kaitlin insisted. “She’s loved him all her life, I think. I don’t know how your grandmother thought you’d get past that.”
“He stole her magic!” But Matthew remembered what Kaitlin had said about that a few days ago. He’d heard but hadn’t listened then. “Did he really offer to give it back?”
“Yes.” Kaitlin paused before adding, “Are you still in love with her?”
“What?”
“Because it kind of sounds like you are.”
“I-” Evan had asked a similar question a few weeks ago, and at the time he had been lying to say no. But something had changed in the past few days. He didn’t know what, but telling this story wasn’t as painful as he thought it would be. It felt more like purging something dark from his soul. “I don’t know. I was for a long time. I got desperate after she agreed to marry me and started to pull away almost immediately.”
“And then you started using direct compulsion on her?”
“Yes.” Matthew tried to sound defiant, but it didn’t work. And in the end he repeated the word, more like a plea for forgiveness. “Yes.”
“Did you ever tell her any of that?”
“No!”
“The truth worked once.”
Matthew shook his head. “It would make me weak. Evan and Cassie are my most powerful supporters.”
“But they don’t really support you at all.”
Once again Matthew felt the vial of blood burning a hole in his pocket. He only just stopped himself from reaching for it; Kaitlin didn’t need to see. He doubted she would approve.
“Your grandmother wasn’t always right, was she?” Kaitlin asked.
“There are many paths and she... she had a way of working towards making her favorites come to pass.” He closed his eyes and remembered the day she had first told him about Cassie. “You know, it’s strange. But the day she gave me that prediction we were walking into your mom’s diner. You were working, and Cassie was there with some other friends from
school. And when my grandmother pointed, telling me ‘There’s the woman you will marry,’ I thought, for just a few seconds, that she meant you.”
Chapter 26
KAITLIN BACKED AWAY, HER HEART HAMMERING, trying to figure out why Matthew had said what he had. Surely he couldn’t mean... sure, in her wildest fantasies maybe, but she’d had too much experience with men to believe in fairy tales. At least, not for herself. She read romance novels all the time, and she knew who she was – at best, she was the girlfriend or sidekick. At worst, she was the woman who “knew the score,” the one the man tossed aside when he finally found his one, pure, true love.
Matthew had risen to hands and knees, scooting closer and staring at her with pity in his eyes. God, he’d heard all that. He knew how insecure she was. And was that sympathy in his eyes?
“What is it?” Matthew asked softly. “You’re a better person than you think you are. What has you feeling this way?”
She shook her head, but for the first time in her life she wasn’t sure she meant it. She wanted to trust someone. She’d always wanted to trust someone, but when it came to opening her mouth to talk, the words would never come.
“I don’t need the words,” Matthew reminded her. “I just need you to let go and show me.”
She stared at him for a long moment as the truth of his words dawned on her. All she had to do was think it and he would know. If she could let go, if she could trust him an inch, he could take it from there. Ironic, that this was exactly what she had feared since she’d discovered the nature of his gift but now it suddenly seemed like exactly what she needed.
She closed her eyes, but she didn’t let go. At least, not right away. It had been such a long time and she’d held the secret so close that until now, she’d even been able to hold off a mind reader. But she knew that if she shared herself with him now, it wouldn’t be because he took anything from her. It would be because she gave it to him.
Oh, how much she wanted to trust in this, in him! She had wanted to believe in heroes since she’d been twelve, which was why she let her heart get broken over and over and over again.
She felt a hand touch her arm and she opened her eyes to see Matthew gazing at her, his nearness and his touch lending physical support. He didn’t push her, didn’t speak, but he ran his hand along her arm and showed her without words that he was there, solid and real. And he’d trusted her first. That hadn’t been easy for him.
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