“I am sorry,” he began. When she didn’t cut him off, he eased closer to her. “I have much to tell you but let me simply begin with that.”
Bri studied the floor between them, her brow wrinkling. “I know.”
“Please believe me—I did not like keeping secrets from you. I want there to be honesty between us. I need you to trust me.”
“Trust?” She glanced up, a rebuke clear in her expression. “You can start by telling me what else you lied about.”
“Nothing, I swear.” He sidled closer and pressed her palm to his chest. “Everything else is true. You must believe me.”
He thought he saw a swell of relief in her eyes before she glanced away. She even softened toward him and leaned in slightly. He had the urge to kiss her, but she backed away, shaking her head. “You tricked me into—”
“I did not mean for it to be a trick!” He braced her shoulders, his voice deep and solemn. “I swear I would never have agreed to it. She told me you would choose to complete the ritual of your own free will, that you were close to making the decision yourself and she would only help things along. It was everything I wanted to hear, so I believed her. I was blinded by the desire to keep you safe. You were so vulnerable…”
Bri pulled away, wrapping her arms around her stomach.
He waited to hear what she was thinking.
“I understand.” The words were so hollow, he knew she still doubted him.
He fell to his knees before her and grasped her hips, making no effort to hide his remorse and heartache, his desperation. “Please, Briana, you must forgive me.”
She hesitated for half a beat but nodded. “I will. Eventually. But no more secrets. Only honesty between us.”
A tremble of relief washed through his whole body. He bowed his head. “I swear, my love. Honesty and forgiveness—always. I will make a blood oath if you wish.”
“No. No more blood.” Bri glanced at her hands and stepped past him.
He followed her out of the chamber. She set new wards behind them, and when they emerged from the fountain, the hidden passage closed with a wave of her hand.
Bri’s new abilities were chilling. Overnight, she’d gone from a novice to a spellcaster of unfathomable skill. Lucas wondered what else had changed within her, what other burdens she now carried. And if she would ever trust him enough to let him share those burdens.
Honesty and forgiveness.
With those, certainly, eventually, trust could be rebuilt, and love could grow. Hope was not lost. With that realization, a sense of calm purpose filled him. No matter what happened with the Ward, time and Fate were his allies. Fate had brought him this far, time could do the rest.
If he had to wait for one human lifetime to pass before Bri was completely his, he would.
He followed her across the now barren courtyard of the cavern and down one of the tunnels leading to the gardens outside. Briana refused all his offers of comfort and assistance as she wove through Hedvika’s statuary, pulling at invisible and crumbling the grotesque statues to ash one by one, until they were walking through piles of it, kicking up the dust as they passed.
She remained silent and concentrated on the magic she was working, so he eventually left her to it, following at a short distance in case she needed anything.
Perhaps a little afraid to let her out of his sight.
The sun was sinking behind the lip of the palace cliffs when they returned. The faintest trace of an aurora could be seen at the darkest edges of the sky. Bri was covered in blood and ash, her face vacant, practically asleep on her feet. She had refused his offers of food and drink all day, and concern gnawed at him.
“Briana, you must rest, and drink and eat. What about a bath?”
She looked down at herself as if surprised to find that she was still had a body at all.
“You’re right. I can’t face them like this.” With a wave of her hand, she was wearing a form-fitting red gown that gathered at the shoulders and gathered at the neckline to drape enticingly across her luminescent skin. Satin gloves in the same blood red covered her arms up to the elbow. Her feet were bare and clean, and her hair was twisted into a crown around her head. “Better?”
Lucas frowned, knowing that underneath the glamour, she still wore Emil’s blood and the ash of the garden. Worry stirred in the pit of his psyche, but she was so beautiful, he couldn’t look away.
She stepped up to him and said, “I’m ready to go home now.”
“I have another secret to share with you,” he said in a light tone, tugging a curl loose from behind her ear.
“Really.” She sounded afraid to ask.
“Vika was right. I did make a bargain with Ryder. I gave my oath to kill Maxxim. He gave me his true name in exchange.” He paused, letting her digest the news. Mild disappointment showed on her face, but her posture was tired.
“I do not ask your forgiveness for this,” he continued, and she tilted her head thoughtfully. “I have come to know him, in a sense. I believe, as he said, that he only wanted to be free of her. She was a torment to him.”
“I know,” Bri agreed. “Thank you for telling me.”
“I did not bargain for the name for myself. It was for you. So, this is the secret—Ryder’s true name is Theliel. If ever you have need, you may whisper it into the dark and summon him.”
“We never said that deal extended beyond you completing your end, wolf,” Ryder said, appearing at his side.
“We never said that it didn’t,” Lucas countered. He had the name now, it was up to him what to do with it.
A wry smile twisted the wraith’s lips. “True enough.” He turned to Briana and took her hand, bowing over it with flourish. “Consider me your own personal chariot, love. Call me for a ride anytime.”
Lucas growled his disapproval at the naked innuendo, but Bri smiled half-heartedly, and he cast Ryder a look of grudging gratitude.
The wraith winked at him as he guided Bri to Lucas’s side, so that the three of them were huddled close. A corona of shadows gathered, enfolding them like dark wings.
“Where to, love?”
Bri exhaled slowly and took Lucas’s hand, her gaze scanning the stars winking faintly on the horizon. “To Kean.”
As the darkness swallowed them, Lucas was glad the shadows hid how the words gutted him.
Chapter Thirty-One
The Arcanum
San Juan Islands, Washington
They arrived in the hall chamber straddled between two of the highest towers of the Arcanum, where, five months ago, the demon squatting inside Bri’s father had tried to kill her. The Synod’s alarm wards flashed red as soon as they set foot on the flagstone. Early morning light slanted through the stained-glass windows, draping across the marble statue inlaid into the floor like a multicolored quilt of light.
Bri stood over Kean’s frozen form, and the pink and white rosebuds climbing over him shivered.
“Last chance to change your mind,” Ryder said in his customary bored tone, though Bri noticed he didn’t tuck his shadows away like he normally would. They swirled in a dark storm around him as he perched on one of the beams crisscrossing the arched ceiling.
“Can you deliver a message for me?” Bri asked. “To Councilor Bellini?”
Ryder graced her with a rare genuine–and genuinely sinister–smile. “Why don’t I bring him to you? I know where he sleeps.”
“No, just tell him I’m here and I need to speak with him urgently.”
“Very well.” Ryder shrugged and disappeared.
Howls echoed up the stairwell leading to the rest of the fortress.
He returned a moment later. “Message delivered.”
“Thank you.” Bri wrung her hands together, fighting the urge to pace. She hoped she knew what she was doing, that she was judging Councilor Bellini and the Synod correctly. She had no backup plan if they didn’t accept her offer, and the three of them would be left to fight their way out, without Kean.
Judging by the way Luc
as tensed at the sound of the other wolves approaching, he was already preparing for that scenario. Would he fight and kill his own kind? Soldiers who had served under him? Slaves who had no other choice but to follow orders? Guilt for forcing such a choice on him weighed heavy in her stomach. She was thankful for the glamour, which didn’t only hide that she was covered in blood and ash, but also that she was pale and sweating and sick.
When she’d had the idea, it had demanded nerve. No waiting, deliberating, or allowing herself to be talked out of it. She’d known she had to follow her blaze of inspiration, trust her intuition… but that didn’t make her immune to self-doubt, only ensured she didn’t have time for it.
Three Hohlwen rushed into the chamber first, fanning out around her and Lucas, though their attention snagged on Ryder in the rafters, his cloak of shadows swirling like a thunderhead. Their glittering black eyes took in the scene, and Bri thought she saw some of their malice retreat and slide toward puzzlement.
A heartbeat later, six wolves shouldered their way in and filled in the flanks of the hall. Lucas’s hand hovered over the sword hilt at his back. A few warning growls answered him, but he did not draw.
Steady. Trust me, please, Bri said silently, releasing the mental barrier she’d erected between them.
I assume you have a plan, Lucas replied.
I saw a path, and I took it, she answered. She didn’t think sort of would inspire much confidence, but when an Oracle spoke of sight, people listened.
Councilor Bellini was a rotund man, and he left them waiting in tense silence, under the watchful eyes of the Kinde and Hohlwen, for several minutes before he huffed into the room in a flurry of black robes. Two more councilors trailed behind him, and another set of Kinde guards, in human form, shoved two other grey-robed acolytes reluctantly ahead of them.
Bri’s heart stuttered when she met Astrid’s startled gaze.
What are you doing here? Bri practically shouted in her head as she took in Astrid, and beside her… Gawain? Both of them were dressed in the grey robes of non-ranking servants of the Synod. They were mussed and bleary-eyed, as if they’d been roused from bed.
And what is he doing here? What’s going on? Bri asked, a slow drip of panic churning in her bloodstream.
The councilors arranged themselves before her with Bellini at the front and the other two flanking him. Ryder flowed down from the rafters in a waterfall of shadows until he was standing opposite of Lucas on Bri’s left, mirroring the council’s show of strength.
Astrid’s mouth hung slightly open for a second before she snapped it closed and said, They’ve been holding me here since you disappeared.
Bri scowled at the councilors, and several beats passed where they studied each other and said nothing.
They were waiting for her to speak, and Bri let the silence and suspense draw out, looking at each of them in turn, her eyes swirling with white light.
The tall, severe, dark-skinned councilor at Bellini’s left was not one that Bri recognized. He straightened his shoulders, his posture suspicious, deep gaze watchful. Councilor Amin stood on Bellini’s right, and he looked so ashen with terror at the sight of her that Bri glanced down to make sure her glamour was still in place.
Bri spoke before Bellini could shift the balance of power.
“Councilors,” she said, her voice calm and steady. “Thank you for coming. I apologize for the hour.”
One of the Hohlwen didn’t bother to disguise his snort of amusement. The other two wore matching expressions of hunger as they studied her.
When she’d spoken, Gawain’s face had twisted into an expression of fury. He’d quickly masked it, but his glare still burned like ice from across the room.
“What is the meaning of this?” Bellini blustered, clearly frustrated that she didn’t understand how this arrest was supposed to transpire.
“Artur.” Bri dimmed the Oracle effect and softened her tone to one of familiarity. “I’ve been on a long and dangerous journey. It was all to find a cure to the demon’s curse.”
She gestured to Kean’s statue on the floor. As a collective, all eyes in the room shifted to the statue and then back to her. She smiled at Councilor Amin affectionately and said, “I found it.”
Astrid gasped, and tried to step forward, but the Kinde guard held her back.
“You found it?” Bellini repeated, looking at the statue again. “But how?”
Bri turned her smile on him, projecting ease and affection. “It’s a long story. One I will gladly tell you, for we have much to discuss. But first, all I ask is that you allow me to save my friend.”
Bellini paused, and the other councilor, the one who wasn’t fooled by her saccharine smile, opened his mouth to speak. Sensing that he was about to lose authority over his own people, Bellini clapped his hands and said in his warm, booming voice, “I think I would like to see that!”
He sent three of the wolves and two of the Hohlwen out of the hall, giving Bri some room without compromising his strategic advantage. Especially since he still held Astrid under guard. Bellini himself, however, crept closer to peer over Bri’s shoulder as she knelt beside Kean.
Ryder formed a moat of shadows around her on the floor, making it appear as if stepping on them would plunge you into an endless abyss. For all Bri knew, that was the case, and it was enough to keep Bellini back a reasonable distance.
Bri studied Kean’s face, and her cheeks flushed hot with guilt. She had already forgotten things–the slight tilt at the corner of his eyes, how one side of his mouth curled a little bit more than the other. Emotions she had no time for welled in her throat. She looked up to find Lucas watching her, as if he’d been trying to read something vital on her face.
Will you help me? she asked. I need to see him first, explain what is going on.
Of course. He took her hand, and their magic flared, tingling up and down her spine, like striking a match to a fuse. The steady burn settled in the coil of his magic still banded around her arm.
With Lucas as her safety harness, Bri stretched out beside Kean and slid her hand into his. Her fingers fit perfectly where they had been when he’d turned to stone months ago, a promise to return on his lips.
Bri closed her eyes and sought out Kean through the ether.
***
Kean was floating in the nothing. He was a part of the nothing.
Nothing, you are nothing, he kept telling himself, willing it all to just end.
But it wouldn’t. He could never yell loud enough or curse mean enough to turn off whatever was left of him. Scare it into dissolving. He couldn’t sleep or meditate or count it away. He was stuck with himself. And nothing.
Nothing had become something tangible to him, because it was all there was outside of himself. He’d even thought about naming it.
Let’s name you regret.
Regret that he’d cast Bri away, his only chance at escape.
She’s never coming back.
Never and nothing were his two best friends now. Even memories were fading. Memories were a function of time. There was no time here. His memories were a deck of cards spilled on the floor, just images. Soon the images would disappear, eaten by grey, like everything else.
First it was the yard, then the upstairs of the house. Then the downstairs. Finally, that kitchen table.
He’d sat there for…forever, or no amount of time at all. Scratching at the splintering rough spots. Scratch, scratch, scratch. Because that table was something. The only thing left.
Until it wasn’t.
And then he floated alone in the grey. Until, slowly, parts of him began to disappear too, and he stopped watching. Soon enough, he didn’t have eyes to watch with any longer, but it didn’t matter, because he was a part of the nothing. But he still couldn’t figure out how to squash out this last cognizant bit.
The grey swirled around him and started to take form into something.
Kean blinked, shocked to find that he had eyes again. He saw only vague
shadows at first, and bright blurs of light, like emerging from a dark tunnel. The shadows stretched and limned into the shape of a hallway, and soon color leached in. He was lying on a stone floor as sunlight streamed through stained-glass windows and painted watercolor waves on the brick walls.
Kean took a full breath and sputtered, shocked to have lungs. He felt all the dissolved pieces of him spool back together slowly, and his soul–if that was what had been left of him when he was floating in the nothing–vibrated with pure gratitude.
Soon, he felt something beside him, a tingle, pressure, warmth. White light filled his vision, like looking directly into the sun. But even blind, he felt her beside him. She squeezed his hand.
“Bri,” he choked out, pulling her on top of him, so the lengths of their bodies were pressed together.
She hugged him back, her smile dazzling as she studied his face.
Is this real?
Or had he finally left the grey purgatory of nothing and entered some kind of heaven?
Gazing at her creamy skin dusted with cinnamon freckles, her fiery hair coiled around her head and curling enticingly against her neck, jewel green eyes glittering with happy tears…it had to be a dream conjured into life, some altered state of consciousness.
He was totally okay with that.
He pulled her closer for a kiss, and her lips met his, but only chastely, before she drew back. He sat up beside her and noticed her red ball gown and opera gloves. They were alone, sitting on the floor of the tower where her father–the Soul Eater—had attacked them.
“It’s time, Kean,” Bri said. “I found it. I’m here to bring you home.” She squeezed his hand again, and he realized she had never let go.
“I’m not back already?” He frowned, taking in his surroundings once again, staring at his fingers laced with hers, wiggling them one by one. “This isn’t real?”
“No.” Her voice wavered. “Not yet. I’m sorry, I just wanted to see you first, to prepare you.”
“Yeah, it was a good idea. I will wake up here. I forgot.” He squeezed her hand and brought her fingers to his lips, joy making the words hoarse. “You did it, baby. I’m so proud of you.”
Veil of Thorns Page 31
