But there hasn’t been a moment to breathe, let alone find the right time to have this chat. And even if there had been, I’ve been trying to give her the one thing she deserves most—time to grieve her loss.
“Still no sign of Juno, huh?” Rhosyn asks, her green eyes still watching Hattie and Elio dart between trees in the distance.
My heart stumbles at the thought of her. Poor, broken Juno with her wild and feral eyes and trembling body.I see her teeth flashing, the desperate act of a cornered creature, and guilt takes its pound of flesh.I hadn’t been able to reach her. Couldn’t soothe her enough to make her believe she wasn’t caged again. And maybe that’s why I knew I had to leave the door open for her. Had to give her that choice. A choice no one has offered her for a long time.
“No,” I admit after a beat, and the word tastes like failure. “But Rennick mentioned that patrols spotted signs of her. Remains from a kill. Paw prints a few miles from here. So, she’s staying close, which is a win, I guess. We’ve left the door to her room cracked open and I’ve been taking food down to the room every day just in case. Left some fresh clothes out for her, too. But I’ve been checking in often just to be sure she hasn’t returned.”
I can still see the look on Rennick’s face when I’d initially opened the door for Juno. He’d looked at me like I’d lost my mind. He wasn’t completely wrong. It was a gamble and maybe reckless inviting risk like that by letting her walk out into a world that’s already hurt her. But locking her in would’ve only made things worse. She’d never believe she was safe here if we acted as her new jailers. I’d rather risk her running than force her to stay.
It’s Rhosyn who asks, “How do you know she’ll come back?”
“I don’t,” I admit as a sad, thin smile finds me. “But things have been so terrible lately and I need to believe that the Goddess hasn’t abandoned us completely. For my own sanity, I need to think she’ll let Juno have this one.That girl deserves it after everything she’s been put through. And the fact she’s still nearby, even when she could have run for the fucking hills, thattells me there’s still a chance. She isn’t completely lost to us. Not yet, anyway.”
Maybe it’s foolish. Maybe it’s just straight-up delusion. But I’ll cling to this hope like it’s a lifeline because if I let myself believe I choose wrong for Juno, if she never walks back through that waiting open door, then I don’t know how I’ll live with myself.
Seren’s arm loops around my shoulders, her hold loose but steady. “Your instincts with our Nightingales are rarely wrong, babe. I’d bet everything I own that you’ve done right by her. She’ll find her way back when she’s ready.”
The sharp edge of my guilt softens with her certainty. I open my mouth to thank her, but the words die when the familiar burn flares up in my lungs and throat. I don’t have time to brace before a cough tears violently out of me.
I jam the crook of my elbow against my mouth just as the coppery taste coats my tongue. The spray is warm and wet but contained and hidden by the sleeve of my deep plum-colored pullover sweatshirt.
“Shit, Noa, are you okay?” Rhosyn’s voice spikes, panicked.
Seren shifts closer, her hand finding my upper back and patting gently. It’s the same way she calms Ivey when she cries. Her pale blue gaze catches mine, and I see it all there. The fear, worry, and worse, recognition.She knows this isn’t just a cough. She knows it’s something darker. Scarier.
I force a jerky nod for Rhosyn, my chest constricting to the point of pain, my breaths nothing but gravelly gasps between violent spasms.
Clumsily, I disentangle myself from between them and ease down off the boulder we perch on. Words are beyond my reach entirely, so I give them a quick, awkward wave before turning and making my way back toward the house.
With every harried step, the coughing fit keeps its tight hold on me. Each one sprays more blood onto my sleeve until the fabric feels wet against my chin and nose. I’m lucky neither Rhosyn nor Seren caught the sharp tang of copper. I need to change before someone else catches wind of it, but first, I need to rinse the fabric with cold water and get rid of the crimson evidence of my progressing decay. Logic tells me I’m being foolish by keeping this a secret. But I can’t bear the way they’ll look at me once they see how far the sickness has already spread. How much the rejection has already deteriorated me. Worse still, I can’t bear Rennick knowing. Not yet. The thought of him claiming me out of pity, stitching our bond back together out of obligation, makes my stomach turn to ice.
My vision swims, the hot tears from the coughing and not from anything else—at least that’s what I tell myself—as the house comes into view. And then I see them. Two figures standing on the deck above, watching.
One of them is Rennick.
Dread coils deep.
Chapter 13
Rennick
The dream settles over me like mist, thick and damp, clinging to my skin.
That part isn’t unusual. For over eight months, I’ve been sucked into dreams that are so real, so vivid, that it’s hard to differentiate them from the waking world. They stick with me, every detail—the mist, the faceless woman, her haunting voice that begged me to remember her. At the time, I hadn’t known who she was, hadn’t known the significance of her plea. I do now. It had been Noa.
But this dream is different.
I’m standing before a cabin I know well. In the waking world, it’s a home that now belongs to Zora, her eccentric style marked across every board with the cheery yellow paint she’d chosen for the door, and the colorful mismatched chairs and flowerpots that clutter the porch. It’s welcoming and eclectic, just like the woman who resides there. But here, in this dream, the cabin has changed back to what it was when I was a pup. Thick bright green moss matts the slanted roofline. Bundles of herbs in various degrees of drying sway from a string of thin rope between two porch pillars. The front door is made of plain, weathered oak. Scarred and scratched from use. And the tree that leans over the roof hums with a dozen of windchimes, their hollow music cutting through the dense fog, stirring something in me that feels like a memory scraping against the inside of my skull.
The white mist surrounding me twists and turns like it’s a living organism. It carpets the damp dirt below my feet and snaking around my ankles. To my left, it swirls higher and thicker until it’s nearly as tall as me.
And, as if she’s made up of the same material, she walks out of the fog.
Thalassa Alderwood.
Her hair is the same rich brown as Noa’s, but it’s heavier with waves. Braids are threaded near her ears with silver charms that catch the minimal pale light of the moon above. I can’t remember a time she didn’t have them woven into the strands of her hair.
As though the years haven’t touched her, she looks just as she did the last time I saw her.
