“Get the hell off my land.”
“Saints, fuck! Don’t shoot!” A familiar voice yelped.
With a gasp Cassia dropped the platter on the kitchen floor. It shattered, spilling shards of ceramics and bits of pastry everywhere as she sprinted to the front door.
“Don’t shoot!” she yelled.
Aevrin advanced across the porch, his crossbow loaded and pointed straight at her brother’s heart. Rylan stumbled backwards down the steps, trying not to trip without taking his eyes off the man with a weapon. Her little brother’s hands were raised. The sleeves of his jacket were too short, and it didn’t look like it would button over his tunic either. None of his clothes fit quite right, like they’d belonged to someone else.
“Go back inside,” Aevrin growled to her.
“Aevrin, stop, it’s my brother!” She raced past him in terror, thumping down the steps in her stockings and shoving herself in front of Rylan, arms spread as she faced Aevrin. With a sharp intake of breath he jerked the crossbow up to the sky.
“Saints, Cassia, you don’t run in front of a loaded bow,” he snapped, the anger in his eyes momentarily replaced with something that looked like fear.
“Rylan,” Cassia said, Aevrin forgotten now that the immediate threat was over. She turned and threw her arms around her brother.
The month Cassia had been gone had changed Rylan. Her brother was three inches taller than her, heavy-built like Cassia, his long-lashed eyes the same gold-brown but his shaggy hair paler, nearly silver-gold. There was a scratch on his freckled cheek and bags under his eyes. His jaw was covered in the patchy beginnings of an unkempt beard.
“What are you doing here?” Cassia needed to know.
After the last time she’d seen him, never, outside her wildest dreams, had Cassia ever expected her little brother to come looking for her.
“I can’t believe it’s really you,” he said. Rylan’s lower lip trembled, then tightened as if he was fighting not to cry. “I… I’m so sorry, Cassia. I shouldn’t have risked coming here. I thought he killed you, but we were at a tavern one night and I heard folk talking about some woman left in the mountains…” Rylan bent his head down and drew a ragged breath.
Cassia hugged him tight, then turned over her shoulder. Aevrin still stood on the porch, crossbow pointed down now but still in his hand instead of holstered. There was a steely expression on his face. Behind him Sath and Mavek crowded in the doorway. There was an axe resting on Sath’s shoulder, but Mavek just looked curious, hands stuffed into his pockets.
“Can we have a little space?” she asked the Rivekers, her throat tight.
“Is that a good idea?” Sath’s voice was as cold as Aevrin’s expression.
“This is my brother,” Cassia said.
Sath studied them both a moment, then jerked his head at Mavek. Both headed into the house. Aevrin stared at her longer, until Cassia gave him a pleading look. He frowned, and slowly turned to walk into the house. He glanced over his shoulder as he crossed the threshold. He left the door open.
“Saint’s shit,” Rylan said, and wiped his forehead with the sleeve of his jacket. “All I did was ask if you were there, and then that fuckin’ maniac pulled his bow out. What the hell?”
“It was your band who left me for dead,” Cassia whispered, keeping her voice down so nobody in the house would hear. “What did you expect him to do?”
“I know.” Rylan’s face wavered. “I’ve regretted it every day. I shouldn’t have come.”
“I thought you wanted me out of your life for good.”
“No. Hell no. Cas, if I left with you, he’d have hunted us down. I was trying to get you to go before he realized you were there. Before he fucking killed you.”
Her world spun. Rylan, spitting mad and telling her he never wanted to see her again, that he hated her, that he’d come out west to get away from her. Rylan… lying? To protecther?
That wasn’t the way it had ever worked. She was supposed to be the one protecting him.
“I could have gotten help,” she protested. “Why not just tell me that?”
“Because my hands aren’tclean, Cas,” he hissed, desperation in his quiet voice. “The things he made me do, the things Ichoseto do, it was them or me, he said—the last thing I wanted was you sticking your nose in and getting caught up in the same mess.”
She buried her face in her hands for a moment, head reeling. If what he was saying was true, she’d done the unthinkable by walking away. She’d been lazing around the Riveker ranch while Rylan fended for himself. She should have been fighting tooth and nail to get back to him. But he’d been so insistent he wanted nothing more to do with her.
And he’d done nothing to help her when Zey finally found her and dragged her out of the room.
“How did you even find me?”
