“You’re still talking,” Ryan growled, as he turned his easel back toward him.
“Right. Gotcha. Not a peep, I swear on the Virgin Mary.”
I grabbed up a stack of colours and chose some lovely sable brushes. I thought of the dream Maeve had that she refused to share. I know she would never believe her dreams, but there was far too much of this prophetic stuff going around to dismiss it. Once she realised she couldn’t ignore it, she’d let us in, I knew it. She just needed to deal with her own grief first. We all did.
Arthur needed to stop being angry, and he hated that because anger was far easier for him than what was underneath. Blake needed to fully become part of this world. Rowan needed to grow a pair, which was nothing new. Maeve needed to believe in herself and her power, and let go of the control she wanted to exert over the whole world.
Corbin… Corbin needed to not be dead. Hot tears stung my eyes. I squeezed my eyelids shut, forcing them back. I wasn’t going to cry in Ryan Raynard’s studio. What would my Uncle the hardarse mobster say? Hell, what would my Ma, god rest her drug-addled soul, say?
But even if Corbin was still alive in some sense, even if hecouldbe restored, his body was gone. Maybe what he needed was a new one.
Whistling an Irish ditty under my breath and calling up a surge of power within me, I dunked my brush into the black paint and made my first strong, dark line.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
ELEVEN: ARTHUR
Ipaced around the empty drawing room, my fingers itching to destroy something. The magic burned a hole inside me, as if Daigh had thrown me on that fire instead of Corbin. The charred bookshelf leered at me, mocking me for my lack of self-control.
Fuck, what was wrong with me? Ryan was trying to help us, and I burned his stuff.
Blake made me so angry. He’d betrayed all of us by messing with Maeve’s dreams. Who knew what else he’d tinkered with inside her head? If he’d never followed us into the human realm, none of this?—
Fresh fire sparked in my fingers.No.I needed to get out of here.
I slammed the drawing room door and made a beeline for the rear of the manor. French doors lined the back wall of an informal dining room. I shoved one open, and a fresh breeze blew across my face. I stepped outside and jogged across a paved patio and down a path between rows of parterres fanning out around a cracked fountain.
Ryan clearly wasn’t much of a green thumb. The back garden was in even worse shape than the front of the Hall. Turgid sludge choked the bottom of the empty fountain, and the formal flowerbeds were overgrown and choked with weeds. I figured our host wouldn’t mind if I did a little gardening for him, all in the name of burning off steam (literally).
I balled up all the rage inside me, and unleashed it through my fingers, aiming a fireball at the nearest parterre. The dry weeds caught fire and smouldered, burning quickly and reducing the garden to embers.
Blake’s stupid face danced in front of my vision. It morphed into Daigh’s, the stupid fae playing games with Maeve like he was the cat and she was his mouse. His games killed Corbin, my oldest friend, my first friend.
Smoke curled toward the heavens. The fires crackled, bringing me back to last night, to the heat rolling off the bonfire as the flames burned Corbin’s skin.
My stomach lurched. Fire slammed from my fingers and consumed another garden, the air crackling with black smoke. My skin didn’t tingle as much, but the pain in my chest hadn’t eased.
A hose reel laid coiled up at the end of the garden path. I unrolled it and doused both of the fires. What a stupid idea. At least I’d managed to burn off some of the rage. I’d be less likely to torch Ryan’s house.
I went back inside to search for Maeve. She’s probably still upset with me for confronting Blake. Good. It was time she knew the truth about him. I figured she’d have gone back to our bedroom, but halfway there I took a wrong turn and ended up in an unfamiliar wing. Loud sobs echoed from a bedroom at the end of the hall.
Corbin’s mother.
Of course. I’d seen his Dad in the drawing room. He was hard to miss – he looked exactly the way I imagined Corbin would look in a few years, once he cut off all his hair and stopped liking cool music and became the book dork we knew he wasinside. It was so weird to know Bree and Andrew were here,now,and Corbin wasn’t. The whole reason he’d searched out me and Flynn and Rowan in the first place was because they’d abandoned him at Briarwood. I hated them for it, the same way I hated my mother for leaving me with her shitty abusive husband. At the same time, my feet moved toward the sobs, drawn by a force I couldn’t describe.
I peered around the edge of the bedroom door. Corbin’s mother slumped in a sofa under the window, her head in her hands. Beside her, his father sat like a stone, his body rigid and his eyes a million miles away.
The grief on their faces tore at me. I didn’t hate them any more.
I leaned closer. The pommel of my sword banged against the wall. Corbin’s dad glanced up. His eyes widened as he saw me.
“I’m Arthur,” I said, extending a hand. “I was a friend of your son.”
At my words Corbin’s mother – Bree, that was her name – burst into tears again, burying her head in her husband’s shoulder. Andrew patted Bree’s back, and extended his other hand toward me. “Professor Andrew Harris. I wish we’d met under more pleasant circumstances. Ryan tells me you were the one who recovered Corbin’s body.”
I nodded. The feeling of his corpse – light and delicate, like a deflated balloon – remained a shadow on my shoulder. The sensation of it would stay with me for the rest of my life.
Andrew’s eyes –Corbin’seyes – bore into me. “Thank you, Arthur. Thank you for being a friend to our son.”
