“She’ll be okay,” I say, although I’m pretty certain I’m trying to convince myself as much as him. “You and your sisters always seem to fight when you see them.”
He shakes his head and waves a hand at the door. “That’s different. What happened in there? That whole mess was vicious. Nasty shit.”
We wait in silence, leaning against the walls for a good five minutes until Echo comes out again, giving us both a tremulous smile that’s world’s away from her usual one.
“Well, that sucked big, sweaty jock-itchy balls. I’d kinda hoped that after meeting all of Brogan’s family, this would be just the same, you know? One big happy family, connecting the two parts of my ever extending family. But nope, I’d forgotten how things go with Jet whenever we’ve had a fight. I’m always the one to apologize to her, to smooth down any ruffled feathers, even when it’s not my fault.” She shakes her head and takes a few steps away from the door, keeping her voice low so that her sister can’t overhear.
“I’m sorry about all that.”
That hurt look in her eyes hasn’t faded entirely and I’m still fighting the urge to take her in my arms, as if I can fix the emotional injuries her sister caused.
Brogan has no such reservations. Then again, he’s a warm-blooded guy, not a walking icebox like me. He pulls Echo into his arms and presses little butterfly kisses all over her jaw and along up to her ear, where he murmurs something I can’t hear. I twist away, feeling like I’m intruding on their private moment, especially when Echo giggles.
Giggles.
I’ve never made her giggle. I’ve barely made her smile. Another stab of envy goes through me at just howeasythis is for Brogan. Connecting with people, making them feel better, while I’m over here like a spare part, wondering if my touch would even be welcome.
Dammit. Maybe I should go outside? Wait for them to have their little moment while I cry into a tiny box to store my tears.
Echo pulls away and shoots Brogan the softest look, one that makes my stomach clench to witness.
“Sorry, I’m okay. I’m okay now. Just, she makes me so mad sometimes. I don’t like how she talks to you or how she looks at you guys.”
“It doesn’t matter to either of us, other than it being disrespectful to you,” I say, earning me an approving look from Brogan from over our mate’s shoulder. At least I got that part right.
Fuck. This mate stuff is hard.
“Thanks, Soren.” She swallows and then seems to pull herself together. “Okay, so Jet didn’t actually have anything useful to report. She just remembered that she’d seen Wren since being at the academy. Apparently, she came on one of our tours to the Elysian Fields.” She shares another meaningful look with Brogan and I wonder what the hell else I missed over the past couple of days. The two of them seem to have bonded a lot while I wasn’t there and I feel like I’m running on tidbits of information instead of the full story regarding what we know about Wren.
I feel out of the loop, a little out of control. And not for the first time, I wish I’d gone with Echo to the academy to meet Wren’s friend and hadn’t spent the day cleaning up guts and fighting off soul-eaters with the damn asshole dragon.
Another useless stab of envy has me scowling at nothing in particular.
“Care to fill me in on what I’m clearly missing here?” I say, my tone is more dickish than I would like it to be. Echo winces slightly and pulls a piece of paper from her jeans, waving it in front of me.
“This is the address Wren’s friend gave us, for where she grew up before she joined the academy. The Elysian Fields. Seems like about six months ago when Wren came on a tour with me, she was visiting home.”
“Hold on.” I put my hand up like that’ll help with the overload of thoughts going through my head. “The Elysian Fields. Wren grew up there?”
Echo nods. “Before she went to the academy.”
How the hell did I not know that? I shoot Brogan a look and he shrugs. Oh right, the reason I didn’t know is that I have the conversational skills of a slug. Wren wasn’t exactly chatty. That was why we got on well. We both didn’t mind settling into silence.
“But… wouldn’t… isn’t everyone there dead? It’s part of the afterlife, right?”
Echo briefly explained to us about what they do to weaver kids, making them a part of society before they bring them into the academy and getting everyone who knew them to forget about their existence. It seems unnecessarily cruel to me. Not too dissimilar to how they force mini reapers to grow up without ever forming connections with other living beings other than our mentors. Our mentors that we subsequently are required to reap in the future.
“I mean, maybe?” Echo says it like it’s a question. “It’s not like the place has those blue orbs zooming around everywhere, or, like, ghosts wandering around. The people there are just people, same as anywhere. Apart from there being minotaurs and a bunch of other creatures I’ve never seen before. But you’d know better than me, right? About what happens to people after you shove them through the gate or whatever, into the afterlife?”
“Not part of my job description, I’m afraid.”
She frowns, looking from me to Brogan and then back again. “What, you mean you don’t know what happens to them? I know you’ve got all those souls—”
The shitshow that is our current situation in the garden is something that gives me enough sleepless nights as it is and is not something I want to get into right now. Or ever. I don’t want to explain it to our mate or to see the look on her face as she realizes that I’m a massive failure.
“We reap the souls, take them safely back to the garden. That’s as far as our purview goes.”
Two big blue eyes blink at me in disbelief. “You really don’t know what lies beyond the gate? Or what happens to the souls once they move on?”
