“What’s there to talk about? You let him touch you, Raina. And yet… you despised him.” The last hint of disbelief in his voice and on his face turns to abhorrence. “This man you loathed, this bastard you wanted to kill. You let him inside you, didn’t you? Let him do things to you only I have ever done.” He smacks his chest. “Me. The man who has loved you for your entire life. How? Why?” I reach for him, but he jerks away and levels me with a glare. Beneath his rage lies so much pain. “Did you ever love me, Raina?”
My mind races as I try to think of something to say, anything to convey how sorry I am. All I manage is an empty, “Of course I loved you. I still do.”
Disgust radiates from his every pore as his features twist into a sneer. “But it’s like you said on the green, isn’t it? On our last day together? Our kind of love isn’t enough.” I lift my hands to reply, but in a manner I’m far too used to, Finn grabs my wrists. Hard. Holding my hands apart. Silencing me. “It’s been weeks!” He all but spits the words in my face. “And you’ve already let him fuck you like some common wh–”
“Enough!” A second wave of power ripples the air, rustling the leaves in the treetops as Alexus pushes between us. He shoves Finn so hard my old friend not only staggers but falls. The muscles along Alexus’s shoulders and neck tighten, and his scarred back flares as he stalks toward Finn and straddles him. He leans down, grabs a fistful of Finn’s tunic, and jerks him up. “If I ever see you touch her like that again, I’ll carry your head around on a motherfucking pike.”
Under the haze of humiliation, a snarl curls Finn’s lips, and he reaches for the dagger sheathed at his thigh. I gasp and start toward them, but I freeze when Alexus seizes the dagger first and presses its deadly edge to Finn’s throat.
“Brave or stupid,” he says. “That’s always the question with you, isn’t it? I fear the answer is stupid.” He stabs the dagger back into the sheath, and with the strength of a single fist, hauls Finn to his feet, bringing them nose to nose. “I am not a mountain you want to cross, boy. I will bury you. But for now, I’ll give you one more chance to use the brain Loria gave you. If you speak to Raina with respect and keep your hands off her, I’ll let you continue breathing. But if you lay a single, angry fingertip on her or so much as think a slur about what she and I do in the dark, I promise you, I will dig the hole for you myself.” Alexus lets go of Finn’s shirt with a shove, then wipes his bleeding lip with the back of his hand.
The expression on Finn’s face as Alexus returns to my side is one of rage, his eyes violent. He opens his mouth, but before he can utter a response, Hel calls his name. A keening wail leaves her, a sound so filled with relief it pierces my heart like a needle.
She stands near Nephele’s tent with Rhonin and my sister, dressed in the clothes she slept in—a white linen tunic, untied and hanging off one golden brown shoulder, and gray leather britches barely shoved into her boots. Her long hair is a tangled mass of black waves, surrounding a face still soft with sleep.
Rattled by the familiar yet unexpected voice, Finn turns his frenzied gaze upon her as more shock piles onto the heap already weighing his back. “Hel?”
She runs straight for him and collides as only Hel can, throwing her arms around his neck and her long legs around his waist. Finn stumbles a step and lifts his hands, and after a few moments, looks at me. I can read the questions in his eyes.
Is this real? Is any of this real?
I nod, and as Hel’s little death dances in my heart, the tears I’ve been fighting since I first saw her brother fall down my face. Finn lets the moment between us live one last second, then he wraps Hel in his arms, crumbles to his knees, and weeps.
11
RAINA
“One of us should check on them.” Rhonin squats near the campfire and adds a handful of forest duff to the weak flames. “I know there’s much for Hel to explain and that this is difficult for her brother, but it’s already late morning. There’s only so much daylight.”
Joran strolls to a downed log and sits next to my sister. She recoils at his nearness. But at least he’s clothed now.
“Or perhaps we should leave their miserable asses here,” he says. “It isn’t like they can’t find their way to the valley.”
Alexus stands with his back against a tall oak. He’s an impressive sight, clad in black from boots to fitted leather pants to a jacket buckled over a midnight tunic. His arms are crossed over his broad chest, and though he stares distantly into the low-burning fire, Joran’s words are enough to make him stiffen.
“I’m not leaving anyone behind,” he says, his voice sharp-edged.
“We could divide into two groups,” Rhonin offers. “Nephele can lead some of the others to the loch and after the next hour passes, if Hel and Finn still haven’t finished, I volunteer to break up their reunion. I’m sure they’ll understand. Then we can all be on our way.”
Alexus lifts a brow. “You think more highly of that boy’s temperament than I do.” He touches his thumb to his wounded lip. “I expect we’ll come to blows again before we reach the valley. Possibly before we leave this wood.”
That can’t happen. Finn does get stupidly brave when he’s angry. It isn’t either/or. It’s both.
“I will take care of it,” I sign to Alexus. Then I pick up what’s left of Finn’s shattered bow and head for the last tent standing.
“Does she know they killed her mother?” I hear Finn say as I approach, and the fissure that formed in my heart when my mother died cracks a little wider.
“She does,” Hel says. “She saw it happen.”
A heavy sigh. “I buried her, you know. Ophelia. In the cemetery. Next to Rowan.”
A breath of sadness flutters through my veins. The memory of my mother cloaked in magick and trying to save me—to save us all—is never far from my mind.
“I’m certain Raina will be thankful,” Hel says. “She should hear this from you, though.”
“I can’t. I wanted to share a life with her, Hel. When she got her head out of the clouds. Now I don’t even know who she is.”
“She’s Raina Bloodgood. Your best friend long before she was your lover.”
