“Elodie. My favourite little gardener. Did you miss me?” he says, the corner of his mouth twitching into a grin. A hysterical laugh bubbles in my throat, half sob and half relief. The shock of Bryn’s collapse is still vibrating through my bones, but Kael’s humour is like a physical wave of calm. So normal. So him.
“I know you will all have a lot of questions, but I think there is someone who can explain it all a lot better than me.”
A figure steps out from the clearing behind me. I can’t quite make out his face, but Rowan moves closer to him, stopping dead in his tracks as they meet.
“Masen?” I hear Rowan say, the sound falling from his lips as if he were calling out to a ghost. I look back down at Bryn, checking to make sure she is breathing, that her eyelids are still flickering with life before I look back. My eyes linger on the back of the figure standing next to Rowan. There is something about the way he holds his shoulders, the slope of his frame that feels like a whisper of a memory, but I shake it off.
Then he speaks and the world stops.
My hands freeze on Bryn’s arm.
I know that voice.
That is the same voice that taught me how to tell a poisonous root from a healing one.
The voice that showed me how to play chess like a winner.
The voice that looked out for me, always.
I stand up slowly, my legs feeling as though they belong to someone else. Ignoring Rowan’s whispered command to stay back, I approach the man whose back is still turned to me. At the mention of my name, he turns to face me.
“Hey, buddy,” he whispers softly, as if it’s a normal day. Like we were just starting our day at work.
“Sam?”
Chapter 25
Rowan
The cottage feels too small for so many people. Too quiet after what happened in that meadow.
Bryn is alive, barely.
Her pulse flutters softly under her wrist.
Mara keeps checking constantly, never leaving her side. We all sit in anticipation, having laid Bryn down under blankets to cover her. Waiting for her to move, flicker her eyes open, anything. We walked in agonising silence back from the meadow, my eyes flicking between Elodie, Kael, and the ghost currently at my side.Masen.Neither of them has explained anything. Bryn’s health came above answers in the heat of the moment. The hearth glows with warmth as no one speaks. Kael stands by the window, his eyes searching the view beyond. I don’t know how to feel.
Happy that my brothers are back?
Angry that he left me?
Furious that Masen has been lying to me?
The room isn’t peaceful.
Its silence is heavy with questions that are coiling tighter. It feels like there is a hand wrapping around my throat, the air in the room thinning. I stand abruptly, marching out of the door and into the kitchen. I can’t take it anymore. The waiting, the wondering. Pacing the floor of the kitchen, I feel a shadow appear in the doorway.
I know who it is without looking.
“You left.” My voice is bitter, my anger clear in my tone. “Rowan—”
“You left, Kael.” Turning to face him now, he looks the ghost of the man I’ve marched a dozen battles with. His eyes are exhausted, full of everything I feel in myself.
“I didn’t have a choice,” he rasps, leaning his weight into the timber of the doorframe, “If I had told you, you’d never have let me go.”
“Of course I wouldn’t have. We don’t do that, Kael. We don’t abandon each other. That is not who we are.” My anger morphs into everything I’ve been trying to ignore.
Guilt.
