“Marlowe killed me. You are setting me free.” The shadows under the door reached for her, and her voice shifted once more, dripping with the hollow reediness of the wraith. “Your task is set. In a moment, I will open the door and merge with the wraith again. In the same moment, the Kessian of twelve hours past will be coming here from the wedding. He intends to meet Tal, but will encounter me. I will take him to the strid.You must go to the spring and swim its waters one last time. I—some version of me—will wait for you there.”
I nodded in understanding. “Then I suppose this isn’t goodbye.”
Laurelie smiled sadly. “Let us say it anyway.”
I wrapped her up in a hug. She felt insubstantial, like trying to hold a cloud, cold and watery. We released each other, and she reached for the door.
“Wait,” Kessian said.
She turned to him.
“Why did you choose me as Keeper? That was you, wasn’t it?”
“It was.”
“You didn’t know me.”
Her expression softened so much she almost looked like the real Laurelie again.
“In the waters of the Bloodstream, you were as known to me as Taliesin. I knew you through him. Your connection shone to both of us—the strid and me—like a North Star. Even while cursed to wander and to be left behind, you found home in each other. Making you Keeper was one thing the strid and I agreed upon. Beyond that, I felt it was right to break the rules of inheritance. Edwin chose to give it to me instead of Marlowe. A great irony, when it was this exact eventuality Marlowe hoped to subvert. It happens often. Someone, in their efforts to avert disaster, instead plays into that design.”
Kessian’s stony expression hadn’t shifted. He nodded, and Laurelie turned back toward the door, where shadows wreathed the cracks.
She opened it and stepped out into the embrace of the wraith, whose smoke slowly engulfed her once more. It was too much like watching her die again, so I closed the door. In a moment, she would take off after the Kessian of twelve hours ago. Once the coast was clear, I would make my way to the spring.
In the warmth of Lunaris’s kitchen, things were quiet, a reminder of a once comfortably uncomfortable life. I ran my hand along the counter. She’d always come to my rescue, but it had all caught up to us in the end.
Kessian leaned against the counter. “The two of you have come to my rescue more times than I can count.”
“You stood up to my mum, which was far braver,” I said. “Consider this returning the favor.”
“That’s not funny.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry either. If this is how things have to be, I have one request.”
“What’s that?”
He leaned his cane against the counter and stepped into my space. His fingers knotted in the collar of my sodden shirt. “Kiss me like you would have if we’d made it to our rendezvous.”
My pulse hammered. “I don’t think there’s time for the kind of kiss I was going to give you.”
“We have thirteen long minutes. I counted the length of a second. Ten minutes in here is more like an hour. Time enough to properly say goodbye.”
I spun him until his back was to the counter, lifted him up onto the edge of it, and with both hands on the hinge of his knee to encourage him to wrap his legs around me, leaned in to kiss him like the world was going to end.
Because mine was.
Chapter 39
Ileaned in and kissed him so hard, he nearly bit me back. My hands went under his clothes, pulling at the fastening. He wasted no time in peeling open the buttons of my shirt while his free hand ran steadily over the front of my trousers, feeling the outline of my stiffening cock. His legs, hooked around mine, drew me in so I was trapped against his mouth, which migrated from my lips, to my neck, lower. He shoved aside my shirt to suck on a nipple.
It was harried and manic, the desperate hunger to devour one last meal before we both starved, but I still asked, “Any more rules I should know about?”
“Pretend like this isn’t our last night together.”
I nodded feverishly. “Okay.” I’d pulled enough buttons open to pull his shirt down over his shoulder. I mouthed over the mark I’d left and traveled lower to make more.
