She stood in front of the small stone, the two words etched on it gleaming in the darkness of the night, shrouding them in silence. Deryn opened her palm to her flame and simply looked, the tombstone staring back at her with all the patience of an eternity.
“I’m sorry I didn’t come to see you when I swung by Dragons last year.”
Deryn watched her words disappear into the chilly night in a cloud of vapor. Somehow, she felt compelled to speak. To share things she wasn’t yet ready to tell her sisters. And Deryn knew her mother would understand, though why she presumed to know her mother, Deryn couldn’t answer. Elizabeth was just as much an enigma to her daughter as the woman she had come to talk to her mother about.
“Ceridwen asked me the other day if I’d know when I met my Fate. And I didn’t tell her anything. I didn’t tell her who I’d met and how I wish… Damn, I have no idea what I wish for. I sure as hell wish you were still here. To tell me to stop cursing. To tell me what to do. To be honest, I have no idea why I am evensaying any of this.” Deryn’s flame leapt higher in the cold air of the night, as if calling out her lie. “Out of everything else, I want to share with you… To ask you…” Deryn trailed off. There was so much to say. So much to scream, really. Her chest would cave in any second now from the weight of the unspoken words. But above all, there was one sentence that choked her the most. And so, Deryn let that bird fly, a cardinal splitting the air with a red streak. Like a warning sign. Like blood.
“I miss you, Mom.”
Tears were blurring her vision, trembling in her lashes, but Deryn didn’t close her eyes. She just watched as the air filled with the sound of her voice. And when she couldn’t watch anymore, she whispered the most painful and inadequate words of them all.
“I’m sorry, Mom. I’m so sorry.”
No answer was forthcoming, no forgiveness. Deryn wiped the tears that rolled down her cheeks. The silence wore on as, in the distance, the ocean fought its never-ending battle with the cliff’s rockface. Behind her, the light went on in the kitchen. Seren had come home. Deryn closed her palm and made her way in the darkness back out to the gravel path and then down to the sleeping town, hoping her ghosts wouldn’t follow.
9
PALOMA, OLD FRIENDS & SAFE SPACES
As the door shut behind Deryn, Paloma exhaled. Something directed her steps back to the windows, her breath the only sound in the room as she watched the familiar figure step out of the hotel and, instead of heading to the parking lot where Paloma knew a brand-new motorcycle was parked, turn in the direction of the woods.
Paloma glanced down at her wrist, the heavy Audemars Piguet, her father’s watch, letting her know it was still early enough for Deryn to make it down into Crow’s Nest safely.
Not that anything would’ve really harmed her in the woods. Paloma had walked them extensively in her early days on the island, trying to familiarize herself with the land, with how it lived and moved around her. The forests were picturesque and somewhat dense, but nothing breathed there that could do serious damage. Unless you counted your own thoughts.
Did Deryn have any that were terrible to be alone with? Paloma almost dismissed the idea, but an image intruded, one from just moments ago when she had spoken about history and Deryn’s rather famed conquest line. The woman had looked stricken, and the haunted expression stayed with Paloma despiteDeryn wiping it away very quickly, masking it with that sexy bravado she slipped on in the blink of an eye.
Sexy bravado?
Paloma shook her head at herself and stepped back from the windows. She sat down on the couch that Deryn had just vacated and closed her eyes, trying to clear her mind. Instead, images of this very couch popped in, and there was nothing relaxing about them.
Rough, hot hands. Biting, snarling mouth that kissed and bruised in the same breath… Taking her apart with each stroke of fingertips over her clit, with each lick over her nipple. And every time she’d try to hold off the onslaught of sensation, the lips would smirk over her skin, the fingers would delve deeper, harder, jolting her out of any thought of struggle… How could she even think of resisting this when it was she who had sought it out? When it was she who wanted these hands and this mouth on her?
It was sex, primal and raw, messy and rough, and it was also something entirely different from the sex that she knew, and it began at the fire. Paloma lifted her hand and let it caress her neck, the skin there remembering bruises that had now faded away, bruises she’d had to cover for days, bruises sucked into her skin by lips that felt like fire, lips that left a brand. Paloma half expected the bright red marks to never go away, to have been burned onto her.
But they faded, and yet this woman never quite left her thoughts. Her wounded expression wedged itself in Paloma’s memory, tugging at heartstrings that she’d thought long atrophied. She felt as affected by the pain on Deryn’s face as she had been by the lust. And now they were stuck together in Lachlan’s stratagem.
She shook her head. Blaming it on Lachlan was not entirely fair. She could’ve stopped him and his so-called plans at anymoment. She could’ve tried to go about this election on her own. Her loss wasn’t certain; she had her backers, she had her platform. And even if she lost… Why did it matter so much? Why did this town and this godforsaken island matter this much?
The phone on the coffee table pinged, and Paloma smiled at the name of the author of the text. And at the text itself. Instead of replying, she called.
“You are getting older, mi amor.”
The old nickname made Paloma’s cheeks warm. Just a little. Just a touch.
“Elinor.”
“Or, you know, it could be me getting younger, going with the much gentler ways of the world and texting ahead, instead of cold-calling you.”
The voice was sly, playful, and Paloma suddenly missed New York. What a strange sensation to associate a city where she had lived her entire life with a person who, relatively speaking, took up much less time and space there. Forty-five and fifteen. And yet, somehow those fifteen with Elinor were richer.
Elinor evidently wanted to speak to her for a very specific reason, as that very sly, very playful tone was a clear indication of her intentions. Before Paloma could take a wild guess, Elinor cut straight to the chase.
“So, let’s set aside my metaphorical fountain of youth. I hear you are tapping into an actual one…”
Paloma’s cheeks, already warm, were suddenly on fire.
No way…
