The Titan shut up like he’d been chastised by the school principal.
“Shake hands and act your age,” I said. “You’re brothers.”
Silas grunted. Atlas glanced toward Silas’s feet. It wasn’t a handshake, but I got the feeling it was as close to a truce as we were going to get.
I extended a hand to Silas. “Take me away. Somewhere safe for you.”
Silas looked to Atlas, then back to me. He took my hand, and he nodded. A second later, we were gone.
Chapter 12
We appeared in theblink of an eye somewhere else.
A place more beautiful, more exquisite than any I’d seen on this island yet, and that was saying something. There had been no tugging sensation this time, no tumultuous travel by pixie dust or spell or whatever else I’d already experienced.
“You can Phase too,” I surmised when we landed. “Just like Atlas.”
Silas gave me a succinct nod. I couldn’t get a read on his mood. He was still bloody and bruised and generally looking a wreck. A handsome, lovely wreck.Mywreck.
I moved toward Silas, raised a hand. I wiped mud from beneath his eye.
“You’re back,” I whispered.
Silas raised a hand, pressed it to mine. We were both holding my hand to his cheek. His eyes filled with an emotion so big and vulnerable I felt my heart splinteringinto pieces.
He looked ashamed and hopeful and terrified and destroyed. I stepped closer to him, raised onto my toes. I let us hover there, inches apart, until he dipped his head to meet me halfway.
I pressed a whisper of a kiss to his lips. A brush that lasted only a split second, a nod to the fact that I was here with him. A promise that even if I couldn’t completely understand him, I’d be here trying. That I recognized what he’d done for me.
“What happened?” I asked him. “When we were traveling from the mainland, you were taken from me. I don’t understand how that happened.”
Silas nodded, his brow furrowing, like whoever had done the taking wasn’t going to be alive for a whole lot longer. Judging by the way Silas had gone at it with his own flesh and blood, I could only imagine what he might do to someone he truly disliked.
“You were Ripped from me,” Silas said. “Ripping is a way to strip someone of their destination when traveling by magical means. It’s an intensely difficult form of magic to master. Even harder to keep all parties alive.”
“Do you know who’s responsible for it?”
“No.” His answer was short, clipped, like there might be a little more to it, but not enough to say just yet. “But Fates help them when I find out.”
“Are you okay?” I asked. “Where were you?”
Silas cocked his head to one side. “You tell me. You’re the one who found me and brought me back.”
“No, that was Atlas,” I said. “I just came up with the spell. It was the bond between brothers that allowed me to locate you.”
“A bond between brothers wouldn’t have been strong enough to locate me,” Silas said. “I think you know that.”
I did know that. I knew something had happened that had rendered Atlas’s help useless during the spell. He’d been physically blasted away from me. I’d been on my own. I knew it; I just couldn’t believe it.
“What sort of bond could we possibly have?” I asked in a small voice. “I barely know you. We’re strangers.”
“We are,” he said. “In some ways.”
“Atlas said it too—that he could see the bond between us. What was he talking about?”
“I have something for you,” Silas said shortly, cutting off my line of questioning. “Here.”
Silas fumbled in one of his pockets. He withdrew two bottles. One was antibiotics for Eloise. The other was a hot pink jar of Pepto Bismol.
