He looks far off.
“You don’t have to…” I tell him. “I swear you don’t have to relive anything that makes you feel pain.”
“I want to tell you.” He grabs my hand, his thorns and blooms burst from his skin to match mine. “Mother thought I was safe,I mean she really couldn’t have known that Amarantha seduced Moros and in return he had Unseelie warriors in the forest.”
Something burns inside of me. I don’t like where this is going.
I look at Orion then back to Whispen, my sixth sense pulsing. “Go on.”
“Anyway. There I was. Sitting by the campfire at the tavern with my babysitters. A few dryads and a nymph.” He tilts his head. “I remember now.” He picks at a thorn, piercing himself then watching it heal again and again. “The nymph used me as a shield when the assassins came.”
People who should have guarded him, keep him safe, failed him and it cost him his life.
Graves’ face flashes behind my eyes. Different century. Different weapon. Same math. The people who are supposed to protect you are the ones who know exactly where to aim.
I don’t say anything because there isn’t anything. Some things don’t get words. They just get witnessed.
Orion gets up and walks away. His anger pulses through the bond. At how charges failed a child.
Achild. I was a child, too, once. Before Graves turned that into a liability.
“Dagda found me too late.” He blinks away his tears. “Caught my spirit and created a wisp. When Mother and Father died, I swore I’d protect you.”
“You did, Whispen.” I hug him again. He’s so small. So frail. So mortal. “I swear to all the old gods, you will live to feel immortality.”
“That’s a big promise, sister.”
“Who would I be if I didn’t keep it?”
I wait for it. The whisper. The one that always comes when I reach for something good.
You don’t deserve this. You’ll break it. You’ll lose him the way you lose everything.
Nothing.
Just my brother’s green eyes and thorns that match mine and a heart that feels two sizes too big in a chest that’s finally stopped bracing for the hit.
“You must wake the others,” he says, pulling back.
“How?” I swipe at my tears.
“Well, I flew through Orion and then you soooo…” He shrugs. “Your guess is as good as mine!”
“When I dreamt of this place I fell into the mound, not everyone was healed enough to wake.” I turn to Orion. “The Cauldron.”
He’s already pulling it out of his chest, offering it to me.
“Time to wake a few gods.” For the first time I look into the small wooden bowl. Its full of blood and I try not to over think it. Why did I not once think about what it would be full of?
Orion’s blood.
I walk toward the closest mound and set my palm on it. Just like before, I fall through the soil and into the mound itself.
This time I know what to expect. And I have my brother with me. My little older brother, and in front of us are a few males suspended in that amniotic-like fluid.
“Wake him,” Whispen says. “Thornback.”
I spin around, seeing the Fae male I beat what feels like years ago, though I know it’s only been weeks.
