Arthur let the mention of Ira go by without comment. He wanted to see him—wanted to deal with the way they’d left things—but first, he wanted more time with his sister.
He fished around in his pocket for the rowan cross, handed it to her. Her breath caught.
“It did keep me safe,” Arthur said, and he told her about the fog.
She turned the cross over and over in her fingers, eyes bright. “I suppose we’ll never know why Dad had this.”
Arthur smiled crookedly. “I think there’s a lot we’ll never know. Why he didn’t tell us he was friends with the Lord of the Wood. Or what he’d think of—”
He broke off, skin prickling. He hated feeling so uncertain of the one person who had always been there for him. Mrs. Young’s single, angry word echoed in his head; Arthur knew what Seacliff would think. But he wouldn’t care what they thought, if only Charlotte understood.
Her eyes flickered over him. “What he’d think of you and Ira?”
Arthur’s stomach clenched. His palms were clammy.
“You know?”
She gave a small smile. “It’s the way he talks about you.And... it explains a lot. About you. You were always so lukewarm on courtship, no matter how much you dreamed of romance.”
She didn’t sound angry, or disgusted, and there was that small smile, but Arthur’s mouth was dry.
“And... you’re not... you don’t...”
Charlotte chewed her thumbnail. Like Jonas’s lip picking, the nail chewing had been a nervous habit for a long time, but Charlotte had grown out of it two decades ago.
Arthur tugged her hand from her mouth. “What is it?”
“I loved John,” she blurted.
“I know,” Arthur said in confusion.
“I still do.” Charlotte fiddled with John’s ring. “But I’m... I’ve always...” She cleared her throat. “Elspeth... the woman I’ve been traveling with. The way it is between us... It’s like how it is with you and him.”
Arthur’s heart stuttered. He’d always thought them so different, he and Charlotte, but here they shared one thing that seemed rather important.
“I’ve always known,” she said tightly. “I’ve always... admired other women that way.”
Arthur wrapped his arms around her. She relaxed.
“I never knew,” he said, “until him. Where... where is he?”
She helped him to his feet. “I should warn you. I don’t know what he looked like when he left you, but...”
Arthur’s legs wobbled, and he was half bent over, but he could stand. Sort of. Charlotte handed him her cane; Calyx supported her. She seemed perfectly comfortable with it, and bygones were bygones and all that, but Arthur wouldn’t be anything like comfortablewith Calyx for some time.
Charlotte nodded to their left. Clinging to the furs, Arthur peered through the trees.
Sasha and Jonas ran back and forth, kicking leaves at eachother. A beast with a scarred eye and a twisted leg slunk between them, growling. He had a wolf’s tail now, too, Arthur noticed with a pang. Moss and lichens grew more thickly over his scar and in the ruff of his neck than ever.
Sasha whacked the beast in the side with a stick. With a pained howl, he fell to the ground. She threw the stick down and jumped on him, tickling him as he pretended to die a slow, dramatic death.
Arthur’s heart fluttered. Ira was playing with the children.
“I can’t say I cared for him at first,” Charlotte murmured, “but he’s not so bad.”
Arthur didn’t respond. His skin buzzed, his ears rang, and he wanted nothing more than to run to Ira and hold him.
But he was being held together by stitches and bandages. He was mostly standing because of Charlotte’s cane. And he wasn’t sure how Ira would react to being run to and held.
