by Justine Dee
****
“Your brother doesn’t look much like you.” Izzy said as she settled Gwyn down onto the couch back at the house.
Izzy and Logan were living in their family home since her father’s death. Izzy tried not to think about that, and in truth she could not really. She had been there, been in the room when he was stabbed to death but whatever they had done to her she remembered nothing except waking up screaming to find her father dead in front of her.
“He’s not my birth brother. It’s complicated, but he is family.” Gwyn replied.
“I like him.” Izzy grinned.
“I got that.” Gwyn smiled weakly as Izzy handed her a small glass of golden liquid, the smell of Irish whiskey greeting her senses and reminding her to not drink too much of Logan’s good whiskey this time. “He’s kind of impossible not to adore and he sure knows it.”
“I got that.” Izzy replied with a laugh, repeating Gwyn’s own words. “Are you sure you don’t want to change your mind and go to dinner?”
“No, I don’t think I can.” Gwyn sipped her whiskey to distract her body from any desire it might have to cry. She was struck by the absurdity of all this, she was sitting almost in tears in the home of her boss, her boss who happened to head some of the biggest companies in the country. And it seemed comfortable and normal.
“So sunshine, what did your brother mean about us and past lives?” Izzy tactfully changed the subject. She knew what it was like to not want to talk about a painful love life; she used to be the queen at it until Roen had broken through everything and made her discover that love could be real and not conventional at best or fake and abusing at worst.
“I don’t know, when I was over there the other day, he mentioned that you and Logan and I were bound by past lives. But you’ll learn something about Myrddin; he’s cryptic and annoying and he loves it, so I don’t know anything more than that. But he wants me to remember, he wants me to let myself remember and I feel so strange talking to you about this but not strange.”
Izzy laughed.
“Sunshine my whole life is one whole big dance of strange but not strange. But I take it that means that you don’t know how we knew each other before then?”
“Not a clue. I have some memories from different lives, snippets really, but I’ve never taken the time to look closer at them, to devote the time to doing any regression work. I know my exes have, after the whole debacle a few years ago; they’ve both devoted themselves more to their studies. Myrddin thought telling me might encourage me to do so. Kind of didn’t work.”
And the conversation had come around full circle again. Izzy reached over and pinched her leg when Gwyn went quiet, lost in her thoughts, staring at the remains of the whisky in her glass.
“Come on sweetheart, no more talking then. We are going out and we are going dancing. Somewhere too loud to even think or talk and when you reach the point of talking, I’ll teach you all my tricks. Just call me mistress and I shall teach you everything I know.”
“Mistress?” Gwyn looked at Izzy and blinked, wondering.
The only life she remembered was Blodwyn and there had been a strong warrior woman who had taken Blodwyn under her wing, protected her, and fought to restore her to Bedwyr. She had taught Blodwyn to be strong like her and Blodwyn had called that woman Mistress. But before Gwyn could think on it more, Izzy was dragging her out the door to find some harmless fun to distract her.