Reluctantly, the girls let go of our legs and crawled back behind their mother, their earnest faces questioning Corbin, begging him to explain why he didn’t live with them, why he couldn’t stay for dinner and dessert and bedtime stories.
Corbin blinked. Without a word, he turned and stormed through the door, disappearing down the path without waiting for me. He didn’t look back.
“Th-thank you for your hospitality,” I whispered, turning away to hurry after him.
“Don’t you ever come back here again,” Corbin’s mother hissed at my back. “Corbin may be lost to us, but I won’t have Tessa and Bianca exposed to the likes of you.”
My dreads slapped against my back as I fled the house. Corbin wasn’t on the sidewalk outside, and panic turned my veins to ice before I spied him at the end of the street. He sat on the curb, his face in his hands.
I ran to him and placed a hand on his shoulder. Beneath me, his skin heaved. A sob? But Corbin never showed his emotions like this. After a moment, he lowered his hands. His face was dry.
“You saw that room, didn’t you?” he said, not looking at me. His voice wasn’t choked up, wasn’t sad, just resigned.
“Yes.” I could never lie to him.
“It’s not even our real bedroom. At Briarwood, we’d each had our own rooms. They only bought that house after…”
“I know.”
“They keep it like that – a shrine to the two sons they lost that day. Isn’t that sick? And they didn’t lose me. I’m right here.”
I had so many things I wanted to say, but my tongue wouldn’t form the words. Who was I to give him comfort? I didn’t have a family. I had no right to pass judgement on his.
“We shouldn’t have come,” Corbin kicked a loose stone out into the road. “It was a waste of time. They won’t even talk about magic.”
“You had to try. Besides, you made your sisters happy.”
“Yeah.” Corbin looked up at me then, and the first genuine smile I’d seen in days lit up his face, brightening the dim grey sky. “This must seem so ridiculous to you. Tell me the truth – you think we should just forgive each other? We should just bury everything that happened, like we buried Keegan?”
I nodded. I’d told him that a hundred times. He was so lucky to have a family. It seemed so stupid for them to be divided over this. Corbin’s parents left him all alone with his guilt and his grief. How could they not see it? It was written behind his eyes.
“You’re not responsible,” I said, for the millionth time. The words floated away, meaningless and useless, like me.
Corbin shrugged, but the shrug didn’t come across as carefree. Not at all. “We should get going. If we hurry, we’ll just make the next bus. I’ll text Flynn and let him know everyone is on their own for dinner. Maybe Blake will finally get that curry he’s been harping on about.”
That was Corbin, always thinking of others, always being responsible. I know he did it to distract himself, because in the quiet moments – when night fell and the house went to sleep and he had no one to watch over or care about – his own nightmares began.
What I didn’t know was how to help him.
16
MAEVE
As soon as Jane and I got back to Briarwood, we went to the library and filled the others in on what happened.
“You could curse them, you know.” Blake held up a plate piled high with Rowan’s cakes and pastries, shoveling the sweet treats into his mouth with barely a thought to proper mastication. The trail of crumbs across his black shirt indicated he’d already made a sizable dent in the stack. “Make them all grow boils or turn their toenails into beetles. It’ll be a hoot.”
“Brilliant idea, Sherlock. That would totally convince them I’m not an evil witch.”
“Why does everyone keep calling me Sherlock?” Blake demanded, waving an eccles cake in the air. “Is it some kind of witch insult?”
“This should explain everything.” Arthur pulled a thin book off the shelf behind Corbin’s desk and tossed it at Blake. I glanced at the title as Blake opened it with jammy fingers. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. “Now, what are we going to do about Dora?”
“I think one of you guys needs to talk to her. She thinks of you like her own sons. The only way she’s going to accept me is if one of you convinces her that I’m like the daughter she never had, and let me tell you that’s going to take some serious smooth talking. While you’re at it, try to get her to understand that it isn’t the eighteen hundreds and Jane is free to do whatever she likes with her body.”
“I could just compel her to believe that,” Blake mumbled through a mouthful of cake crumbs. “Problem solved.”
“Sounds great—Hey, give that back, you little scamp.” Jane wrestled a book back from Connor’s grasp.
“Not going to happen,” I said. “Magic caused this issue with Dora, so magic isn’t going to solve it. And maybe it’s okay in the fae realm to run around messing inside people’s heads, but if you want to be a member of this coven, you will never, ever force someone to think or do something against their will. You got that through your skull?”
“It’s lodged in here, Princess.” Blake tapped the side of his head. “You need to relax more. Maybe if I ran my tongue over your nipple, it would calm your nerves—”
“My nerves are just fine, thank you.” I flopped down on the sofa and folded my arms across my chest, hoping Blake couldn’t see my nipples standing hard and pert through the thin fabric of my dress. Don’t think about how much your body craves Blake. Get this conversation back on track. I glared at Arthur. “So you’ll talk to Dora?”
“I’ll try. But not today, okay? I have a feeling if we don’t get through these books before Corbin gets back, Dora will be the least of our problems.”
“I agree.” I sat down on the sofa next to Blake and grabbed a random book off his stack.
“As fun as all this Harry Potter wand waving and chanting medieval Latin is fascinating, I think I’ll leave the research to the actual wizards. I’m going to go try and find that other woman Sheryl mentioned.” Jane jiggled Connor on her hip as she headed for the door. “If anyone needs me, I’ll be down in the kitchen making some calls. You’d better hope like hell there are still some eccles cakes left, fairy boy, or there’ll be trouble.”
The library descended into silence, the only sounds the shuffling of leaves and Blake’s chewing. I flipped aimlessly through the book in my hands. It seemed to be some sort of treatise on the magical properties of various crystals. I could barely focus on the words. I knew we needed to do the research, but I hated sitting on my butt (or arse, as the guys said) doing nothing. Historians looked for the answers in books. Scientists conducted experiments.
Which reminded me. All the scientific equipment I’d purchased to monitor the gateway was still sitting up in my room. In all the chaos, we’d forgotten to set it up. If we knew more about the gateway and how it actually worked, that might help us find a way to block it permanently.
Or destroy it forever.
The thought had been swimming around in my head ever since Blake led us through the ritual and I heard Daigh’s voice in my head, laughing at our efforts. If we destroyed the gateway… all the gateways… then the world would be permanently protected from the fae.
I raced out of the library and clambered up the stairs, disturbing thoughts swimming around in my head. I hadn’t told any of the others yet because there hadn’t been a chance and because… because even though I currently had no evidence, I was certain that destroying the gateway meant destroying the entire fae realm. And I didn’t know how I felt about that.
On the one hand, as a scientist I had to place importance on the mathematically greater good. A few fae lives to save the lives of millions of humans seemed like a no brainer.
We weren’t just talking about stealing a few babies here. Corbin had explained the fae’s ultimate goal the night I’d first learned of their existence. The Slaugh. The dark fae host riding
across the earth, raising the dead and leaving the world bathed in the blood of the living. Corbin said the Slaugh caused the Black Death. If the fae brought another plague or worse, we had to do everything we could to stop them… even if it meant destroying them.
But on the other hand… the whole idea of wiping out an entire race just because their king had a persecution complex made my stomach churn. Didn’t that make me just as bad as Daigh? If Blake stood up to the king and escaped, did that mean that others might do the same thing, also? Could I honestly condemn them all to death?
And there was a third thing. I tried to push it to the corner of my mind because it was an emotional issue and had nothing to do with the wider moral and scientific implications. But it kept nagging at me. That’s my dad in there. If it came down to it, could I kill my own father? What did I know about him, really? Had he used my mother, as he said, or had he once loved her? Had she seen something good in him?
A cold ache settled in my chest. If only I could ask her. But she’s gone, and it’s all because of the fae. They’ve already taken so many good people – the Crawfords, Rowan’s parents, Flynn’s father, Arthur’s mother. I can’t let them take any more.
I reached the top of the stairs. Instead of taking me up to my bedroom, my feet dragged me in the other direction. I glanced up, and my eyes fell on my mother’s portrait.
I’d been deliberately avoiding it ever since I’d heard the voice that wasn’t mine inside my head. I rubbed the back of my neck, where the hairs stood on end at the memory of those words whispering against my consciousness.
It was probably the wind. It makes all kinds of noises as it funneled through the open courtyard and covered walkway. No reason to avoid looking at a painting. That was giving in to base fears when a rational explanation was sufficient to explain the phenomena.
Just to prove to myself that I believed my explanation, I took another step toward the painting, focusing on my mother’s face. Her wide, smiling eyes drew me in. My eyes.
Those eyes hid so many secrets, so many stories that I’d never be able to hear. All my life she’d been a mystery summed up in two words – birth mother – with not even a photograph or letter or figment of memory to cling to. And now, here she was in vibrant technicolor. All I wanted was to dive into that painting and sit with her and see what she saw that made her smile like that. Her lips were closed, curled up at the edges, her features placid, her skin radiant.
My gaze dropped to the citrine pendant around her neck, and the identical ring around her long finger. Corbin said the jewels were a symbol of her status as the coven’s High Priestess. They made her look so powerful – a force of nature, capable of great and terrible things. I hoped she used that power wisely, as I wanted to do.
“I wish you could tell me what to do,” I said out loud, feeling foolish.
My eyes flicked back to my mother’s face, and I gasped, staggering back.
Before, Aline Moore’s lips had been closed in that sensuous half smile. But now, her lips were parted, her cheeks sunk into shadow, and her eyes…
They were wide with terror.
17
MAEVE
That’s impossible.
My heart clattered against my chest. I shut my eyes, hoping like hell when I opened my eyes and stared at my mother’s face again I’d see the same serene half-smile that had always been there. It’s just a trick of the light, a figment of my overactive imagination, a hallucination caused by too much sleep and whatever the hell it is Rowan puts in his hot chocolate.
I opened my eyes.
No.
The horrible expression remained. My mother’s face twisted in an mask of pure terror, vividly captured on the canvas that had only seconds ago been alluring and beautiful.
It’s got to be some kind of optical illusion. Maybe the roof leaked and the paint dripped away and this contorted the expression.
Dragging my legs forward, I reached up a shaking hand to touch my mother’s face. Cool, dry paint met my fingers, the canvas hard and unyielding. No dampness. It was just layers of paint and gesso. It couldn’t move.
And yet, I knew what I was looking at. My mother’s expression was different.
I gulped down the panic rising in my throat. “Arthur!” I yelled. “Flynn! Get your asses up here!”
Footsteps clattered on the stairs. A moment later, thick arms wrapped around my body. I sank into them, my trembling limbs steadied by Arthur’s bulk. I pressed my face into his shoulder, breathing in his hot, smoky scent. It calmed my nerves a fraction.
“Maeve, what’s wrong?”
“The painting…” I stammered out.
“She’s a fine broad,” Blake whistled. I guess he’d followed them upstairs.
“That’s my mother you’re talking about.” I snapped. “She’s dead. And she moved.”
“What do you mean, she moved?”
“Can’t you see it?” I jabbed my finger at the canvas. “Her expression is completely different—”
The words caught in my throat as I glimpsed my mother’s face again. Her placid eyes and hidden smile stared back at me. No trace of the horror I’d seen only moments ago.
“That doesn’t make any sense.” I frowned. “She looked completely different. Her face was all twisted with fear.”
“It could have been the light falling on the canvas,” Arthur said, rubbing circles on my shoulders. “The paint is quite thick and maybe it tricked your eye into—”
“I know what I saw,” I said. “I’m a scientist, remember? I’ve run through all the rational explanations already. And I’ve concluded that the painting moved. I’m not going to willfully ignore the evidence of my own eyes anymore.”
Blake tapped the corner of the canvas. “You realize this is a painting, right?”
“Yes, thank you, Blake. I do realize that. But I’m telling you, I saw it move. And now I want to know why that happened. Is it some kind of fae trick, like a glamour?”
Blake frowned at the picture. “It’s definitely the kind of prank Daigh would approve of. He fancies himself a bit of an artist, so he loves fucking with the human works he considers inferior. On one of his forays into this realm he once cast a glamour that removed all the fig leaves from the Renaissance exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery. Caused quite a stir, if I recall. Blushing art historians everywhere.”
“But how could a fae cast a glamour through the castle’s wards?” Arthur asked, narrowing his eyes at Blake.
Blake shrugged. “Maybe your wards are weakening. Or maybe the fae gave that haughty woman some charm to hide in the castle that’s allowing them to project a glamour.”
“Or maybe a witch who can perform fae magic thought he’d play a little trick?”
“Sure, you can waste your precious breath accusing me.” Blake tapped the edge of the portrait again. “That’s a thing you could do. It’s not like I’ve already proven my use to you several times over. But hey, you go ahead and raise your fists to the best weapon against the fae you could possibly have, and see how that works out for you.”
And just like that, I realized what we needed to do.
“Guys.” I grabbed Arthur’s shoulder, pulling him back just as he raised his fist. “I think we’re going about this all wrong.”
“All what?” Flynn waved around a tiny spell book he’d carried up from the library, the open pages flapping in the air. “You mean how Arthur’s about to rearrange Blake’s face? You think his tongue should go behind his ear or something?”
“No. Don’t do that,” I gripped Arthur’s arm and met his eyes. A maelstrom of rage circled inside his irises, and heat surged from his fist. I jumped back as a tall flame leapt from his closed fist, licking at the antique hall table beneath the painting. Quick as lightning, Flynn darted forward and sent a spray of water from his palm. With a sizzle, the flame died out.
I rubbed Arthur’s arm, keeping my eyes training on his. The muscles beneath his skin remained taut, hardened. His whole body stiffe
ned in attack mode. The anger in his eyes scared me even more than my mother’s contorted face.
“Arthur, please, come back to us.” I tried to keep my voice even, calm. “Blake’s not our enemy. Even if he did do this, it didn’t do anything except frighten me. We need him.”
The muscles in Arthur’s arm relaxed a fraction, but the storm didn’t leave his eyes. Beneath my fingers, his skin crawled with heat. He’s moments away from unleashing another fireball.
Not knowing what else to do, I reached up and pressed my lips to his, pouring all my feelings for Arthur – my awe at his strength, my desire for him, my admiration for what he’d made of his life, my fear of the tsunami of anger rising inside him – into the kiss, curling my body around his. Desire shot through me, drawing up a heat from deep inside me that sizzled under my skin.
The magic. It pulsed and raged in my veins as I curled my tongue around Arthur’s, drinking in all his darkness and transforming it into raw energy that built inside me, pulsing between my legs, begging to be released.
Arthur’s whole body shifted, the tension flowing out of him as he responded to my touch. My fire witch channelled all that his rage into the kiss, mashing his mouth against mine, sweeping me up in a wave of passion so intense it left me panting and breathless as I drew away.
I glanced up at him and there was Arthur again, his eyes calm, his beard a wild tangle, his mouth curling up in a satisfied smile. “Remind me to threaten Blake more often,” he grinned.
“Do I get a kiss if I turn Arnold into a frog?” Blake asked, a salacious grin stretching across his face.
“I threaten the English every single day,” Flynn added.
“For the last time, it’s Arthur.”
The mood in the hallway changed. Now the very air sizzled with sexual tension. I glanced from Flynn to Blake to Arthur, aware of the hunger in their eyes, the way their bodies surrounded me, and if Blake or Flynn took another step closer, they’d be pressed up against me. I’d be the meat in the world’s most delicious sandwich.
The Castle of Fire and Fable (Briarwood Reverse Harem Book 2) Page 12