by Jenna Black
My mom intercepted me before I could go talk to my dad. She was waiting for me when I stepped out of the bathroom.
“I know you haven’t grown to love tea,” she said, holding up a mug, “so I made you some coffee.”
Damn if my throat didn’t start tightening again. I swallowed hard and managed to hold it together. “Thanks,” I said, taking the mug from her and wrapping my hands around it. The only coffee my dad kept in the house was instant, but it was better than nothing. I took a sip and managed not to grimace. At least it was warm and soothing.
Mom sat on the edge of the bed, then patted the mattress beside her to indicate I should sit down. Despite my intention to apologize to my dad, I can’t say I was in any hurry, so I was perfectly happy to obey. She put her hand on my back and rubbed up and down while I sipped my coffee. I usually would have shaken her off, but right now, I was too desperate for comfort.
“You really like this boy, don’t you?” she asked softly.
I squirmed a bit. Mom and I didn’t exactly have a warm and cuddly relationship. I’d never talked boys with her, and I certainly hadn’t told her much about Ethan. I didn’t exactly feel like talking now, but Mom was reaching out to me in a way she never had when she was drinking. If I shrugged her off, she might never try it again.
“I guess,” I told her. “It’s kind of complicated, though.”
I didn’t look at her, but I could hear her smile in her voice. “It always is.”
I made a little sound that was almost a laugh, then took another sip of terrible coffee as I gathered my thoughts. “I don’t think it would make a difference if I hated his guts,” I said. “I’d still feel awful that he was hurt because of me.”
“It’s not your fault, honey.”
I shook my head. “Yes, it is. The only reason the Erlking targeted Ethan was because of me. If I’d just listened to you when you’d tried to warn me about Avalon…” It showed a bit about my state of mind that I would actually make that argument. My mom had told me so many conflicting stories about my dad and about Avalon that I’d had no idea what to believe. I’d finally decided I would have to see for myself, and that’s what had started this whole nightmare.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my mother wince. “That’s hardly your fault,” she said, looking unhappy. “I know I didn’t make it easy for you to know what to believe. Maybe if I hadn’t tried to embellish the story to make you not want to come…”
Maybe she hoped I would let her off the hook for that, but I wasn’t about to. We were having a warm, mother/daughter moment here, but that certainly didn’t mean I was ready to forgive her for the wreck she’d made of her life and mine.
She shook her head and continued as if she hadn’t been expecting me to say anything. “Then again, if you hadn’t come, you’d never have met your father. I know he’s not perfect, and I hate that you’ve had to go through so much, but I am glad you got to meet him. And that he got to meet you. I always felt so terrible about hiding you from him…”
“Did you know about Connor?” I asked, watching her face carefully in search of a lie. I don’t know whether knowing I had a half-brother would have had any effect on me, either growing up or since I came to Avalon, but it would be yet another strike against her if she’d known and hadn’t told me. And seeing as she hadn’t told my dad he had a daughter, I couldn’t help suspecting her.
“No,” she answered, and something about the pained look in her eyes convinced me she was telling the truth. “He never talked about it. I knew he’d lost someone who mattered to him to the Wild Hunt, but I didn’t know who it was, and I didn’t know whether ‘lost’ meant dead, or captured.”
“Would you have told me if you’d known?”
Back when she was drinking, Mom didn’t hesitate to lie to me. It didn’t matter how blatant the lie was, or how obviously I didn’t believe her—if it was a choice between telling the distasteful truth or making something up, she’d make something up. I suspect this particular question would have warranted a lie in her mind back then; now she told me the truth with a grimace.
“Probably not, honey,” she admitted. “What purpose could it possibly have served?”
On the one hand, I was glad she was being honest with me. On the other hand, she was honestly telling me that she wouldn’t have told me the truth.
I shook my head at her. “Why would it have had to serve a purpose? Wouldn’t I have the right to know I had a brother? I’m not a little kid anymore, Mom. You don’t need to protect my delicate sensibilities, or whatever the hell you think you need to do.”
I couldn’t miss the hurt in my mom’s eyes. Great. First I’d picked a fight with Dad, now I was going for round two with Mom. I could hardly expect myself to be Little Miss Sunshine under the circumstances, but I knew better than to lash out like that.
“Sorry,” I mumbled, looking away from the hurt in her eyes.
She reached over and patted my back. “It’s all right, honey. I know you’re angry with me. You have every right to be.”
I bit my tongue. Hard. She still didn’t have a clue why I was angry with her. After all, we’d already established that she wouldn’t admit she had a drinking problem. If she didn’t have a drinking problem, then I couldn’t be angry with her about it, right?
Someday, I was going to totally lose it and we were going to have a screaming argument about her drinking. But I didn’t have the energy for it today. I just wanted to go home, crawl into bed, and pull the covers over my head. So I kept my mouth shut and stuffed my anger back down into its hiding place, where it could fester some more.
Chapter Twelve
My parents wanted me to spend the night at Dad’s house. I guess they thought I was in need of their nurturing comfort or something. If I stayed, they’d probably expect me to talk to them and let them coddle me, and I was afraid I’d lose control of my fragile temper and make the evening even uglier than it already was. Besides, though my dad obviously had money, his house wasn’t exactly huge, and my mom was in the only spare bedroom. Mom offered to sleep on the couch so I could have her room, but I refused.
Dad could have made me stay, of course. But I think he’s the kind of guy who’d rather be left alone when he’s miserable, so he understood where I was coming from.
Whatever the reason, he agreed to take me back to my safe house. Finn met us there, and when Dad left, I retreated to my suite to be alone with my thoughts.
I knew I should call Kimber to check and see how she was doing. But I knew how she was doing, and it was lousy. Calling her would be the right thing to do, but that night, I just didn’t have it in me to do the right thing. I didn’t want to face the guilt her grief would stir up. And I didn’t want to cry anymore, which I knew I’d do the moment I heard her voice. Even looking at my freshly manicured nails practically set me off, and if I’d had any nail polish remover, I’d probably have put it to use. I thought about trying to call the magic again as a way to distract myself, but I wasn’t sure I could sing even “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” right now. So instead, I went to bed way early, then lay there wide awake wondering if there was anything I could have done to save Ethan.
* * *
I must have fallen asleep eventually, because I woke up to the sound of someone pounding on my bedroom door. I groaned and tried to settle back down into the covers. Sleep was the greatest invention in the history of mankind. When I was sleeping, I wasn’t feeling guilty, or miserable, or sad.
The pounding on the door continued until I realized that sleep was not among my options. I have one of those alarm clocks that gradually brightens in the morning so I didn’t have to wake up to the pitch-black of the cave. When I finally forced my eyes open, I saw that the clock’s light was at its brightest, so even though it took me a moment to focus my bleary eyes, I knew immediately that it was morning.
The pounding on my door was relentless. And annoying.
“All right!” I yelled. “I’m up.” Why couldn’t Finn ju
st let me sleep? It wasn’t like I had somewhere I had to be.
“Sorry to wake you,” Finn called through the door. He didn’t sound very sorry. “Keane’s been waiting over an hour, and I figured that was enough.”
It took like five minutes for me to process what Finn said. Then I remembered this was Tuesday morning, which is one of my regularly scheduled lesson days with Keane. A glance at the clock told me it was well after ten, and my lessons usually started at the ungodly hour of nine.
I pushed my sleep-matted hair out of my eyes and stifled a curse. I hadn’t expected Keane to show up today. I know life goes on and everything, but still …
I’d have tried to crap out on the lesson, but I knew Keane too well. He’d come into my room and drag me out of bed if he had to, then carry me over his shoulder to the practice mats.
“Tell him I’ll be out in a few minutes,” I said with resignation.
Usually, I shower before our sparring sessions, even though I know I’ll land right back in the shower as soon as the lesson’s over. Today, I just didn’t feel like it. I was pretty sure I didn’t stink, although one glance in the bathroom mirror was almost enough to make me flee in terror. Yeah, I looked that bad.
I brushed my teeth, washed my face, then combed out the tangles in my hair and arranged it in a messy knot at the back of my head. Then, still yawning, I dressed in yoga pants and a form-fitting tank top. When I’d first started training, I’d worn loose, comfortable T-shirts. I’d quickly discovered that loose, comfortable T-shirts don’t do such a great job of keeping you covered when you spend half of your time upside down or being dragged across mats. It still made me blush to think of the up-close-and-personal look Keane had gotten of my bra. (Thank God I’d been wearing one! I’m flat-chested enough that I could go without.)
Keane was waiting for me in the sitting room. The furniture had already been moved aside, and he’d laid out the mats. It was the usual routine, and yet when I got a look at his face, I saw that at least part of the usual routine was missing.
Keane is all about arrogance and attitude, and his catalog of facial expressions usually runs to smirks, smugness, and glowers. Today, he looked different. Whatever he was feeling, I wouldn’t call it a happy emotion. Was it because he knew what had happened with Ethan yesterday? Or was he still sulking about how his dad had kicked his butt in front of me?
Whatever it was, I didn’t want to deal with it. Hell, I didn’t want to deal with anything.
I gave myself a mental slap upside the head. Ethan hadn’t wanted to be captured by the Wild Hunt, either. What we want out of life and what we get are two entirely different stories.
I wondered what was happening to Ethan right now. Was his wound all healed? What had the Erlking done to him? Ethan was apparently destined to become a member of the Wild Hunt, but what did that entail? I remembered the Erlking saying that his Huntsmen don’t talk, and I shuddered as my mind tried to send me pictures of just what he might have done to them to keep them mute.
Damn it, tears were burning my eyes again. I blinked fiercely, determined to keep them back. Crying wasn’t going to save Ethan, and it wasn’t going to make me feel any better.
Keane proved to me once again that he was all heart. While I stood there in the doorway trying to get control of myself, he crossed the distance between us in a couple of long strides. Was he coming over to give me a hug, or commiserate with me, or tell me everything was going to be all right?
Not exactly.
Before I had a chance to react, he’d grabbed me and yanked me forward, pulling me off balance and then sweeping my legs out from under me. I was completely unprepared for the attack, and I found myself heading face-first toward the stone floor, since we hadn’t even gotten to the mats yet. Instinctively, I put my hands out to stop my fall, but Keane grabbed me under the arms and hauled me to my feet before I hit the floor. He then shoved me, hard, onto the mats.
Graceful as a wounded rhinoceros, I tripped over the edge of the mats and went sprawling. I’d had enough lessons with Keane by now to know that I didn’t dare lie there and catch my breath, so I rolled quickly to the right, avoiding Keane’s pounce. I hadn’t secured my hair well enough, and a strand came loose to dangle in my face.
I pushed to my feet, my body going on autopilot now that the lesson had started—whether I was ready for it or not. Keane was frowning at me and shaking his head.
“How many times have I warned you not to put your hands out like that?” he barked, doing his best drill-sergeant impersonation. “You could have broken your damn wrists!”
I tried not to flinch. I’d thought I’d gotten used to the way he yelled at me when we sparred, but I guess I was in a particularly fragile state of mind. It was true, though, that Keane had spent a lot of time teaching me how to fall, and taking the full impact on my outstretched hands wasn’t in the lesson plan.
Usually, I’d have had some kind of snappy comeback. Well, at least a lame comeback that I could pretend was snappy. Today, I kept quiet and wished I’d stayed in bed. Keane wouldn’t have been able to come drag me out if I’d hit the panic button and lowered the security doors in the hallway.
Keane must have been in as foul a mood as I was. Instead of waiting for me to say something or to brace myself, he swung his fist at my head. Once again, my body went on autopilot, and without thinking about it, I stepped into the punch, taking away his momentum, while sweeping my arm up to block it. I was too slow to block it completely, and ended up taking the blow on my shoulder.
I know Keane holds back during our sparring sessions, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt when he hits me. When we’d first started, the pain had often shocked me into immobility, at least for a moment. Today, it just made me mad. I countered with a kick to his knee that would almost certainly have broken something if it weren’t for his shield spell.
We were fighting in earnest now, my entire being concentrating on blocking his blows and evading his holds, while still looking—unsuccessfully—for a way to get through his defenses. There was no actual teaching going on, not right now anyway. If my brain weren’t so busy trying to keep me in one piece, I might have wondered what had gotten into Keane this morning.
I was doing a pretty good job of defending myself, but each blocked punch or kick hurt, and the pain made me madder and madder, until finally I threw a punch of my own.
My lessons with Keane were all about self-defense, not offense. Yeah, I’d learned to kick and punch and grab, but always with the goal of learning to momentarily disable my attacker so I could get away. I was only supposed to attack the most vulnerable parts of his body with the least vulnerable parts of my own. Which was why I took us both by surprise when my fist made contact with his jaw.
If he’d been a real bad guy, it would have been a terrible decision. I’m not strong enough to do a lot of damage with a punch, unless it’s to something really sensitive. Plus there’s the little-advertised fact that, duh, when you smash your fist against something hard, it hurts, and jaw bones tend to be pretty damn hard. So do the shield spells Fae fighters use to protect themselves.
I felt the impact all the way up my arm to my shoulder, and for a moment my fingers went completely numb. I had half a second to register the surprise on Keane’s face—and to feel a malicious thrill of triumph—before the numbness went away and my hand screamed with pain.
I half-expected Keane to take advantage of my distraction—he wasn’t exactly taking it easy on me today—but I couldn’t help cradling my hand against my body, gritting my teeth against the pain. It left me completely undefended, but at that moment I didn’t care.
Keane heaved a dramatic sigh and reached for me. “Let me see it,” he said in a long-suffering tone.
I jerked out of his reach, anger still simmering in my veins. “Don’t touch me!” My knuckles throbbed to the beat of my heart. I saw no evidence that my punch had actually hurt him. Surprising him seemed to be the best I could do. Somehow, that wasn’t quite as
satisfying.
Keane rolled his eyes. “Don’t be a drama queen. Let me see the hand. If it’s just bruised, I can heal it. If you broke something, we need to get you to the emergency room.”
“I didn’t break anything.” At least, I hoped I hadn’t.
“Then let me heal it.”
Even the least powerful of the Fae have enough power to heal minor injuries like bruises. Keane, with his Knight heritage, could heal more serious ones than the average Fae, but fixing broken bones was beyond his capabilities. It was a sign of Ethan’s magical genius that he could heal broken bones even though he was neither a healer nor a fighter.
Thinking of Ethan took the last of the fight out of me, and I meekly held out my hand for Keane to examine. The knuckles still throbbed, and my middle finger was starting to swell. I tensed in anticipation as Keane ran his fingers lightly over the back of my hand, examining the damage.
Considering what a hardass he was as a teacher, he was surprisingly gentle with me now as he prodded and poked and forced my fingers to move. Gentle or not, it still hurt, and it took all my willpower not to yank my hand out of his grasp.
“Not broken,” he finally declared with a nod.
I let out a sigh of relief. I needed a trip to the emergency room like I needed another enemy out to kill me. I expected to feel the tingle of Keane’s magic gathering, but instead he let go of my hand and went to pull the coffee table away from the couch.
“You’ll want to sit down for this,” he said in reply to my questioning look. “Unless you want to go to the hospital after all. A real healer can make your hand go numb before fixing the damage, but I can’t.”
I shrugged and walked to the couch. “You’ve healed bruises for me before, and I haven’t swooned.” I put my wrist to my forehead in the classic damsel-in-distress swooning pose.