He was right about the nurses loving him. Even when visiting hours were over, they let him stay with me. He made calls to Rhys, who had been waiting to hear of my progress all day. Linden told me he’d been by when I was still asleep, but he had helped with most of everything that had happened after I passed out. I had a lot to thank him for.
Linden had to leave eventually, but he swore he’d be back first thing in the morning. This was a hospital in Rhode Island, so he was close. I didn’t want to sleep alone—or sleep at all—but it was something I had to deal with.
They only kept me for a day and a half more. Once I could stomach more than crackers, the doctor was convinced I could do the rest of my healing at home, provided I actually listen to him and take it easy. I swore I would; anything to go home.
I was shocked to see the rest of the undines I knew waiting at the hospital doors the day I left. Even Nerio smiled a little, and Tally was in better spirits than usual. Rhys hugged me lightly, aware of my injuries, and I had to tell Calder to let up a little when he squeezed too hard. I could see they were all anxious for the full-blown story of what happened, but Linden gave them warning glances as we made our way to the car.
The drive was short, and I’d never been so happy to see the house on the beach. I was a little wary of the beach itself, but I didn’t feel like going to it anyway. I just wanted to sit on the couch, or some other soft surface, and do nothing. Linden was more than happy to oblige, but Rhys got a little insistent, and pulled him into the kitchen the second we walked in. I however, went straight for the living room. The couch had never felt so comfortable, and Calder laughed at my reaction.
“You want to just sleep there now?” he asked.
“Oh no,” I replied. “I’ll be living in that bedroom for days. Just a warning.”
“Fair enough,” he said. He sat next to me and clicked on the TV, mumbling that he was glad I was back. I smiled at his shyness and said I was happy to be back, too.
Rhys didn’t ask me any questions the rest of the day. He tried to treat it as if nothing awful had happened in the past few days, and I respected him for that. Through dinner, I could tell Nerio was biting his tongue, but I was sure I’d give him answers sometime. If not sooner, than later. Besides his want of answers, I had tons of messages from people back home. Alysana left some, as did Rene and Meryl. After I ate a small meal, I called Alysana first. I barely got a word in over her gushing, though she was careful about what she asked. Rene was less subtle. She begged me to come home and gave me the details on Omar’s burial. He was respectfully cremated, and the ashes were buried in the local cemetery. I didn’t want to hear about it, but I let her talk anyway. Meryl only asked if I was okay and if I was happy. I answered yes to both of those, and she assured me that I always had a place to go if home didn’t work out. Truthfully, I wasn’t even sure where ‘home’ was, but the offer still stood.
When night came, I wasn’t sure what to make of it. I felt cautious as I made my way around the house, even though most of the lights were on. I was tired, but I still waited until Linden said he was ready to go to bed.
In the bedroom, I kept the thin curtains closed over the window. Linden didn’t ask questions, and I undressed slowly. I was appalled at the bruises on me. Black, purple, and yellow blotches went across the right side of my ribs, and fainter pale blue ones were scattered here and there. Linden openly cringed as I went to the mirror. I expected my face to be in worse shape, but it wasn’t all that bad. My lip had healed, leaving it only slightly blue in the middle. Some healed scratches and faint marks went across one cheek, but it could have been worse.
“Does it hurt?” Linden asked, gently laying his hand across the darkest bruises.
“Not as much as before. And I took another Advil earlier,” I replied. “What about you?”
I lifted his shirt, expecting scars to be all across his abdomen, but there was nothing. I ran my fingers across his skin, vividly remembering the sound he made as the knife punctured his body.
“Forget it,” he said. “I’m all right, and soon you’ll be back to normal.”
“Normal?” I had been thinking about my own part in the past days events, particularly how strangely my will had reacted. Hesitant, I looked towards the window, intending on just parting the curtains from across the room. Instead, they were flung off the curtain rod, and another crack went across the glass. I pulled my hand away fast, glancing at Linden.
“Yeah, I mentioned that to Rhys,” he said. “After I told him about twin flames and all. He thinks it might be part of that.”
I frowned as I sat on the bed. “So I have auctorita, too?”
“No, it’s not like that. It’s just some kind of increase in power after finding your twin.”
I nodded to myself, wondering just how much we’d gained. Twin flames weren’t exactly the most common of occurrences. I assumed Rhys and Rene would both be able to tell us something helpful, and in the meantime I’d cut back on using any kind of will.
“Who did he mean by ‘they’?” I asked, now moving on to another topic that had been bothering me. I looked up at Linden, wondering if he remembered, too.
“Who did what?”
I sighed and lay on my back. It felt so good to be in a familiar bed, and it was much better than the one in the hospital. Linden lowered himself beside me, watching me intently.
“What are you talking about?” he asked.
“Aidan said ‘they’ll come after you’,” I replied. “Who was he talking about?”
“He would have said anything in that position,” Linden replied. “So don’t worry about it.”
I looked at him insistently. “But who did he mean? Hypothetically.”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. He could have meant the vulcani or someone else. I have no idea.” I nodded vaguely, and he moved closer, carefully holding me. “Don’t even think about it. No one’s coming after you. There’s absolutely no reason. You didn’t kill anyone.”
I knew he was making the comparison to Aidan, but it brought up something else. “But you did …”
He shrugged again, careless. “He was going to end up like that anyway. Someone just had to find him first.”
Despite his efforts to comfort me, it wasn’t working very well. He noticed, and he kissed my cheek. “Quit it, Riley. It’s over.”
I nodded, knowing what he said was true. I had to believe it, or worry would eat me alive. So I turned to kiss him, his lips purposefully gentle against my bruised one. I would have preferred more, but he insisted I had to let myself get better first.
So this was the first slow step in that direction. Eventually I would have to discuss what happened and relive it, but I had to remember it couldn’t happen again. They were gone, and this is what remained. And what more could I really want? I had Linden, and I understood him now, and we had all the freedom we could want. I tried to ask Linden what we would do next, but he only smiled and replied, “Think about it in the morning.”
AFTER
Seeing the house again was a strange mixture of sensations. It was so comforting and familiar, yet also strange and new. Clouds were not here yet, but they were on the horizon behind us as we drove. There was a pile of newspapers near the steps, and the porch generally looked a little wind-blown with all the scattered leaves. Fall was rapidly approaching here, unlike the house in Rhode Island.
“Wow,” Linden said as he pulled up. “It looks haunted or something.”
I smiled and unlocked my door, stepping out. I took a deep breath, reveling in the smell of the swamps. I’d forgotten how much I missed it. As Linden stood and stretched, I went to the newspapers and stacked them up in my arms.
“Do you need these?” I asked as he ambled towards the stairs.
He pursed his lips and shook his head. “No, unless you want them for something. Fire starter?”
I shrugged and followed him up the stairs. He held the screen open for me after he unlocked the door, and I stepped inside, feel
ing like an intruder. The house wasn’t as cold as I expected. Meryl had been coming here lately to keep it up to date, and she had turned on the heat already. Linden’s mail was piled up on the kitchen table, but I went to the living room first and dumped off the newspaper next to the fireplace. His fish were still living in the tank, and I sprinkled food along the surface before going back to the kitchen.
“I can’t believe it, she even made tea,” he said as he pulled out a pitcher. He asked if I wanted some, but I declined. He guzzled a tall glass before turning to the rest of the house. “Well, home sweet home. Think you can live with it?”
After Rhys had said he would be moving on again, it was up to us to decide what we were going to do. After all that had happened, I didn’t really want to stay in the beach house. At least, not at that moment. Tally was interested in living there for a while, so that left Linden and I with the old house. I didn’t mind at all—in fact, the offer was so appealing at the time, I jumped on it. It was in a place we could both enjoy, and it was near the remainder of my family. Rhys insisted it would always be there for us, as well as any other home of his if we chose to travel. Somehow, I had a feeling we would definitely be using that to our advantage.
I shrugged jokingly, looking uncertain. “Yeah, I guess so.”
He laughed and crushed me against him, putting most of the pressure on my shoulders. It turns out I was healing faster than normal, too. Rhys attributed it to the twin flame connection. Once I had personally told him about my strange increase in power, he nodded and told me what he knew of twin flames. Only after I disappeared did Linden mention it to him, and he connected the dots just as Aidan had: auctorita must come about through finding one’s twin flame.
He made many conclusions after that, but most importantly, he said I would have to learn how to work with it. It wouldn’t be as intense as Linden with auctorita, but there was a definite increase I would have to deal with. Naturally, he had spoken to Rene about it, and she agreed to help me with as much as she could. This wasn’t her normal field of knowledge, but she knew a few others who could help as well.
This thing felt strange in me since I’d used it. Maybe it had never been harnessed before, but now it was a constant reminder, buzzing there in my veins. Linden said he had a similar feeling with auctorita, though it was slowly beginning to fade as he practiced. He too would still have to learn how to control it, and Rhys warned me of the things that could happen.
“If he ever gets out of control,” he whispered to me the day before I left, “you need to leave. Not for good, but just a few hours. I know he’s strong, but still, be cautious, all right?”
I would take his advice, and I kept the idea in the back of my mind as Linden and I walked through the house together. Meryl had done wonders; nothing felt too awkward. I expected the rooms to smell of stale air, but somehow it was the faint scent of lavender instead. Looking into this further, I found she had put lavender satchels in most of the rooms.
“This is better than I would have thought,” I remarked as we joined in the bedroom again.
“I know,” Linden replied. “She’ll have to watch the place anytime we leave.”
I could never quite get used to his use of ‘we’, including me. Just knowing that I was his and he was mine was enough to have me shivering with pleasure. At the thought, I stood in front of him and laced my fingers at the small of his back, holding him near.
“Are you okay with all of this?” I asked for about the millionth time.
Linden rolled his eyes and jokingly shook me. “Yes. I am, and more than okay with it. I would have been a little devastated otherwise.”
I laughed, and felt my phone going off in my pocket. Reluctantly, I reached for it, seeing it was only a message from Alysana. We were supposed to be meeting up with her and a few others for lunch.
“Aly?” Linden asked.
“Yeah. She says we should be there in about twenty minutes,” I replied.
One of Linden’s wicked grins slowly spread on his face, and I halted it as I pressed a finger to his lips. “Wait—can we ascend?”
He frowned slightly. “Why?”
“Because I like it there. And it’d just be a change.” I shrugged.
He thought about it for a moment and then shrugged agreeably. “All right, if you want to.”
“And then I can say your true name without worrying about people hearing it,” I added.
He smiled genuinely and kissed my forehead. “Same here. It’s better when you say it though.”
And the same went for him. Hearing my true name coming from him was a verbal caress. I guess that came with the fact of being his twin flame, but that was the best part of it. Few got to feel this way about someone, at least so strongly and on so many odd levels. It was beyond the physical and emotional, and it made me wonder why some would want to stop it. What harm did it bring anyone?
These were questions I had asked Linden before, but he couldn’t answer them. He blamed it on close-mindedness and people living in the past.
“Everyone needs to change,” he had said. “If we don’t, we’ll all be stuck in the same rut. They all talk about moving forward, but if they hold on to stupid grudges, nothing gets done.”
He referred to the grudge Aidan had held onto so fiercely: witches were the half-breeds tainting the natural lineage. It was news to me, but also something I initially wanted to forget. I took Linden’s word that no one was going to follow in Aidan’s footsteps.
Here in the house at the swamps was safety. Even though most of what I knew was burned to the ground, this brilliant seedling was growing out of the ashes. I could start over. This time, I didn’t have any fear of being alone as I did months ago. This way, I could go out into the world without fear. As long as I had a certain undine with me, I would be content.
“Ready?” Linden asked as his arms encircled my neck.
I rested my forehead against his before I kissed him lightly. “Yes.”
I closed my eyes and let him do the work. When I felt myself going into the calm darkness, I was concerned with nothing else. No lessons about controlling my will, no caution because of auctorita, and no fear of the vulcani. Nothing else was important except for what existed there in that moment: him and I.
Table of Contents
Evensong.. 1
BEFORE.. 5
THE HOUSE OF WITCHES. 12
THE SWAMPS. 18
AGENTS OF CHANGE.. 31
COMING AROUND.. 38
RECOVERY’S CURIOSITIES. 51
WAVES. 58
LESSONS. 66
SPECULATIONS. 74
ELEMENTALS. 80
FRIENDS AND ACQUAINTANCES. 88
RECALL AVOIDANCE.. 98
TWENTY. 104
PRO OR CON.. 114
ALBUMS. 120
ONLY A NORMAL BOY. 130
YOU’RE WATER LILY. 142
COMING OF AGE.. 160
SANCTUARY. 171
NAME.. 180
RELATIVE THINKING.. 186
DISTURBANCE.. 200
INSTINCT. 207
FAÇADE.. 215
GREETINGS. 221
DAY. 234
THREAT. 246
VULCANI. 256
NEVER AGAIN.. 266
A TRUTH.. 275
THE COMING STORM… 285
AUCTORITA.. 298
CONFRONTATION.. 312
THE STRANGER.. 324
TRUE NAME, TRUE FORM… 333
JUSTICE.. 345
PURPOSE.. 353
IN DEATH.. 358
THE FACE OF MORCANT. 366
IN LIFE.. 375
AFTER.. 382
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