Branwyn got out of the way as Severin’s arms closed around Charlie. He’d held Imani’s ghost the same way, through similar tears, but with Imani’s ghost, his face had been bleak. This time, he was furious, as if he was thinking about how Gale was still available to tear apart. He said something in Charlie’s ear and she mumbled something back, shaking her head. He said something else, and she sighed and put her head on his shoulder as if unwilling to argue with him.
He stood up, picking Charlie up and balancing her on his hip like she was a toddler. “I’m taking her to Imani. I’ll—”
Branwyn’s burgeoning warm fuzzy feelings vanished in a rush of alarm. “No, you can’t yet!”
Severin gave her an impatient glance. “And when can I? When you come up with an impossible answer to the Saint’s challenge? He’s never letting these kids go, cupcake.”
“We’ll come up with something.” But panic yawned in Branwyn’s stomach.
Severin said, “Will you? Before Rhianna vanishes? I don’t think there will be much of her left after the next charge goes.”
Branwyn wanted to keen. She agreed with him. She agreed with him completely. Except Rhianna didn’t want them to do this. She wouldn’t betray her this way. “Just… wait?”
He shook his head. “The faster I do this, the better it’ll be, even for you.”
“Severin…” she said haltingly.
His expression cool, he said, “You don’t really mean it.”
“Severin, no!” she said more urgently. Charlie lifted her head from his shoulder and looked at Branwyn with a resigned expression.
Severin turned away from her. “Give me a few minutes before you call again, cupcake. Otherwise you might interrupt something.”
“Ramiel,” she whispered, feeling as if she might crack in two. “Stop.”
He stopped.
Then he put Charlie down. In a voice like a blade, he said, “I’ll be back soon, mouse. This won’t take nearly as long as I’d like.” He turned around, his eyes molten with fury. Sick inside, just as furious at herself, Branwyn didn’t move. Two steps and he had her by the arm. One more step and they were both in the windowed darkness that was his alone.
He’d said she’d pay a price for using his true name. The sick twisting of Branwyn’s stomach suddenly became a dark anticipation, an eagerness for however he wanted to make her pay.
“Such love for your little sister,” he said acidly. He turned her toward him and held her by the wrists, his darkly burning eyes boring into her. She saw herself reflected there: breathless, conflicted, unresisting. Waiting.
As he stared at her, the anger in his gaze faded and the usual veil dropped over his expression. Beyond them, something shifted in the velvet darkness: ghostly shapes moving and murmuring. She didn’t know what they were and wasn’t sure she cared. She couldn’t seem to tear her eyes from him.
With an odd twist of his mouth, he released one of her wrists and brought his hand up to trail his fingers across her cheek and mouth, as he had in the Court of Summer.
This time she didn’t move her head away. Instead, confused by his hesitation, she whispered, “Severin?”
Something reignited in his eyes. His fingers threaded through her hair. Then he was kissing her, his mouth closing over hers, his teeth nipping her lower lip. She gasped, and he brushed his lips over the corner of her mouth in a shadow of tenderness. What had been nervous anticipation transformed into a fire that swept over her, driving all thought away. She rose on her toes, leaning into him.
His hands in her hair tightened and now there was nothing gentle about the way his mouth drove against hers, pushing her own open, his tongue moving as he held her head still. When he finally broke the kiss to push her coat off her shoulders, all she could do was blink up at him.
One of the ghostly images drifted through them. As soon as the phantasm touched her, she was back in the waking dream she’d had earlier: clutching at Severin, writhing against him, overwhelmed by a tangle of rage and passion.
The dream passed on and the fragmentary experience faded. But his hands were under her shirt now. The fabric snagged on her bra strap as he lifted it over her head. Things never snagged in dreams.
As excitement made her knees weak, she brought her hands down onto his tightly muscled shoulders. “I—”
Another dream passed through them. She was on a bathroom sink, her legs locked around him as she traded herself for help she hadn’t needed. His fingers unhooked her bra. The dream drifted on, but his hands remained. His rough thumbs traced the thin line imprinted under her breasts by the elastic before pushing up on her nipples.
She gasped again, and he kissed her open mouth once before pressing his face into the hollow of her throat and kissing his way along her shoulder. One hand remained stroking her breasts, while he trailed his other hand down her stomach, unsnapped her jeans and slid his hand within. His fingers moved past her outer folds and brushed against the hood of her clitoris, and she moaned.
Branwyn’s back was against a wall. One of the windows? Apparently solid when he wanted them to be. She squirmed against his hands, then tightened her arms around his head and shoulders so she could curl her fingers in his hair and enjoy the movement of his back.
Yet another dream slid through her mind. She was on top of him, riding him, and they were both covered in blood she could see, taste, but not feel. When the dream moved away, he was kissing her again as his hands made her wriggle and pant. She flailed at him, trying to remove his clothing like he’d stripped hers, but she couldn’t figure it out and he wasn’t helping her. Didn’t he want to be naked with her? He was always at least a little naked in her dreams.
She eventually found the waistline of his jeans and fumbled at it. He laughed against her mouth and she pulled away to scowl at him. This was his punishment; didn’t he want to do it right?
She thought that… and then she froze.
He stilled too, pulling away except for one hand drawing lazy circles against sensitive flesh, and watched her with his eyebrows raised and a crooked smile. Then she pushed him back, panting, “We shouldn’t do this. Why would you do this?”
He moved the hand he’d just been touching her with under his nose and said lazily, “To distract myself from that thing you didn’t want me to do. What was it again?”
Branwyn shook her head frantically. “No. You were furious with me. This is the price I want to pay, not the one you said I’d pay.”
Severin gave her his predatory smile. “I’m all right with that.”
Almost in tears of frustration, Branwyn said, “That’s the part that bothers me! You never did anything like this before Shatiel. And now my dreams are here, and you’re…” She remembered what he’d been doing, and shivered. Then her body registered a strident protest at the interruption of prior activities, and she threw herself at him.
He caught her, kissed her again, just as thoroughly. But his hands moved more slowly now, and when she pushed him away a second time, he didn’t resist. She whispered, “Wouldn’t it be nice if I could fuck you without feeling bad later? If I could fuck you and tell myself, well, I had to, I did something to him?”
“I’d be good either way,” he assured her.
She shook her head. He didn’t get it. “You’re doing exactly what I want. And Shatiel bound your name to me.”
He gave her an exasperated look so speaking she felt compelled to present additional evidence. “And you stopped! You stopped earlier, right after Shatiel did it, and you stopped now. Since when do you stop when I say stop?”
His silent exasperation was now a palpable force. Feeling sulky, Branwyn crossed her arms over her naked chest and said, “You were furious with me. Deservedly so. And now you’re not.”
“I could get there again real fast,” he said dryly. He watched her for a moment. She let him, despite her skin prickling under the scrutiny. It was the least she could do in the circumstances.
“You’ve made several mistakes,” he
said eventually. “One of them I can’t do anything about, and I’m sure it will continue to be entertaining in its own way. One of them is part of your charm. But one of them, I’ll fix right now.”
He moved closer to her again, and she couldn’t back away because of the window-wall behind her. That was probably okay as long as he didn’t touch her. But then he uncrossed her arms and cupped her breast and kissed her mouth lingeringly. And she let him. But at least she didn’t cling to him—
He broke the kiss but continued to stroke her nipple slowly. “You thought I would harm you rather than simply taking something I want as my price. A mistake.” He lowered his head and scraped his teeth over her breast before sucking at it, just for a moment, while she moaned and pushed her fingers through his hair.
After that, he looked at her again, stroking both thumbs over her breasts, and her hands dropped limply to her sides as she tried to control herself.
“But if you want me to hurt you? I will. I’ll enjoy it.” He released her breasts and ran his thumb over her lips. “But you have to ask first. Otherwise you’re far too… useful to break.”
Then he stepped away from her and tossed her shirt and bra to her. “But since you have work to do, if you really want me to hurt you, ask me later.”
Later.
Weakly, she said, “Offering to hurt me, but only if I ask isn’t convincing me you have free will.”
He settled back into his chair, watching her like he was at a show. “I did say you were making a mistake I can’t do anything about.”
Branwyn put on her bra. “Shut up,” she said, and eyed him. He smiled at her and put his finger in front of his mouth.
She bared her teeth and pulled her shirt back on. “Why are you acting differently, then?”
“Am I?” he said, and that was all.
She sat on the nonexistent ground and put her head in her hands, trying to regain her equilibrium and her focus. He was there, of course, which should have made such a thing impossible. But what did she have to hide from him now? She’d thrown herself into his arms, and he’d still stopped when she asked him to. As long as he was quiet—and out of reach—all she had to do was breathe.
A distant sound made her glance up. “And why are my dreams here, if not because of the connection?”
He moved a finger and the phantasms and associated sounds faded. “Don’t take it personally, cupcake. Anytime somebody dreams of me, the dreams linger here. I’ve got nothing to do with it.” He moved a finger again and another dream appeared and faded: Imani, with her back to Severin and her arms crossed angrily. “I do try to keep them in a closet but sometimes… they get out.”
Branwyn gave him a flat stare. He looked back at her, his face impassive but without the on-edge tension she had seen so often. She remembered him saying, in their first conversation in this place, You can’t even feel what you’re doing to me. She couldn’t. She had no idea. That was the problem.
Her inescapable conscience twinged. It was a small problem, comparatively. Compared to Rhianna, compared to Imani, compared to almost anything else. I’m annoyed for all the wrong reasons, because I can’t stop wanting to sleep with a monster even when Rhianna might be dying.
Biology sucked.
She sighed and put her head on her knees. Any minute something useful would occur to her. It was possible. In the meantime, it was a comfortable temperature here, and calm. She would let the overwhelming maelstrom of sensations subside until she could once again act rather than react.
“So what marvelous tale will you spin for the Saint?” Severin asked. “To convince him what a fantastic place the world is?”
No so calm. Branwyn raised her head. “Me? I thought my job was to hold down the fort until Rhianna woke up.” Then she put her head down again. “I don’t know. I’ll think of something. I’ll bribe him. I’ll sweet-talk him. I’ll put the fear of Umbriel into him.”
“What did he say, now? You have to convince him Earth is a better place for kids than his house? You’d probably have a talking point if his house burned down.”
Branwyn sighed. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Not a hypothetical, cupcake. Our big red playmate is coming.” A window slid down, showing a snowfield stretching to the horizon—the top of the cliff, Branwyn thought. It wasn’t completely empty; a single arctic wolf paced back and forth, head low and ears flattened.
Above the snowfield, a rose bloomed into existence, the petals growing into flames as once again the beast of fire and thorns respawned. Branwyn stared at it as the vestiges of her attempt to calm herself vanished. “Oh my god. It’s the roses Rhianna fed. It’s the haunt. She fed it and now she’s part of it somehow. That’s why the soul charges are going into her.”
“Yes,” said Severin, and she cranked her head around to stare at him. “I didn’t see it either at first because it’s dressed up in faerie nonsense. But it wants Rhianna and those other souls back, all the same.”
Branwyn clenched her teeth, then grabbed up the parka. “Stop it. Keep it away from her. I’ll talk to the Saint right now.”
In response, a window swept over them. Branwyn stumbled into the bedroom where Rhianna slept. Severin brushed the back of her neck and vanished again.
Charlie sat on the other bed, hugging her knees. She jumped when they both appeared and stared at Branwyn in surprise after Severin vanished again. “You’re still here.”
Branwyn checked on Rhianna: still peacefully asleep. “And so is Severin, although he’s a little busy right now. Do you know where I can find the Saint?”
“Uh… still in the study… I mean… you’re still alive?” said Charlie, looking bewildered. “I thought he was going to kill you.”
“No, I’m too useful,” said Branwyn. The awe growing in Charlie’s eyes was disturbing. “Charlie, do me a favor and stay here with my sister? She’s ill and I don’t want her to be worried if she wakes up and I’m not here.”
“Oh, uh, okay. What’s her name? Can I go through your bags?”
“Her name is Rhianna. You can peek through the backpack and that bag, but don’t go through hers without her permission, please. Thanks, Charlie.” She went out the interior door, waving.
Two birds, one stone. She wasn’t too worried about Rhianna waking up alone, but keeping Charlie and Rhianna in the same room would reduce decision-making stress later.
It wasn’t hard to find her way back to the grand study. The door was ajar, and the chatter of children was a reliable guidepost. She saw a few of them as she walked down the hall, mostly the older ones. They all looked at her as she passed. One of them, a rangy girl, called earnestly, “Good luck!”
The Saint was still in his loft office, although he now sat on the top stair, whittling something from wood. The shavings drifted down to a blanket spread on the floor below him. An automaton sat at the edge, reading to some of the smallest children.
When Branwyn stood at the base of the stairs and lifted a hand, the Saint gave her a nod of acknowledgement, finished a tricky bit with his knife, then stood up. “I thought you’d be along. Let’s go for a walk.”
Silently, Branwyn stood out of the way so he could descend. She followed him out into the hall, and then out of the lodge. She couldn’t help a glance cliffward, but she didn’t see the red glow of the beast of fire and thorns yet.
“It’s out there,” the Saint said, walking along a curved path that led to stables and paddocks. “The burning soul.”
Branwyn crossed her arms tightly. “It wants my sister.”
“Ah? Then it seems to me that soon you’ll have to make a choice between a dead woman and a live one.”
Branwyn didn’t yell at him, though she wanted to, because the only reason it was a choice was his own scruples. She did kick some snow. Would ending Imani now save what was left of Rhianna? But she knew, knew that Severin would never agree with that, even if it was possible.
After they circled a paddock where four horses browsed a feed bin, she s
aid, “You’re the only supernatural entity I’ve met who doesn’t seem to think that souls are as important as lives.”
“They’re not worthless,” said the Saint. “I lost mine and poof, no more wonderworking.” He snapped his fingers. “But I think the difference between a soul falling into the Horn of the Hunt and a soul drifting through the Fold to whatever lies beyond is… philosophy. Angels and what not, they’re philosophy given form. It matters to them. But I lived once.”
A horse came over to visit them, and the Saint pulled a slice of apple out of the air to feed it. “It’s why I saved the children, you understand, when Summer and Honeychord just watched in play-horror.”
“But you only saved the children,” said Branwyn grimly.
“We all have our priorities and our limits.” He cast a knowing eye over her. “Though they were hard for me to see, back in the early days.”
Branwyn muttered, “I know some people in Tucker were… guilty, but they couldn’t have all—”
“It wasn’t about guilt or innocence, little sister,” said the Saint, and Branwyn blinked to be so addressed. “Some of the children I pulled home were anything but innocent. How could they be, with the upbringing they had? But they had the shortest lives, save for those yet younger. They have the most ahead of them.”
Chewing her lip, Branwyn stared at the fence railing. It was smooth, painted green, perfectly maintained. “You’ve taken them away from everything they know. And you don’t have time here, do you? Not like at the Court of Summer.”
“It drifts in, here and there. That time donated by the Court of Stone’s child, they voted to give to the babies. But they all will grow up, eventually.” He sighed. “They always do.”
Branwyn shook her head. “But much slower than they would outside? Decades will pass there. When you let them go, what will there be for them?”
He gave her a knowing look. “You think there’s something there for them now, but you haven’t told me what that is.” He pushed away from the railing and started walking again. “Would you like to see one of my workshops?”
Fury Convergence Page 24