Aline grinned, her own questions forgotten as she swept her hand in a dramatic flourish. She relished her role as the sage oracle from the past. “Let’s see… I grew up here at Briarwood, as you know. Your mother Dana lived in Pembroke Hall just over the hills – on the other side of Holly Avenue, near Raynard Hall. We played together while our mothers did magical things. I didn’t like Dana’s mother much – she was always scolding me for having rumpled clothes and unruly hair. Sometimes Dana snuck over to Briarwood at night – I’d leave the kitchen gate unlatched and she’d sneak up the secret staircase and we’d stay up all night wishing on the stars.” Aline popped five more blueberries into her mouth. “Sometimes when Dana came in the night, I could tell she’d been crying. She always had bruises on her arms and legs. She said she bruised easily. I believed that at the time.”
My hands gripped the edge of the table so hard the knuckles turned white. I hated to think the violence that had been a daily part of my life had been my mother’s reality, too. I guess the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.
“Dana’s parents sent her away to a fancy boarding school. I stayed here at Briarwood. I didn’t want to do anything except practice magic every day and build the new coven. My parents had a few friends they trusted – but it wasn’t the coven I imagined; a true melding of kindred souls. My mother couldn’t wait to hand it over to me so they could retire to the Maldives. When I was twenty-one my parents moved out and I moved all my friends in.” She threw up her hands. “It was free love – any witch or weirdo was welcome. People in the village called us a commune. Rumors flew around about the orgies and naked dancing going on at the castle. I loved every moment of it.
“By this time, Dana had started her law degree at Cambridge. She came back for the holidays, but her mother forbid her to see me. Imagine, her precious daughter friends with the local witch? The scandal! But I guess Dana had enough. She appeared on the kitchen doorstep one night, her face bruised, a battered suitcase in her arms and a fierce look in her eyes. She moved in to my bedroom and we stayed up all night wishing on the stars like we had as kids and she told me she wanted to leave her law degree and Cambridge and join the Briarwood coven.
“The very next day she went down to Cambridge to submit her withdrawal paperwork, and returned a week later with a towering man with bright eyes and a kind smile. She introduced him as George, her husband. They’d married in secret that weekend. Your mother was so timid, I never expected it of her, especially not without consulting her parents first. Especially because…” Aline’s face had that apologetic look people get when they know they were about to say something you won’t want to hear.
Because my grandparents wouldn’t approve, I filled in for her inside my head. My legs trembled. Because my father was black.
Because no one in your family is ever good enough. My shoulders tightened as the anxiety clawed its way up my spine, lodging itself in my windpipe. My breathing slowed. I scrabbled at the edge of the counter for something to hold me upright.
No, not now. I need to hear this. I need to know.
If you dig into the past, you’ll kill everyone you care about. Maeve will suffer if you don’t stop asking about your parents. Corbin will die if you keep pushing. You think everyone accepts your relationship with Corbin, but you’re wrong. You’ll be ostracized from Briarwood. You’ll have to go back to the streets…
I whipped my head up, fixing my gaze behind Aline’s ear at my jars of herbs and spell mixtures lined up on the shelf. One… two… three…
The counting brought some relief. The tension in my shoulders loosened. The room no longer spun. But it wasn’t enough, wasn’t nearly enough.
If Aline noticed anything unusual about my behavior, she didn’t say anything. “Dana may have been quiet, but she was stubborn,” she continued. “She and George moved into the room Corbin has now. She flaunted their marriage in the village, holding his hand and flashing her ring around so word got back to their mother. They had a screaming fight at the farmer’s market one day. Dana made a pipe burst in the public bathroom, so a huge spray of filthy water hit her mother right in the face.” She hooted at the memory. “I’d never seen Dana use her magic like that before, never out of anger. But her parents were cruel. They deserved it!”
…ten, eleven, twelve…
My nails dragged against the granite countertop. I strained to hear Aline’s words over the screaming voice in my head.
“Your father was the chef here at Briarwood. More than that, he was the life of every single party. He was always joking and telling ludicrous stories at the top of his lungs. Anyone living in the castle spent most of their day in here, throwing whatever they could find into his pots when his back was turned and getting fat on all his amazing baking.”
…sixteen, seventeen, eighteen… I gasped for air. My chest ached, a heavy weight squeezing my lungs.
“Dana had tremendous skill as a healer. She trained as a midwife and delivered every one of the babies at Briarwood, including Maeve. She acted as a midwife for any woman who needed her around the shire, even if they couldn’t pay. I often woke in the night to the sounds of her collecting her things and driving off into the night. She used to sell soaps she made infused with herbs from the garden at the castle gift shop. A cosmetic company in London wanted to give her forty grand for her soap recipe, but she refused because they couldn’t assure her they wouldn’t test on animals. I can’t believe you didn’t know any of this already.”
“How would I know?” I choked out. Twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four…
“Surely your grandparents looked after you after your parents died? They knew all about your mother’s powers, even though they never appreciated her.”
“They told me I had no family left,” I whispered. “That’s why I went into the foster system.”
Aline clamped her hands over her mouth. “That doesn’t make any sense. I don’t know about George's parents – I think they live on a Caribbean island somewhere, but Melanie and Richard definitely still lived at Pembroke Hall and they had so much money.” Her face lit up. “I know. We could visit them. I bet they’re still up at that hall, or another relative is. Melanie would’ve returned as a zombie before she let anyone else get their hands on their estate.”
Visit them? My legs jerked beneath me. My whole life I’d dealt with the crushing pain of being completely alone in the world. The care workers had never been able to locate my family. All this time, they had been right around the corner, living it up in a huge mansion while I drowned in my own private hell.
Did they even care when my mother died? Did they even know? They had to know. Why didn’t they want to help her son? Why didn’t they want me?
Because no one wants you. Your grandparents let you live in that hell rather than take you in.
My vision blurred. The jars on the shelf melded together, impossible to discern one from the other. I wrenched my neck around, searching for the comfort of something else to count.
Another thought occurred to me. Corbin must know. He’d worked his way back through the coven history and done extensive research to find me. The first place he’d have looked was my grandparents.
He knew they lived nearby – practically next door – and he never told me.
Because he doesn’t care about you. He doesn’t want you to have family. He wants you to be his broken boy, the brother he could save.
I swiveled my head back to the shelves, but the jars and bottles blurred into one. I grabbed for the counter, but my fingers slid off. Aline leaned toward me, her mouth moving.
“Help,” I whispered, but it was pointless. No one would help me. No one wanted me.
My legs gave out from underneath me. My head hit something hard. Bright lights spun in front of my eyes, and a dark shadow loomed over me before it consumed the light entirely, and the world turned black.
15
CORBIN
“Someone help me!”
Aline’s shrill voice ech
oed up the staircase. I tossed down the book I’d been reading, threw open the door to my bedroom, and fled down the hall.
What now? Is it the fae?
Aline’s yells came up from the kitchen. Rowan. I yanked open the secret passage and vaulted down the staircase in one leap. My naked torso slammed against the wall at the bottom. I shoved the secret door open and rushed into the room. The sight that greeted me turned my blood cold.
Fuckfuckfuckfuck.
Aline knelt in the middle of the kitchen floor, surrounded by squished blueberries and broken ceramics. Rowan slumped against the counter, his eyes glassy, his body unmoving.
Rowan.
“He’s not breathing!” Aline wailed, cupping his cheek. “We were just talking and he went all pale and and and then he fell and I—”
I sprinted across the kitchen. Sharp shards dug into the pads of my feet, but I didn’t slow down. I grabbed Rowan and laid him down on his back, away from the glass so he wouldn’t get any cuts. I tipped his head back to open his airway and checked for breath. Aline was right. Rowan had stopped breathing.
“Rowan, can you hear me?” I slapped his cheek, shook his shoulder, placed my hand on his chest to see if he responded. Nothing. Just that awful blank gaze.
“Call an ambulance,” I called out as I checked his pulse. He had one, which was a good sign, but it was faint and thready. With Rowan’s intense anxiety and the medication he was taking, a fall like this could throw his body into shutdown. I needed to try and get more blood and oxygen around his body.
I gave him two breaths and when he didn’t respond, I moved to his chest, placing the heel of my hand on the center of his chest. With my other hand on top, I interlocked my fingers the way my mother had taught me for chest compressions on an adult. With my shoulders over Rowan’s chest, I pushed down, feeling his sternum rock beneath me. I counted out the beats in my head. One, two, three, four, five…
After thirty compressions, I tipped Rowan’s head back again, pinching his nose and blowing precious air into his lungs. One, two… c’mon Rowan…
He didn’t respond. His glassy eyes stared back at me, cold and lifeless.
Air leaked from my chest like a deflating balloon. Don’t think about it. Don’t panic. You have to focus for Rowan.
Rowan would have found it funny that I was the one counting.
No, don’t think in the past tense. Rowan is not going to die. Rowan is not Keegan. Rowan has a future.
“You hear that, Rowan?” I muttered as I compressed his chest again. “You’re not dying on me.”
I tipped his head back, pinched his nostrils, and breathed into his mouth. A mouth that only hours before I’d kissed goodnight. Lips that had pressed against mine with such intensity and now hung slack against his teeth.
One… two…
Rowan coughed. My heart leapt. I lifted him into the recovery position as his entire body pitched, kicking shards across the room. I clung to him as he sucked in breath after glorious breath, resting my head in his shoulder, my lips against his neck.
“Don’t ever do that to me again,” I whispered against his skin.
For the first time since I’d seen him lying there, I became aware we weren’t alone. “God, Rowan.” Maeve wrapped her arms around him, burying her head in his dreadlocks. I pulled her back to give him some space and embraced her, my body trembling with the knowledge of just how close I’d come to losing him. Rowan reached out to me, his fingers tightening around my bicep, then dropping back to his side.
“Ambulance?” I asked. Rowan was out of immediate danger, but since he’d hit his head and with the medication he was on he needed to be checked out.
Aline shook her head. “I don’t know how to work the… mobile phone thingie. I’m sorry.”
“Maeve, call the ambulance.” I pushed my own phone into her hands. She ducked across the room to make the call. “What happened?” I glared at Aline.
“I don’t know! We were just talking, and he was leaning forward. I thought he was just really interested, but then he seemed to be holding himself upright. Next thing I know his head bounced off the counter and he was on the floor and he wasn’t breathing.”
“Even if the fall knocked him out, he shouldn’t have stopped breathing! His heartbeat shouldn’t have been so weak.”
“He was having trouble breathing right before he fell.” Aline glanced at her arm, which was stained blue from berry juice. “Maybe he had an allergic reaction?”
“He’s not allergic to anything except stress. My guess is you frightened him into a panic attack and he fainted before he hit the counter. Now he’s probably got a concussion. What were you talking about?” I demanded.
“About the coven! He wanted to know about his parents.”
My heart pounded in my ears. No, don’t let him find out about—
Rowan’s nails dug into my arm. “My grandparents…” he choked out.
Shit.
Rowan’s eyes watered. “You never told me,” he murmured.
“Because I was afraid that this would happen,” I smoothed his hair.
“You should have said something. I had to find out… like this.”
“Corbin, what’s going on?” Maeve asked, returning with the phone. She glanced between Rowan and I in concern.
“My grandparents… they lived right down the road.” Rowan’s voice rose with every word. “They might still live there. Corbin knew, and he never told me. You never told me.”
His words cut through me like Arthur’s sword slicing through a Far Darrig. I glared at Aline. This was her fault. She should never have said anything or let him get this upset. Couldn’t she see how much her words stressed him out? “Because I knew if I told you then you’d want to see them. They’re not nice people. I always meant to tell you, but you made so much progress and I didn’t want you to relapse, and then months turned into years and it was too late.”
“That was my decision to make.”
“I know you. I know what you can deal with, and seeing them would’ve broken you. I visited them. They were the first people I tried when I went looking for you. Melanie Pembroke told me she’d paid some officials a lot of money to make it appear as if you had no family. They changed your name, your story, everything.” His face froze in an expression of such raw pain. My throat closed up. “They told me if you ever showed up on their estate, they’d have you shot.”
“I needed to see them, Corbin. I needed to know for myself, but you kept me from my family.”
“We’re your family. I thought that was obvious. They don’t give a shit about you and I do. I’ve done everything for you. I helped you get sober. I got you through the diagnosis and treatment. I protected you—”
“You can’t protect people by sticking them in a bubble.” Rowan’s eyes flashed. His body shook so hard his foot tapped against the counter.
“Is that what I did?” My voice boomed. “I stuck you in a bubble, like a fucking monkey? Like an object in the zoo? Or did I wipe your fucking arse and clean up your puke and hold you down so you wouldn’t throw yourself out a fucking window?”
Flynn winced. I was being a total dick. I didn’t want to yell at Rowan, but I couldn’t stop. My hands trembled too. I nearly lost him. And it was like… it was like he was blaming me.
I already blamed myself enough for both of us.
“I’m not Keegan!” Rowan shouted. He kicked out with his leg, splintering the wooden cupboard door.
The crack of the wood breaking froze the room. Rowan never raised his voice, never yelled, never lashed out in anger. Not since he got sober. I sucked in slow, labored breaths, trying to force some calm into my shattered body. Maeve’s eyes bore into mine.
Rowan lowered his voice, choking out the words. “Corbin, you know I’m not Keegan.”
The room spun. Rowan’s face morphed into Keegan’s – the last time I’d seen him alive, when he’d railed on me in a mighty rage, screaming that I was the favorite, that I wanted him out of the
way so I could have Mum and Dad all to myself. And then he climbed up a tree with a length of rope and… and…
“I know you’re not Keegan,” I whispered.
“You don’t, you don’t! You think that I’m mad at you, so I’m going to off myself just to spite you. You think everything that’s wrong with me could be cured if you just work hard enough. You think if you save enough of us, you’ll be absolved of your guilt. But it’s not enough, Corbin. It’s never going to be enough, because you have nothing to be guilty about. Your brother died because he was unhappy and his head was messed up. It had nothing to do with you. You think I’m the one who’s messed up like that, but you’re the one who’s not going to get any peace until you forgive yourself.”
My knees cracked as they hit the tiles. I barely registered the pain shooting up my thigh. A deep growl rose from my chest, tearing out of my mouth before I could stop it. Blake stepped back, his expression terrified.
Rowan shuffled forward. He rested a hand on my knee, and his eyes watered with shared pain. “It’s not your fault,” he whispered. “None of it is your fault.”
“I…” Nope, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t dislodge the guilt. It was my fault. I’d been so angry at Keegan for all the things I said, I yelled back instead of trying to help him. I didn’t go after him when he ran. I spent the last hours of his life hating him for being a dick.
I nearly lost Rowan.
“Corbin, listen to us. I can see it in your face – you’re still blaming yourself for all of this.” Maeve knelt beside us both, her hands resting on our shoulders. “The same goes for both of you. The things that happened to you aren’t your fault, either, Rowan. Being sick isn’t a punishment. It’s just a shitty thing that happened.”
“I made those choices,” Rowan’s lips brushed against my shoulder. Wet tears rolled down my shoulder. “Corbin can’t blame himself for my punishments.”
The Castle of Wind and Whispers (Briarwood Reverse Harem Book 4) Page 10