A Matter of Forever (Fate #4)

by Heather Lyons

  A hand reaches out to finger the misshapen scarf; it’s trembling just a little, but ... he’s moving. He’s awake. Oh my gods, Jonah’s awake.

  I toss the scarf and needles anyway, kick the book off the bed. I’m straddling him, my hands cupping his face as I stare down at those sublime cerulean eyes. “Jonah?”

  His smile is drowsy, too. Amused. He mimics my wonder, albeit slowly: “Chloe?”

  Nonsensical words of relief and happiness fall out of me as I pepper his face with kisses.

  He’s alarmed, immediately confused by what must be an overwhelming amount of extreme emotions tearing through me, but then little details all too soon start to sink in. This is not our bedroom. We are not in our bed. Neither of us are in our normal pajamas or lack thereof. We are in a strange room and I was knitting and now weeping happily as I can’t stop touching his face and he has no idea what is going on.

  “Don’t worry,” I assure him when he struggles to ask his questions. “It’s okay now.” I lean down and kiss him again; he’s no longer cold. I’m ridiculously pleased by this.

  “Are we in the hospital?”

  I smooth stray hairs sticking up around his head before cupping his face again. “Yes.” He’s alarmed once more, his hands trailing across my face and arms in his search to see if anything is wrong with me. Guilt, oh so much guilt, fills my gut. He thinks this is yet another instance when I was hurt, except ... this time it was him.

  “I’m fine,” I assure him.

  He tries to sit up, but I won’t let him. Lines form along his forehead as he tries to fit all the pieces together. And then ...

  He does.

  I know the exact moment memories surface, because all the confusion melts into recognition. “What ...” He swallows, frustrated at how hard the words are for him. So I head him off at the pass, pressing my fingers across his lips.

  “I will tell you everything, but right now, all I care about is making sure you’re okay.”

  He shakes his head; frustration darkening his eyes. “Tell ... me.” Now his hand is on my face, searching for any lingering traces of battle I might have.

  It breaks my heart.

  So, I tell him. I let him know I destroyed Karnach when I saw what was happening to him, and of how I was forcibly dragged out by Enlilkian. How I woke up in a strange house and eventually fought my way out. I try not to get into too much detail, as I want him to remain calm, but I don’t want to hide things from him, either. So I tell him everything except how I was responsible for his twin brother dying, because how does one say that? I hate keeping anything from him, but ... all I can do is let him know Kellan is next door and that he was hurt rescuing me.

  I hate the misplaced guilt that shines in his eyes, like he’s somehow responsible for his brother being injured. So I do my best to assure him that Kellan is going to be okay, that his brother is just sleeping, exactly like he had been just minutes before. That Astrid has ensured he’s been carefully monitored, and Kate has been doing everything possible to make sure he’s fine.

  And then, he says the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard Jonah Whitecomb say in my entire life. He says, “I’m sorry I failed you. Him.”

  I have to close my eyes for a moment so I don’t outright bawl. “Listen to me.” My face lowers to his, so there is no way he can misunderstand my meaning or words. “You did not fail me. Not even the tiniest bit. I failed you.”

  “Didn’t ... keep ... you safe.”

  “Jonah—”

  “Couldn’t ... even ...” He shakes his head, frustrated. Lets out a hard breath as his words struggle to come out. “He ... saved, not ... me.”

  “Jonah, listen to me—”

  A trembling finger points toward the doorway between the rooms. “He ... there! You ...” He grabs my face again. “So sorry, Chloe. Wish—”

  No no no. He has nothing to be sorry for. I do. I’m the one who constantly put both him and his brother in harm’s way. “Jonah Whitecomb, I need you to hear what I’m saying, okay? Just hush and listen, please.”

  His sigh hurts to hear, it’s so sad.

  “You did not fail me. Or him. You stood by me when almost everyone else was too scared to fight back. You were there every step of the way. If anybody failed anyone here, it was me. I should have taken Enlilkian out the moment we saw him. Just ... lunged at him. Hell, I should have taken him out all the other times. Had I, none of this ... none of the people who got hurt or died would have suffered. This is on me, Jonah. Your brother is in there because of me.”

  “No,” he whispers, hand on my cheek.

  “When I thought you died ...” The thought, even now, is beyond agonizing. How do I let him know it was the worst feeling I’ve ever lived through? “I went crazy, Jonah. All I could think of was how I would do anything to have you back. And here you are. Here I am. Please ... let’s not allow blame or guilt own this moment.” Which is one of the biggest lies of all tonight, because here I am, drowning in it.

  He tells me, “Okay,” even though I know he doesn’t mean it, before gently kissing me.

  I call down to the desk and have Kate Blackthorn paged; I’m told she’s at home, so it will take a little bit for her to arrive. And then I call Astrid who finally went home to sleep in her own bed for the first night in over a week after I promised to watch over both boys. I put it on speakerphone, so Jonah can hear her, too. The phone rings a good five times before a groggy voice answers. “Hello?”

  Only, it’s not Astrid. It’s Cameron.

  I pull my phone away and check the screen. Did I misdial? But ... no. It clearly says Astrid Home.

  What in the hell?

  “Hello?”

  I try so hard not to giggle. Are they having a, um, sleepover? I suddenly feel so twelve. “Um. Yes. Hi, Cameron.”

  There’s a lengthy pause before, “Is everything okay? Are the boys okay? It’s ...”—shuffling noises sound in the background—“nearly two o’clock in the morning.”

  “I was just thinking the same thing,” Jonah mutters.

  I literally bite my tongue so I don’t laugh. Well, here’s our official confirmation that things are, indeed, getting serious between our parents.

  Cameron says, “Hen? Was that ...?”

  “Jonah’s awake,” I tell my father. I clear my throat. “I thought ... maybe Astrid would want to know?”

  Muffled words fill the line. And then Astrid’s voice says excitedly, “Chloe? Cameron says Jonah woke up?”

  I hold the phone closer to Jonah. “Hi, Mom.”

  Astrid bursts into noisy, happy sobs. She says something else, but it’s too hard to understand, so Cameron informs us they’ll be here in about a half hour.

  I toss the phone toward the end of the bed. “Well now.”

  “Quick,” he says slowly, “call Will next.” I love that his dimple is finally showing.

  I laugh, and oh gods, does it feel good to laugh right now. Like ... maybe everything is going to be okay after all. Jonah’s awake. I just know Kellan will be laughing here with us any moment now. “You’re awful.” And then, “I did see them in a compromising position when I got here, though.”

  His eyebrows go up.

  “But I’ve been a little distracted, so I haven’t dug deeper on that yet. Time and place, you know?”

  His smile fades. “I want to see Kel.”

  I won’t let him out of bed yet. It’s selfish and awful of me, but until Kate gets here and checks him out, Jonah is going nowhere. So I erase the wall between our rooms so that Kellan’s bed is in plain sight. Hi brother is in the same position as he was the last time I checked on him—head titled toward us, blanket tucked up nice and neat.

  The way my husband’s eyes fill up as he studies his brother devastates me. So I slide down in the bed, curving my body around his. “He’s like you, Jonah. He’s strong. He’s going to wake up, too.”

  I hope I’m right. Please, please let me be telling him the truth.

  Jonah’s hand finds i
ts way to my hair and gently tugs through the strands. “I know.” A tiny burst of frustration escapes his lips. “Can’t feel him, though.”

  Tiny alarm bells go off inside me.

  “Before.” He motions toward his brother. “When he was ...” Another frustrated sigh. “His coma. I could feel him. Surge. Not now.”

  I’m too afraid to even pull air into my lungs. Still, I say carefully, “You just woke up. Maybe you’re tired. Can you feel me right now?”

  He’s quiet for a long moment. “Only a little.”

  I try to consider this logically. Maybe it’s the distance—even without the wall, Kellan is still a good distance away from us. I switch the legs of his bed to have rollers on them and push him closer to where Jonah is.

  I try not to think about the hole in his chest. How his eyes rolled back. What it was like to watch that monster murder him. How I felt, believing the worlds had lost both Whitecomb brothers.

  So I don’t fight it when Jonah insists I help him the few steps over to his brother’s bed. My heart just hurts, just flat out breaks repeatedly as I watch him touch Kellan’s face, trying desperately to get some sense of how his twin is. Or even maybe say something to him, something only they can hear.

  “I feel him,” he finally whispers.

  All the muscles tensing in my body ease up a little.

  While not completely one hundred percent back to where he was before the Battle of Karnach (at least, that’s what the media is calling it), Kate gives us the best of news two days later: Jonah’s got a clean bill of health; there is no lasting damage done. And I marvel, despite growing up with a Shaman, over how somebody whose body suffered so much could be perfect once more.

  Raul’s isn’t, though. Raul died the night before, just a minute past midnight. I held my Cousin as she shivered and cried silently, but she never raged like I would have guessed she would.

  Funny, charming Raul Mesaverde is gone.

  I snuck into his room when Lizzie and Meg were consoling Cora. I thought, I brought Kellan back, I can surely bring Raul back, too, right? But no matter how hard I tried, no matter how much I willed it, his heart never jumped to life again.

  My power of reanimation is gone.

  Jonah and I were both granted clearance to go home the day after Raul died, but when Jonah balked at leaving his brother for even an hour, Kate pulled some strings for us so we could stay. Outside of sleeping, the Lotuses and Danes are our constant companions; Kellan is never left alone.

  Too many thoughts constantly race around my brain, too many what-ifs plague my conscience. What if the heart I made him was nothing more than a functioning placebo? What if he was already gone, but I forced his body to keep on going, like some kind of twisted life support machine nons use? What if, even with Enlilkian’s gift of reanimation, it just wasn’t enough from a person with no experience wielding such power? What if he does wake up, and he’s no longer Kellan, but Enlilkian? I used his life essences to bring Kellan back, after all.

  Gods, that last what if scares me so much that sleep is elusive.

  What if I am nothing better than the mad scientist who brought the dead back, only to raise a monster? What if I have to admit to Jonah and his family that, because I hesitated, Kellan died?

  The funny thing is, when Jonah languished in a coma from all of his injuries, I felt his pain. I thought the agony I lived through was proof of his death, that it was some twisted offshoot of our Connection ... only, upon reflection, it truly was. But with Kellan? Okay, yes. I felt what that Elder did to him as if it had happened to me. Now? There’s no pain except that of missing him. And that’s a familiar pain for me, one I’ve learned to live with on a daily basis for a long time now.

  So, along with the what-ifs, there’s a whole lot of hope, too.

  I’m sitting by the window, watching golden and red leaves fall from the trees surrounding the hospital and knitting while everyone else but Astrid is playing a card game. Poor Cameron and Will got tricked into playing with Jonah and Callie hours back, and neither Astrid nor I had the heart to tell them just how vicious those two can get. It’s already turned ugly; Will is no stranger to trash talking, so he’s joined in merrily with Jonah and Callie as they fight for supremacy. Cameron is clearly outmatched and keeps glancing over at a knitting Astrid in some kind of misguided plea for help.

  Without even looking up from her stitches, she reminds him sweetly, “You wanted to play.”

  It’s so hard not to giggle at the wounded expression he favors her with. “You could have warned me, woman!”

  “Here’s your warning: don’t ever play cards with Lotuses or Whitecombs. You will always lose.”

  Everyone in the room stops. Turns and stares at the bed and the person within whose scratchy, tired voice says this.

  Kellan is awake. Eyes clear and wide open. Words soft but coherent, looking like he’s just woken up from a nap. Astrid flies out of her chair; so do Callie and Jonah. And all I can think as I join them is thank you, gods.

  Thank you.

  Kate has been paged. Astrid is hovering; Kellan is tolerating it well. Jonah isn’t saying much, and it worries me, because lines riddle his forehead as he studies his brother. Astrid is doing most of the questioning, and all of Kellan’s answers are clear, if not soft. How are you? Good. Tired. Are you thirsty? A little. Are you hungry? Not really. Are you in pain? Not at all. Are you sure? Yes. Positive? Yes.

  She’s on her way to another round of questions when Kellan abruptly says,

  “Chloe, I need to talk to you. Alone.”

  The entire room goes silent.

  “Sweetling,” Astrid says, smoothing back some of his hair, “Kate is on her way to check you out. I’m sure you can—”

  He takes hold of her hand and kisses the back of it. “This cannot wait. I’m sorry.” His attention switches to Jonah. “J, can you please help me here?”

  Jonah is silent for a long moment as he merely studies his brother. Kellan eventually says, “Jonah. Please. Just for fifteen minutes. Then everyone can come back in.”

  It doesn’t make him happy, but Jonah herds everyone out and shuts the door behind him. Once everyone’s gone, Kellan and I have a stare-off.

  I’m the first to look away.

  I clear my throat, count to ten to steady myself. “You cannot believe how glad I am you’re awake. You had us all scar—”

  “I can’t hear my brother.”

  My mouth snaps shut; my eyes fly to his face. He’s struggling to sit up. I hurry over and try to urge him to relax, but he’s having none of it. “Did you hear me?”

  “I—”

  “I can’t feel my brother.” There’s so much anxiety reflecting out of his beautiful eyes. “Or you. Or Astrid. Or Cameron. Or anyone else in this godsdamn room. Or building.”

  His words are soft and shaky and hard to hear over the pounding in my ears. “When Jonah woke up, he ... he had trouble feeling me for a few hours, too, so—”

  “I’ve been awake for a while now, most of the day. Just ... watching you guys.” He lets out a frustrated sigh. “I kept nodding on and off. Was too tired to talk for some time, could barely keep my eyes open, so I just listened. Listened and did a lot of thinking. And the thing is, in this entire time, I have not been able to hear my brother.”

  I grab his hand; he takes it away.

  “I cannot surge with him, either. Or you. Or anyone else.”

  I fear my knees are going to give out. I fumble for something, anything that could explain this, because Kellan looks so heartbroken right now. “You two were blocking each other, right? Before you left?”

  “I stopped blocking him the moment his pain shattered through our walls,” he says calmly. “It’s how I found him. I tracked him through our thoughts, like I did when you froze time.”

  “Maybe he’s still blocking you?” I know it’s stupid even as the words come out of my mouth because Jonah would never block his brother in a situation like this.

  He goe
s to his wrist, instinctually wanting to twist his cuff, but it’s not there. Astrid has it in her purse. “I remember, Chloe.”

  My knees do buckle now as I drop on the bed like a brick.

  “I remember us in that room.”

  Oh gods. Oh gods.

  “I remember ... something ...” His eyes go to the window, as if he’ll find the answers there. “Something weird happened. You became a blur, you and Enlilkian both.”

  No. No. No.

  “I remember something picking me up. One of those incorporeal Elders. And I remember something slicing right through my body.” A hand comes to rest over his heart. “Something right here.”

  My eyes close. No. He cannot remember this. No.

  “You need to fill in the rest of the pieces for me, C. And you need to do it now.”

  I shake my head slowly. He’s fine. He’s alive. He’s here. He’s talking. We survived. We’re all here and we’re okay.

  Something warm touches my hand; when I open my eyes, I find his fingers across mine. “Please C. I’m ... I know I’m grasping at straws here, but I need to know what’s going on.”

  “Kate’s coming,” I whisper. “Kate will check you over and you’ll see. You’re fine.”

  He shakes his head slowly. And then he says something that makes my stomach bottom out. He says, “I am not fine. I cannot hear my brother. I don’t ...” The sigh that escapes him gently pushes strands off his forehead. “I don’t feel the same.”

  Just ten minutes before, I was so relieved he was awake, and now here we are, and it seems all so fast, like we’re on a speedway going two hundred miles per hour and everything around us is just a blur. There is no time to let it all sink in or savor this moment. It’s only life pushing us forward with each second.

  I can barely find my voice when I offer up my last defense. How does one just say it? How does one tell another that they died? Or that I refused to let him go? “You’re alive. You’re here. That’s what counts.”

  When his fingers curl around mine, squeezing gently, insistently, I find all those numbers that have gotten me through so very moments in the past are just not enough for this one.