But then something else happens.
It is no more than a moment. No more than part of a second, and yet it lasts hours. Rapley pushes her away, makes as if to turn, and then stumbles as though about to collapse. She sees him falling, as if time has slowed almost to a halt, and then, to the side of her, he appears, faint as a rippled reflection on water, as indistinct as mist, but quite definitely him, touches her hand—it is cold and shocking and… disarming—before vanishing into the air.
By the time he hits the ground, Rapley is back, awake, and staring at her where she has also fallen, now crouched on the ground.
She looks at him, and she sees. She really, truly sees.
The name rushes out of her on a breath. “Adam…”
And then she flings herself at him, into his arms, clinging so tight she thinks she will lose feeling in her limbs before she ever lets go.
Rapley has gone rigid, no longer burning with passion as he had a moment before, but cold as ice.
“How do you know that name?”
She chokes on her laughter and tears. It is him! It is! Adam. Her Adam. Oh, God, could it be? After all these years?
Dear God… Adam is alive and has been with her all this time.
She begins to sob, the first tears she has shed since the moment he was taken. “Adam,” she sobs, clinging tighter, even as he grows yet more rigid.
He pushes her roughly away.
“Who are you?” he demands, his eyes wide and wild.
“Oh, Adam! Don’t you recognize your old friend?” Roan cries, tears and dirt and his kiss all over her face all at once.
He blinks, and his shoulders begin to drop. And then she is holding him again, sobbing his name, “Adam, oh, Adam… ”
And slowly his arms come around her and he shuts his eyes and tries to squeeze the years back into himself, to find that person Adam, who he lost so long ago.
But she is here… his Eve, his Roan Eve is here… and it is all coming back.
It takes a long time for sense to return. Roan cries herself into exhaustion on top of him, and he has to roll out from underneath her. She lies weakened and small amongst the heather in the clearing, where he intended to teach her a lesson earlier—the spoiled brat he knew her to be. And yet, she is that other… that girl he had so loved and been so cruelly torn from. His first and only friend. His Eve.
How could he not have seen?
But she is different now. So angry. So hateful. So dangerous. It is a startling contrast to the beautiful child he had loved so dearly. The child who had helped him discover his magic. The magic that now curses him so. Maybe it is the same for her.
Still… he is different too. And he doesn’t want her to see that. Doesn’t want her to see the thing he has decayed into. She is his dark mirror, always has been, and he fears her gaze.
He should have known. Fool, indeed.
From the moment he saw her on the mountain—here—he knew something about her was different. Her eyes have no walls. He has seen inside her and he should have known.
No. No, he will not allow her to see him thus.
He takes the knife from the ground where he dropped it, but leaves the other for her. She has won it from him.
Then he leaves, not once looking back.
He is gone when she wakes, and the terror in her gut rents a choke from her.
“No,” she whispers. “No! Adam! Adam!” She gets to her feet in a daze. It is past dawn, and he is nowhere to be seen. She aches all over, can feel her own heartbeat in her lips, and her head throbs like it has before with the oncoming fever.
“No, please. Adam…”
She looks around but knows it is useless. He is gone. She may have known him as her dearest friend and gift, Adam, but he is Rapley now. Rapley, who vanishes into the shadows of the mountain at a moment’s notice, as if he never were.
She sits down on the ground again and stares around her with a profound sense of loss. She wraps her arms around her legs and waits, with no sense of hope but with the memory of a little boy who always came when she needed him.
He does return. It is dark. She has lit small fires all the way along the ridge, lighting the way home. She is half-asleep under the furs, watching the flames dance as they warm the little space she had once so feared, but which they had made a kind of home.
She hears his footsteps; she is learning his sounds. He crouches by the opening, hands resting on his thighs, staring at the ground rather than at her.
“A man,” he says, his voice so low she has to strain to hear. “A man in black brought me here when I was a child. Eight. Nine, maybe. It was a long journey, and he never once lifted his hood. I was left on the doorstep by the kitchen and taken inside by Mrs. Goode. I was inconsolable. He had torn me away from a warm place, a place where I felt whole and loved. A place where I had the truest of friends who knew my very self before I knew it myself. He ripped me away and left me”—he gestures blindly—“here.” She lets him talk.
“I saw no one for three years, excepting Mrs. Goode and her staff. Then Andrew was hired, and a tutor, Mr. Firth, and, one day, Dr. Maudley came home. He explained the situation. For years I had waited to find out what was happening. By then I had come to know the mountain and its tricks intimately and was no longer the boy he had stolen away.
“So you see… I am not just a selfish brute of a son, a cretin who disrespects his adoptive father. I am a captive with no power or means to flee. Since… where could I find that warm, safe place again? Where could I find her?”
She budges over and opens the fur to invite him in.
Like a boy long neglected, he crawls inside and lies with his back against her, smaller than she had ever seen him, this man who is also a boy, and her dearest friend.
She closes the fur around him and her arm with it. He begins to shiver, and she rubs his arm, his back, kisses his beautiful neck.
How could she ever have called him those awful things? She hates herself.
And he weeps. She knows it is the boy, deep inside, who had been locked away, grieving for all the years lost, abandoned, alone, and hurting. And she will see him through the storm of tonight, and all the nights to come.
She isn’t sure when the caressing becomes something more, what time of night it is when his lips find hers. She loses all senses completely when his lips part and his body relaxes beside hers and then grows firm. All she knows is that she needs him; she needs him as she always has, and his hands are golden warmth on her skin and she doesn’t want him to stop.
She gasps as he kisses and touches hidden places, and again when his naked torso presses against her breasts. And when he enters her, pain and terror and beauty all at once, she cries out and clings to him harder. He tries to stop, to pull away, but she makes a sound of protest and holds him like her life depends on it. He moves with her and in her, and she feels a burning she has never felt give way to a rising warmth that chokes her with its power.
His breathing intensifies, and he stares down at her with an expression of shock and wonder and she smiles. He makes a sound and leans into her, moving faster, until the thing inside her builds and builds like a wave waiting to fall, until all at once it crashes upon the shore of her body, and she cries out again. He moves for a little longer, and then he too stiffens, jerks, holds her closer, and then lies shivering on top of her.
She hugs his head, his sweaty hair, and she kisses it.
“Adam,” she breathes. “Where have you been?”
“He came for me. Came back for me.” Rapley’s eyes are expressionless as he looks up at the slate above them.
Roan rolls onto her side and rests her head on her palm. “The man in black. I remember he took you.”
Rapley nods stiffly. “Yes. He brought me here.”
Something hits her low down inside, like a cold stone dropping dully into a despondent pond.
“Maudley was the man in black?”
“I don’t know. He never showed his face. All I know is th
at the man in the black cloak brought me here. And here I’ve been, ever since.”
Roan sits up and stares down at him. “I cannot fathom that you have been here for ten years. Here? On the mountain? In this… place?”
He looks at her then. “Yes.”
She closes her eyes. “My God, Rapley.”
He flinches; she feels it. She touches his cheek. “Adam.”
“No, you’re right. I’m Rapley now.”
“Who gave you that name?”
“I gave it to myself. Adam was gone.”
She leans down and kisses him full on the lips. “Not gone, just lost.”
He responds to her touch with one of his own. “Eve.”
Her smile lights up the space they share, and his heart aches with longing. So does his body.
She feels it and her eyebrows quirk up. “Again?”
He reaches for her, drawing her close over him. He presses his face between her breasts. “I could never get enough of you.” She barely hears his words, muffled as they are by her flesh, and she laughs as he runs a cheeky tongue over her skin there.
And soon they are moving together again, joined in passion, in love, in long years separated.
Who knows what might have been had he remained with them. Perhaps her father would not have grown so odd and fearful. Perhaps he would never have begun her schooling in symbols, sigils, and dark practices. Perhaps her mother would still be alive.
They might have been betrothed, married already, perhaps. What might he have been? A lawyer? A teacher? Banker? Doctor?
She cannot imagine him as any of those things, can only see him as he is now, here, her wild, untamed man with his knives and his axes, challenging women to duels and brooding in the night.
Brood no longer, she thinks. I shall light your days. Damned I might be, but you are not. And I shall live for you.
Chapter 32
A MEMORY IN BLUE
When it is done, they rise together and wash in the morning dew. Rapley marvels at her naked form, marvels at what they had done—what he couldn’t have imagined doing before. He marvels at the change in her, how he had missed the signs of her suffering. He marvels, too, that on some level, he had loved her. His unwillingness to let her die. His steadfast vigil night after night since she arrived at Mill House.
She calls to him.
His soul answers.
“You need to tell me what’s going on,” Rapley says later as they stand in the moonlight. “You need to tell me what happened.”
Once again, the mists have given them reprieve, as though sensing the importance of the moment. Roan does not want to taint it, hates that he even uttered words belonging to that world of before—before they found each other again. But she knows that she cannot linger in this perfect limbo forever. The ram will be waiting, it will return. And she owes Seamus more than that. Emma, even, despite what she has done.
And she has a crime to face. A murder to claim.
She takes his hands, knowing it might be the last time he offers them so freely.
“I will tell you, but you will hate me.”
He squeezes her hands tight. “Never. Impossible.”
“Let me tell it straight, then. I killed. I killed… Cage.”
His jaw clenches at the mention of the name. “He branded you.”
“Does that deserve death?”
His eyes blaze. “Yes.”
Despite herself, she is relieved. “Still… there’s more. I need to show you something.”
She leads him to the foot of the shelter and crawls in to get the book. She sits beside him and the fire, and reads to him in the morning light.
When she is done, he whispers, “Unclosed… is that what it’s called?”
And despite the fact that she has suspected, or known all along, his words turn her deathly cold.
“No. No, you are not Unclosed,” Roan says. “You’re perfect. Pure. Good.”
He shakes his head. “No. No, I’m not, Eve. And you know it. You’ve known it since back then, the night it happened.”
She frowns. “What are you talking about?”
He looks away. “You don’t remember? My God, no wonder you held me to you so close.” He holds his head between two fists. “I’m a monster.”
“Stop it,” she says sharply. “You’re alarming me. Tell it straight, Rapley.”
He looks at her. “The night your mother… the night she… jumped.”
Everything goes still. “I… I was alone. My mother saw me lose control, like I almost did tonight, like I did with Cage—she saw, she saw my evil, and she—she couldn’t handle it—she—she—I was alone! I was alone, Rapley.”
He shakes his head. “No. We were together. We were Conjuring together.”
And like a burst of fire in the sky, she remembers the night in all its painful detail.
It was easy. The magic came now without the faintest glimmer of thought. The long summer days they had spent in the flower garden, hidden amongst the trees, coaxing the magic from their fingers and minds, had reaped glorious results. It had been like learning to walk—they did it now without thinking.
Eve was always faster than Adam, and he was continually delighted by her tricks and performances. She was patient with his attempts and soothing when it proved impossible for him to mimic some of the games.
Still, he had skills of his own.
They were hiding in Father’s library, waiting for the moment of quiet when they could steal a book from the wide bookcase. Adam was playing his tricks, appearing in one corner of the room before disappearing and reappearing in another. The game was simple: Eve had to predict where he might pop up next.
Their father was away at a meeting in the center of town; it was safe to be less careful. Eve, in a rare show of her skill, and a desire to win the game, let all the barriers fall.
She felt her hands tingle first, and then her eyes. She felt herself rising up into the air, and—for lack of a better word—“sniffing” Adam out.
She found him hovering above her, his back to the ceiling, looking down.
“Got you,” she said, grinning, but then she stopped.
Her voice was all wrong.
Adam was looking at her funny—
Her arms were getting warmer, getting harder to hold down.
Her eyes were burning like fire, but she couldn’t rub them.
She didn’t like this game anymore.
She wanted to stop.
The magic built and built, consuming her, until one moment hit her like falling into a frozen lake.
Her mother walked in the door and stopped dead, her mouth opening into a slow, terrible grimace. Her whole body shrank into itself as she stared up at her daughter floating in the air—those hands, those eyes—
Eve saw something break inside her mother’s eyes. She would spend years trying to explain it to herself—that knowledge that she had done irreparable damage.
Her mother shook her head, back and forth, slowly at first, then gaining speed and violence.
“No, no, no, no, no—”
She said it over and over, backing away, backing farther even when Eve collapsed onto the floor, a beautiful, normal little girl once more. Eve felt her heart thumping inside her. This was bad. Very, very bad. She hadn’t meant for her mother to find out about the magic.
“Mama,” she said, reaching for the shaking woman, but her mother jumped back, holding out her palms.
“Get back! Do not touch me!”
Eve began to cry. “Mama, I’m sorry!”
“Demon,” her mother whispered. “Demon child!”
“Mama, no! It’s just a game. See, Adam is playing too!” She gestured to Adam, who was getting to his feet behind her. He nodded earnestly, but the woman didn’t seem to notice.
“Look,” Adam said, hoping to explain. He closed his eyes and then, a moment later, was standing beside Eve’s mother, who was ethereal and beautiful.
Her mother screamed, and would no
t stop screaming, and then she ran from the room, her shoes stomping on the hardwood floor. She ran to the top of the house, into the attic, where she had a small desk and chair and where she read her Bible each day.
Eve, sobbing, collapsed onto the floor, and Adam came to sit beside her.
“It’s okay, Eve. She’ll be fine. Maybe she was surprised, like I was when I first saw the magic.”
Eve nodded, but could not be consoled. She yearned to take it all back. She yearned to go up to her mother’s room, beg forgiveness, and never do any of the magic ever again.
She got to her feet, brushed her skirts down, and headed for the stairs.
What was it that made her turn to the flower garden? Had it been a sound? Or had she simply sensed it?
She had left her body behind without thought, appearing in the flower garden a moment before her mother hit the stone paving, her head exploding like a melon, her body unusually flat.
Adam was beside her, in astral form, and he took her hand.
Roan hands Rapley the book. “You can feel it, can’t you? The wrongness of the book.”
He nods. “It feels like poison. Something I should be wary of.”
“It is. But you must read it. I’ve realized that it’s not just about me, but about Seamus, and you—and maybe Emma, too.”
“Roan…” He touches her face, eyes darting all over her. “Eve,” he breathes, as if in disbelief. “Eve…” He leans forward and kisses her so gently she almost doesn’t feel it.
She pulls back. “I want you to read it.”
He looks down at it and hesitates.
He opens the clasp and opens the book, allowing it to fall flat at whatever page it likes. As if the book has wants and desires. It is the page she expected. The same page that it opened to for her.
He says nothing, just stares at the symbols and the text without moving.
“Read it aloud.”
“I can’t.”
She frowns. “Why not? Oh—” She takes the book from him when she realizes her mistake. “You’re not schooled in Latin. Why would you need to be, here, on a mountain? Yet Maudley should have schooled you nonetheless—”
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