by W. J. May
Quiet as a mouse, she tiptoed down the stairs.
It was as if she was six years old again. Six years old, and sneaking to the end of the hall to watch as her parents started fighting. She was always afraid to see, but was more afraid not to. Even at such a young age she felt as though, if she wasn’t there, things might get even worse. If she wasn’t standing secret guard, who knew what might happen.
But this time, her father wasn’t fighting with her mom. He was fighting with Devon’s dad.
And Rae didn’t know, not for the life of her, what she would do if things got out of hand.
“…I told you,” Simon was saying, “I had no idea that you would be here—”
“That makes it even worse!” Tristan raged. “You thought you would be alone!”
Simon pulled in a deep breath, trying to steady himself. “I didn’t think I’d be alone. I was trying to—”
“No, you thought you were coming to stay with my son!” Tristan was just barely keeping himself under control. One push in the wrong direction, and he would snap Simon’s neck with his bare hands. “What the hell are you thinking? Involving yourself with the children?! Julian and Rae? Even Angel, as if you haven’t put that girl through enough! You have NO RIGHT to be here, Simon!”
Rae cringed further back into the shadows, staring at the two men with wide eyes. She was surprised that Tristan had included her name amongst the rest, and was even more surprised by the fierce protectiveness with which he had said it.
But more than anything, she was scared. Flat-out scared. Each of these men was a legend in his own right. Each of them had braved more death and bloodshed during their time with the Council than she and all her friends combined. Each of them had survived.
To see two such giants facing off against each other made her blood run cold.
“I have no right?!” For the first time, Simon let his temper get the better of him. “Tell me, Tris, when was the last time you even spoke to your son? When we met, he had no idea that we’d been partners. That we had even met! The kid doesn’t know his own history—”
In a single lightning-quick movement Tristan was across the room, so blindingly angry he looked like the god of thunder himself. “That’s because you’re not a part of his history,” he growled, cutting Simon off. “I gave up everything, forfeited my entire life just to make sure that your name, Simon, would never trouble him. To make sure that you were just another terrible story, one that had no personal bearing—”
“By pushing him away?!” Simon exclaimed, cutting the dean off this time. “By isolating yourself to the point that you separated from your wife? That you abandoned your son?!”
Not good. This is not good at all! Rae’s eyes flew around the room, wishing desperately that Devon would wake up. That anyone else in the house would venture down to help contain the wreckage. She was on the verge of calling out telepathically, but she found herself trapped in a sort of trance. Staring back and forth between the two men like a morbid tennis match—the kind that would only end in blood.
Then again, men might have been overstating it a bit. The second the two of them were alone, they were suddenly teenagers again. Sixteen-year-olds, carrying the weight of the world.
“Don’t you dare talk to me about my son!” Tristan hissed, his long fingers curling into lethal fists. “You presume to lecture me, after everything you did to your daughter—”
“Oh, please!” Simon crossed the room as well, standing toe to toe with the man he had once called a brother. “From the looks of things, you hardly know anything more about parenting than I do! You simply weren’t around. You walked away!”
“Everything I did for Devon I did to protect him. Everything you did for Rae—destroyed her life.” His eyes flashed with unspeakable rage. “It would have been better if you’d died, Simon. It would have been better if they’d never found you in those caves.”
The room echoed in sudden silence, filled only with the sounds of quick, panted breathing.
It was a terrible thing to say, and a terrifying tone in which to say it. But while Rae shrank away in hidden panic Simon merely shook his head, staring his oldest friend right in the eyes.
“You forget. I know you, Tristan.” His voice echoed in the little room, full of an authority that no one there could deny. “I know the man you were, and I know exactly how much you loved that child when he was born. Exactly how much you loved your wife.”
A terrifying silence rang out between them.
“That man would not recognize the person you are today.”
It took a second for Rae to realize that she was crying. For her to realize that the wet streaks warming her cheeks were tears.
She didn’t understand it. Didn’t want to understand it.
The way the two men looked just as likely to rip each other apart as to embrace. The way they could lay each other completely bare, using nothing but a few choice words. But mostly, it was that heartache. That heavy, sickening heartache that had them both firmly in its grasp.
Setting invisible limits, that only they would ever understand.
That they would only ever be so happy. Only ever be so free. Then that heartache would drag them back again, down into the darkness.
“You’re right,” Tristan breathed, taking a step back. “When you drove away, the last time we saw each other…a part of me died that day. A part of me never came back.”
Simon’s rage vanished in an instant, melted into a look of gut-wrenching horror as he made a compulsive movement towards his friend. Tristan didn’t notice. He was lost in his own hell.
“You murdered people, Simon.” All the fight had drained out of him, leaving him looking strangely hollow. “So many people. And then you came back home.” He tilted his head slightly, like he didn’t understand. “We spent every second together. Trained together. Drank together. Watched movies back at the house…and all the while you were having secret meetings with Jonathon Cromfield.”
Simon bowed his head in shame. Every line on his face was etched with that never-ending sadness. One that worsened with every breath.
But Tristan didn’t stop. It was like he was standing there in a daze, vulnerable and exposed, as over a decade’s worth of quiet sorrow poured out of him. “You were the first person I told that I’d gotten married. The first person I told that Mary and I had a child.” He lifted his head numbly, gazing across the room. “Is that what you wanted me to tell Devon? Are those the stories you wanted him to hear?”
Rae slowly lifted a hand to her mouth, backing away into the darkness of the hall.
“How I loved you like my own brother? How you were always my first call?” His eyes tightened as he pulled in a fractured breath. “How it tore me to pieces when I found out the truth?”
“Tris…” Simon paced forward, reaching out a hand, but Tristan pulled away.
Instead, Tristan stared at the ink warlock glistening on Simon’s arm. The one that had caused so much trouble. “Sometimes, I think I should have known,” he breathed. “About all of it. About Fodder and Jennifer. About Jake—” His voice cut off suddenly as his eyes flashed to Simon in actual pain. “How could you do that? To Jake?” He shook his head slowly, looking as though his every nightmare had come to life. “We loved him. Looked for him. We met his wife, his child.” An errant tear slipped down his face, but he didn’t seem to notice. He was still lost in that hellish trance, staring at Simon like he’d never seen him before.
Simon stood, unable to move. Frozen from shame? Regret? Or the loss of a friend? Rae had no clue if he even felt guilty. And who was Jake?
“He never came out of it, you know. Not really. No matter how hard he tried, he just wasn’t the same.” His face tightened again as he visibly tried to keep himself together. “How can you stand in the same room as Julian? How can you look him in the eye? How can you look at yourself?”
Julian? Rae stared between the two men, hoping for an answer. An explanation. Anything to cue her in to what wa
s going on. But the men were past answers and explanations.
Most of all…they were past help.
“I’m sorry.” This time, Simon made no attempt to bridge the space between them. He didn’t even pretend like saying the words would make anything better. Would even begin to repair the damage he’d caused. But he was going to say them anyway. He was going to say them with his dying breath. “Tristan…I’m so sorry.”
They stared at each other. Stared at each other for a long time.
Then Tristan turned away and slowly walked out of the room. “I’m sorry, too.”
Chapter 11
Rae raced back up the stairs as fast as she could, flipping through speed tatùs at an alarming rate. Anything to avoid either Tristan or Simon catching her there. In an act of desperation, she switched into in Devon’s tatù then immediately over to Anthony Fodder’s cheetah, sacrificing the enhanced senses of the fox in favor of raw speed.
It was for that reason she ran into her fiancé at the top of the stairs.
They said nothing as they collided in the dark. Kept perfectly silent as Rae tumbled forward and Devon caught her safely in his arms, cradling her an inch above the hardwood floors.
He had been sitting there for a while, she realized, like she had. Perched like a ghost upon the landing. Listening to, not watching, the hushed fight going on below.
For half a split-second, the two of them froze. Rae still suspended in mid-air, and Devon not moving an inch from where he’d silently caught her. They simply stared at each other with wide eyes. Each one at a loss as to what to say. Each one at a loss as to what to do.
Then there was movement from inside the kitchen, and the two of them flew like spirits back to their bedroom. Devon closed the door without making a sound as Rae perched in the very center of the bed right next to their softly-snoring puppy.
“Devon, I don’t…I don’t even know what to…” she trailed off, shaking her head. In a way, she wished she’d never heard it. Judging by the shell-shocked look on her fiancé’s face, she almost wished he’d never heard it either. It was something too powerful to have stumbled into by mistake while hovering on the stairs. Too devastating to have heard from the shadows.
He stood there for a second, then sank onto the mattress beside her. At first she’d thought it was just the lighting in the hall, but there wasn’t a drop of color in his entire face. Even his lips were pale, dotted with the tiniest drops of blood from where he’d bit down on them too hard. “I never knew,” he breathed, staring vacantly at the streaks of silver moonlight painted across the walls. “I never knew why he…left.”
Rae pulled in a sharp breath, and lowered her gaze to her lap.
Devon had grown up living with his father. ‘Living’ in that the two of them shared the same roof, drifting in and out of rooms like silent puppets on parade. When he said that his father had left, he didn’t mean it in the conventional sense. But Rae understood all the same.
“All this time,” she murmured, “I thought Simon Kerrigan ruined just my life. That the repercussions of his sins were limited to me alone.” When she lifted her face, there were tears in her eyes. “But he got you, too, Devon. I’m so, so sorry.”
“Sorry?” He turned suddenly to face her, his forehead creased with a frown. “Why in the world are you sorry? You’ve never done anything, Rae. Never done anything except survive him.” He paused, staring off into space as storm clouds danced behind his eyes. “I’m sorry.”
Rae just shook her head, letting those tears spill over as the two of them quietly laced hands on the bed. Finally, after a lengthy stretch of silence, she managed to steady herself enough to talk. “Do you remember the look on your dad’s face?” she asked under her breath. “The first time that he saw the two of us together? When he figured out what was going on?”
A faint shiver rippled through Devon’s shoulders and he bowed his head.
Yes. He remembered it very well. And that wasn’t all. He remembered every slight. Every moment of neglect. Of confusion and abandonment.
He’d just never understood what they were all for.
“I always thought it was me,” he whispered. “That I’d disappointed him somehow. I never knew it was because he felt…guilty. That he’d helped enable things too terrible to live down.”
Rae threaded an arm around his shoulders, and rested her cheek against his chest. No matter what she did, she couldn’t stop replaying the whole thing in her mind. Every cutting word. Every devastating implication. The air was so thick with emotion, it had been almost hard to breathe. And even now that she was safely removed her head was still spinning dizzy with it.
“Who’s Jake?” she asked suddenly, lifting her head to look Devon in the eyes. “They kept talking about a Jake—”
“He was Julian’s father.”
Rae sat bolt upright, staring down at him in disbelief.
Talk of Julian’s past had always been scarce, and as an unspoken rule the topic was generally avoided. It wasn’t that he was exactly withholding, but every memory seemed to be a painful one and the last thing any of the friends wanted to do was cause him pain. Rae knew that his mother had died. He never spoke of his father. And over the years, it had simply become that the tightknit group of friends was the only family he’d ever had. Molly and Rae hadn’t even known that he’d been in foster care until he’d quietly confessed it in front of the Council one fateful night.
But Devon had known. Playing the image back in her mind, Rae recalled that Devon hadn’t looked remotely surprised. In fact, he rather looked like he’d been expecting it.
It wasn’t hard to believe. The four friends had grown up together, had come to love each other, had risked their lives to keep one another safe. But Devon and Julian still shared a special bond. A brotherly trust and affection that knew no limits. That no secret could ever withstand.
“His father,” she repeated, as she struggled to put two and two together. “But what does that have to do with Simon? What did he—”
“I don’t know,” Devon admitted, raking back his hair. “Jules never talks much about his family, and when he did in the past there was never any mention of Simon Kerrigan. To be honest, whatever they,” he jerked his head towards the door, “were talking about down there…I’m not even sure if Jules knows.”
No. He probably didn’t know. Her heart caught in her throat. But she knew a way he might find out…
* * *
The next morning, Rae intentionally woke up a few minutes before her alarm. She and Devon were supposed to go to the palace that morning to meet with Sarah and Philip to discuss the wedding, but there was something she had to do first. Something important that, in the chaotic days since she’d returned from Samantha’s exile, had completely slipped her mind.
She padded down the hallway on the tips of her toes, careful not to wake the sleeping house. The sky was still dark, and would be for another hour or so. With any luck, she could deliver her precious parcel without raising any unwanted questions.
After Devon had finally fallen asleep that night, she’d risen noiselessly from the bed and rifled around in her luggage until she pulled out a large purse. The very purse that, until recently, had constituted her only belonging in the world when she was living on her own in London. She reached inside and closed her fingers around what she’d been looking for. A manila folder.
It was the same folder she’d stumbled across while rifling around in the restricted section of the PC’s reference center, pretending to be a clerk so that she could steal Samantha’s address. A folder that she’d automatically assumed belonged to a certain psychic she happened to know.
It was supposed to be a treat. Something fun they would laugh at together over drinks as they told stories and flipped their way through.
Not so fun anymore.
She’d opened it up just long enough to confirm her suspicion. To see the photograph of a breathtaking man who bore an uncanny resemblance to her friend.
Sure enough J. Decker didn’t mean Julian. It meant his father.
She clutched the file safely in her hands as she stopped in front of the room at the end of the hall, rapping quietly against the door with her knuckles. “Jules,” she whispered, “you awake?”
Afraid to be caught out in the open, she took a chance and opened the door.
The room was pitch-black, but armed with Devon’s ink she was able to make out the outline of two people sleeping tenderly intertwined in the center of the bed. All at once, her righteous mission felt strangely voyeuristic, and she paused uncertainly in the doorway.
Alright, Kerrigan, this better be worth it.
“Jules?” she tried again, hoping like mad that she wouldn’t wake Angel.
There was a soft rustling sound as Julian propped himself up on an elbow. He took a second to get his bearings, then squinted into the darkness. “Rae?”
“Yeah,” she barely whispered as she nodded swiftly. “Can I talk to you for a second?”
There was a disbelieving pause.
“…Now?”
Although he couldn’t see it, she grimaced apologetically. “Yeah, now. Sorry.”
Most friends would have refused. But Julian and Rae weren’t ‘most friends.’
Without another word, he slipped his arm out from beneath Angel and lay her back down on the pillow, taking great pains not to wake her as he carefully extricated himself from the bed. His girlfriend wasn’t exactly what you’d call a morning person. And she was usually armed.
He glanced around blindly for his clothes, but gave up after a second and shuffled to the door wearing nothing but boxers and a lone sock. “What’s up?” He blinked sleepily and pushed his dark hair away from his eyes. Free from its usual ponytail it hung in loose waves down his cheekbones, spilling all the way to his shoulders.
Making him look even more like the man in the file.
Well aware that to anyone who didn’t have Devon’s ink the house was still pitch-black, Rae guided him out into the hallway. Then, worried that the hallway was too open and exposed for what she had to say, she pulled him into the bathroom instead.