Liam threw a hand up. “Please tell me you aren’t complaining because you’re embarrassed to sing in front of us. Can you please swallow your pride and dignity long enough to save us from the madman?”
I was being a lousy shit. I sighed. “I’m sorry,” I said, though it came out petulant. “I’ll try.”
20
Liam and Garret wandered a little way along the wall while I stood before one of the openings. I stared at the place my mother had lived before I ruined it all for her.
The song fell from my lips before I could think about it.
“Codail a mhuirnín, codail a stor
Dún do shúile
Gheobhair is gheobhair, o gheobhair a pháiste
Codail a stóirín go ciúin is go sámh”
“There!” Garret pointed at the opening second from the left. “There’s light coming out.”
“Was that so hard?” Liam grumbled as he hastened past me.
“What’s your problem?”
“Stop!” Garret pushed back the hood of his black cloak and stopped in front of us. He turned and held his hands up. “Would you two just kiss and makeup already. This day has been hard enough without the two of you chewing at each other like a pair of pissed off trolls.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Trolls don’t exist. Right?”
Garret groaned and looked away for a moment before he set his ice blue eyes back on me. “Are you changing the subject?”
I drew in a giant breath, huffed it out. “Look, I’m sorry I’m angry, and I’m sorry I took it out on you. Let’s get inside. I promise I’ll shut up if he does.” I jabbed a thumb toward Liam.
“That’d be a miracle I’d like to see,” Liam muttered.
I scowled at him. “I heard that.”
“Enough!” Garret shoved fingers into his hair. “Goddess, I’m starting to wonder who’s the grown-up here.”
Liam nodded. “Fine.”
“Fine,” I agreed.
Garret shook his head, turned and disappeared into the lit opening in the granite. Liam gave a bow and a dramatic sweep of his arm to usher me inside.
“Tits before dicks.” I strode past him.
He followed me in, laughed as though trying to keep some ugly words inside his mouth. Just having him close soothed my soul, so why did I keep pushing him away? Because he betrayed me. Because he’s of Parthalan’s people, that’s why.
I expected cooler, damper air inside the cave. Instead, I found comforting warmth. The walls were smooth instead of bumpy, and everything gleamed as if someone had recently polished it from floor to ceiling.
Garret walked ahead of me, jumping every time he kicked a pebble or my heels made a louder click than the one before. A halo of dark blond hair stood out all over his head. The sight of him reminded me of Rourke. Hopefully nobody had found him wherever Donovan had chained him. I shivered despite the warmth.
The light in the cave never changed, never allowed us to catch up and never left us behind. We followed it in silence until the tunnel opened into a wide lake. The rock ceiling hovered only a few feet above the water. Crouching down, we could see the tiny light on the far side. It had to be at least a mile across.
Liam stepped up beside me. “What now?”
“I guess we swim.” I unwrapped the bandages from my hand. “Why do you suppose they’d put something like this here?”
“It’s a test for anyone who tries to cross. If the gateway doesn’t deem you worthy to enter, the ceiling probably comes down and drowns you.”
Garret made a tiny sound. The color drained out of his cheeks, and he stared at the water as if it might eat him.
“Let me guess,” I said. “You can’t swim?”
He shook his head, his gaze never leaving the lake. “I don’t like the water.”
I went to him and took his clammy hand. My anger drained away in the face of my brother’s terror. My brother, all I have left of my family. He was mine to protect, and I would do it, so help me.
“It’s okay.” I gripped his shoulder with my hand. “I can swim really well. I’ll lay on my back in the water, and you’ll lay in front of me. I’ll pull you along. All you have to do is stay limp, and we’ll be okay.”
“Maybe I should take him.” Liam met my eyes. A moment later, he shook his head. “Never mind.” He opened the button of his jeans.
My eyes drank him in before I gave myself a mental slap. “Why are you undressing again?”
“I’m not swimming in my jeans.” He turned to face me as he shoved them down his hips. “You didn’t seem to mind while you treated my body like an amusement park the other night.” He flashed a defiant grin and dove into the water before I came up with a good retort.
“Why is he so infuriating?” I peeled off the ridiculous boots, then the garter and hose. I kept on what little I had left.
Garret shrugged as he dropped his cloak. “I think what’s happening is just getting to all of us.”
“I don’t know. Maybe you’re right. Still, it makes me wonder why the Goddess played her little match-up game with us.”
“She must have had a good reason.” He dropped his black pants and stood in a pair of blue boxers, rubbing his hands along spindly arms.
If she had a good reason, I’d like to have heard it. So something amazing happened when we were together. It didn’t mean we were compatible life mates.
I walked into the water and turned around, savoring the cold against my warm skin. It didn’t smell fishy the way normal lakes did, but sweet and soothing like honey.
Garret stared down at me. His hands shook.
“It’ll be ok, little brother. I promise I won’t let you drown.”
He flashed that innocent grin I saw that first night in the shed. “You give your oath?”
I nodded. “I do. Now come on, let’s get this over with.”
After testing the water with his toes, Garret walked in and leapt at me. He wrapped his arms around me, trembling. His teeth chattered.
I rubbed my hands up and down his back as I held him. “Hush now, it’ll be all right. You need to listen to me, or you’ll drown us both. I’m going to turn you around now, and you need to relax. You’ll float better that way.”
“Don’t let me sink, please, please, please,” he whispered with his eyes closed.
As I spun him, I began to sing again. He leaned against me. I looped my arm around his chest and tucked my hand under his left arm. He tensed and squeaked when I pushed off from the bottom, then relaxed against me.
“You told me your mother sang like a frog with a cold,” I said when I tired of singing.
“That part was a lie, but I do remember her scent. Do you look like her?”
“So they tell me. I’m sorry you never knew her. She was … everything to me. I would have saved her if I could.” A few tears escaped and trailed down the sides of my face.
Garret nodded. “Yeah, I know. I can’t believe I have a sister.” I gave him a squeeze because my voice would have betrayed me.
It took a long time with only my legs and one arm to move two of us, but after a few rest breaks along the way, we made it to the other side.
Liam offered his hand to Garret, then to me. I stared at it for a moment before I took it and climbed out of the water. I ignored the warmth travelling up my arm.
“Thanks.” I averted my eyes from the tight lines of his nude body and wrapped my arms around myself so my hands wouldn’t reach out for him. God, why do I feel this way? “Garret, can you give us a minute?”
He stared at me for a moment, looking like a half drowned cat. With a grin, he nodded, turned and followed after the light. The sand gradually turned to grass, and in the distance, a green meadow stretched for miles.
“I know I’m being an ass.” I dug a toe into the sandy shore.
“Yes,” Liam said. “You are, but so am I. Sometimes I forget what your life’s been like.”
I shook my head. “I’m so angry, it’s choking me. It’s comin
g out at you, and I can’t seem to help it.” I gave a humorless laugh. “Not that I’m trying to excuse it. I’m still furious that you didn’t at least give me a chance, but thank you for saving my brother … and me. You didn’t have to.”
A zap of electricity sang down my arm when his hand landed on my bare shoulder. I leapt away and turned to face him. When my gaze traveled down his nude body, ribbons of water still trickling down his chest from his wet hair, I put my hand over my eyes.
“Don’t shut me out. Not now. Touch me. Find something good out of this dark day.”
I held my hand up until I could speak without my voice cracking. “Feeling what I do when you touch me … it’s a betrayal to them. They’re dead, my entire family except for Garret, and it’s my fault. I shouldn’t feel anything good.”
I uncovered my eyes but forced them to his face.
He nodded. “None of this is your fault.”
“How can I let myself care for anyone when he’ll just take them away from me?” I clenched my teeth. I will not cry.
“I’m not sure if I understand, but I’ll keep my distance until you’ve had some time. But don’t go off on me if I forget. I want to touch you as badly as you want to touch me.”
I drew in short breaths to calm my aching lungs. “How come sometimes I can feel you in my head, and other times I can’t? It’s as if a door opens between us.”
“I can hold you out. I knew you were overwhelmed, and I didn’t want to add to it.”
I nodded. Part of me wanted to see a future with him, but the logical side of me knew it was just a fairytale. He’d be safer if he wasn’t around me. I wouldn’t give Parthalan another target he could use to get to me. “For now, can you just shut up while we find Garret?”
He smiled, warming me down to my toes. “I think I can handle that.”
We walked along the grass toward the meadow—Garret a small speck in the distance. “The shifting, did that happen after we …” I made an awkward gesture between us with my hand.
“Yeah. Taking an animal form is an Unseelie cumhacht. Scared the hell out of me, too. When you dove out the window that night at the farm, I went out the front door after you. I was so confused and scared of what Parthalan might do. And then I felt something growing inside me too fast like it would burst out of my skin if I didn’t stop it. I ran out behind the barn and went down like a sack of shit. God, it hurt so much. Every bone in my body shattered and remade itself. I didn’t know what had happened until I moved my arm and saw a wing. Thought I’d lost my damn mind.”
“And the colors I saw when you came back to get me in the cellar, that was you changing back?”
“Shifting uses a lot of Light. When I shift back, the Light is released as pure energy. When I could look at it without getting blinded … it’s beautiful.”
“You must have already started to change before you came through the window. You’re huge as an owl. You would have taken out half of the house.”
“Yeah, I started a little too soon, actually. Almost ploughed into the ground head first, but I managed to hold the last of my feathers until the last second.”
I grinned as I pictured that, but it faded. “Something happened when I left you on the road last night. When I thought of you …” I couldn’t assemble the words in my head to sound anything other than insane.
“What?” He stopped and stood in front of me. “Did the Goddess grant you a gift?”
“I don’t know. I thought of you, and … I think I was using the trees like an extended set of senses. I could hear the flapping of your wings, could see glimpses of your white feathers, could smell the forest and feel the dampness in the air, but it was fleeting.”
Liam stood, blinking at me, his face held tight in concentration. “Sight of the Goddess.”
My brows crowded down over my eyes. “What does that mean?”
“It’s a Seelie legend. If the Goddess ever deemed a fae worthy, she would lend her earthly senses to aid them. You can think of any anyone in the world, and you can see where they are and maybe even communicate with them. Shit, that’s amazing.”
“I called out to you and saw yellow eyes—your owl eyes. You looked up as if you could hear me.”
“That was you? I thought I heard a voice in the wind, but I decided I must have been hearing things.”
“So you did hear me.” I didn’t know what else to say. I wanted to lie down, go to sleep and wake up to find my life a sick joke, or a dream. Worse, I wanted Liam to lie down with me.
We found Garret standing in the middle of a green meadow. Tiny white star-shaped flowers spread across the lush expanse like confetti on a jade carpet. The scent of rain mingled with a gentle breeze, and not a cloud scarred the blue sky overhead. If I didn’t know we were deep inside a cave, I would have said we stood outside. The silence had a hollow, almost musical quality to it as if the air hummed in a frequency I couldn’t quite hear, but the vibrations registered in my bones. I’d hoped for some degree of familiarity, and although the meadow was beautiful, it sparked nothing more than awe.
Before us stood a broad oak door. Nothing held it up—no walls, frame, hinges or strings.
My brother turned to us and shrugged. “There’s no handle or anything.”
Liam and I looked at one another. “Now what?”
21
Liam passed a hand under the door and stretched to reach up the sides. If fae glamour hid the construction holding it up, touch should reveal it—or so he’d told me when I’d interrogated him.
I walked a tight circle around the door for the fifth time but found nothing new. A narrow mother-of-pearl inlay decorated the arched top and continued down the perimeter two inches from the edge of the door. The wood had been stained a dark honey color, and an emblem of an eye had been carved into the center of the single raised panel.
Garret sat cross-legged in the grass, elbows on his knees, staring at the oak slab.
“I’m going to touch it,” I said.
“No. I told you, we don’t know what might happen.” Liam came to stand beside me, still nude.
All the while, I fidgeted in the corset and thong, wishing I had pockets. I did my best to keep my gaze glued to his face, but my eyes kept wandering back to his enticing landscape.
“We can’t risk your safety,” Liam continued, “and if Garret or I touch it, it’ll certainly do something unpleasant to us because we’re Unseelie.”
My eyes narrowed as I edged closer to him. “What do you think it’ll do to me?”
“I don’t know. That’s the problem.” He stood in front of the door, his arms straight at his sides, his intense eyes fixed on me.
“So, what do you suggest? Stand here and stare at it?” On one hand, I wanted Dun Bray to fill me with a sense of home and to find others like me after believing I was alone for so long. On the other hand, I wanted to find nothing and prove my mother hadn’t lied to me, that I wasn’t the queen of the Seelie. I didn’t want to be fae, and I certainly wasn’t queen material. I didn’t know what I wanted. Peace might have been enough—to go a day without seeing something horrible, to have the comfort of Liam’s body wrapped around me one more time and the insane pleasure we shared that night. I groaned internally. Stop it! Not going to happen. Mind on task, Lila. Mind on task.
The longer I thought about what I’d find beyond the door, the more my mind conjured images of corpse-strewn streets and ruined buildings. Somehow, I needed to get Liam away from that door before I convinced myself all of my mother’s people were dead. If I lived to kill Parthalan, I vowed to take some acting classes.
Wincing, I pressed my fingers to my temples.
“What’s wrong?” Liam ran forward, but I turned away from him. When he came around in front of me, I whirled around and rushed for the door. I placed my hands against the smooth finish, just barely touching until I determined it wouldn’t eat me like the last one I’d leaned against. My heart fluttered.
“Goddamn it.” Liam appeared on one sid
e of me, jaw flexed and eyes narrowed. Garret stepped up on my other side but not too close.
“It just feels like a door.” Disappointment tainted my voice.
Liam turned and uttered a curse. When he returned his focus to me, he said, “Fine, you’re right. Push it open then.” The unease tucked behind his dirty look seeped out. I wanted to ask what he thought we’d find on the other side, but I didn’t want him to know the extent of my confusion.
I hesitated for a second before I pushed hard. When it didn’t budge, I hung my head. “I guess I’m not welcome here after all.” I settled my gaze on Liam, afraid to take my hands away as if that would make my rejection final.
Liam reached for me but stopped short and dropped his hand. The deep blue of his eyes drew me in, but I couldn’t take the intensity in them. To stare at them too long would weaken my resolve on the distance I needed to keep. I averted my eyes back to the door.
“We’ll figure it out, the three of us,” he said. “Don’t give up on me now.”
Maybe my rejection from Dun Bray was a sign.
I screamed as pain tore through both of my hands. Liam grabbed my wrists and yanked me away from the door. Wooden spikes had sprung out from the surface in the exact place where my palms and fingers had been. My blood ran down the surface like ruby tears before disappearing into the wood.
None of us said anything, only gaped as the door groaned and swung open.
I tugged against Liam’s grip when pleasure spiraled up my bones.
He tightened his hold, sapphire eyes boring into me.
“I’m fine!”
With a groan, he released me. “I won’t touch you, but hold them up so I can look.”
“Why did it do that?” Garret kept his gaze fixed to the open door.
“It was tasting her blood.” Liam traced each of the puncture wounds on my hands. “The Seelie probably sealed it, and only the true queen can open it … with a small sacrifice.” He glanced at Garret. “I need your shorts.”
“What? I’m not giving you my shorts.” On any other day, the mouth hanging open, eyes stretched in horror as if he’d been asked to dance naked in front of a bunch of teenage girls might have made me laugh.
The Glass Man Page 17