CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Tarquin returned late in the evening. He was avoiding Mira, he had to admit to himself, but all he wanted to do was run back there and kiss her madly and hold her to him. But he couldn’t anymore. It wasn’t fair to her to keep this up when he couldn’t trust himself to remain committed to her; to not get sucked back under the waves of his grief which beat at him ceaselessly, still, nearly a decade later.
When he returned, he vowed to himself to apologize, to at least give her some explanation of why he wouldn’t ever be over this, of why he couldn’t ever be Mira’s. It ate at his chest, he realized, in the same way that Aurelia’s death had. The depth of the feeling overwhelmed him.
He didn’t know if it mattered. He loved Mira. It should have been simple, should have been the easiest thing in the world to love her. He should have taken her in his arms and held her and kissed her until she knew how he felt.
But he wouldn’t— couldn’t— give Mira all of him. There was always that small, necessary part that belonged to his mate.
Cyrus had summoned him to dinner, and promised information about his brothers, so despite Tarquin’s need to track down Augustus, and his wish to find Mira and— he didn’t know, he ignored both and dressed for dinner.
“You’ve heard of the Dark Ash Tribe?” asked Cyrus, once Tarquin had been served.
“Once,” he said, “but I know little about it.”
“They’re north of here,” Cyrus said, then swirled his glass and took a long drink. “Far north. Almost to the border. They’re like you.”
“Like me?” he asked.
“Dragon shifters. But— not like you. They avoid their human form as much as possible. They’re not what you might call civilized.”
“What does that have to do with—”
“Tate has joined them,” Cyrus interrupted, “and renounced his connection to the throne. I don’t know why, but there it is. You’ll find him there.”
Tarquin considered that. It was an interesting way to have disappeared, but he wasn’t entirely surprised. Tate had always been an outsider, especially compared to his twin.
“What of Demetri?” he asked, the question full of implications. “Do you know anything?”
“Very little,” said Cyrus, “but what I do know might interest you.”
Tarquin just leveled his gaze at the strange man, trying not to let his frustration at the slow drip of information show.
“Demetri is dead,” he said. “Or— Demetri was dead.” He studied Tarquin, clearly looking for his reaction.
“Dead?”
“Not anymore,” he said. “I don’t have details; I don’t know where he is.”
Tarquin was quiet while he ate, unsure what to think about that. It was a relief, certainly— he’d only gotten the first half of the news from the bearded man.
“May I ask you something personal?” Cyrus asked, interrupting the silence.
Tarquin nodded.
“You’re the youngest of your siblings, correct?” asked Cyrus, his eyebrow arching elegantly.
“Yes,” he said.
“I know your father was… aloof, but your mother loved you?”
He nodded again, wondering where the strange man was going.
“Did your mother love you less because others came before? Did she love your brothers less because you came after?”
He didn’t say anything, but… there was something there. It wasn’t something he could dismiss, it was… he didn’t know.
“Mira left,” Cyrus said. “You’ll find her at her family’s home, if that’s something that you need to know.”
Tarquin nodded and stood. “Thank you,” he said, “for the information— and your hospitality.”
He left the room quickly. He needed to find Augustus.
Mira arrived quickly, with the help of Jane’s magic. She arrived quickly, but not quickly enough.
Colin had died several hours before, though her mother’s unearthly keening was still echoing through the house when she rushed in the front door, afraid of what she would find. Jane had been by her side, ready to help as she could, but when she saw the dead man laid across the table she squeezed Mira’s shoulder sympathetically, offered a small smile, and retreated back to the carriage where she could let the family mourn in peace.
Her mother laughed frantically when she saw that Mira was home, and then hugged her so tightly that her bones ached. She savored the feeling. She tried to keep her eyes from her brother’s corpse, tried not to think of how his face was too pale and his chest was too still and his eyes would never open again. She held her mother against her and shushed her like a baby, because she didn’t know what to say.
She was rocking in place with her mother when her gaze fell on Eve. She hadn’t even seen her at first, hadn’t even thought of her, which immediately made her feel awful because if anyone should be comforted right now— it was Eve. She sat in the corner, in the shadows, her eyes locked on Colin, her face blank, and her hands protectively over her growing belly. Mira blinked at it. She had known that they were expecting a child, but the reality hadn’t hit her until just that moment. A child who would be coming soon. A child who would never know its father.
She released her mother into Ethan— her other brother’s— arms, and found her father right beside her. He pulled her in close for a hug, a more supportive action than what she’d had from her mother, and she found herself weeping quietly and pressing her face into his shirt. He told her comforting things, told her how she’d always been Colin’s favorite. Mira couldn’t take her eyes from Eve, though.
They all stood in the room for a long time, a mostly silent vigil, until the sky was dark. She didn’t know what to do, didn’t know what needed to be done, so she retreated into her old room and sat up in bed, mournful and exhausted and helpless.
The next morning, Mira didn’t know what to do, and she didn’t want to spend another minute in the house with her dead brother. She rose early and dressed in one of her old gowns she’d found hanging in her wardrobe, the skirt feeling strange around her ankles after she’d officially adopted her uniform of pants and a blouse. They weren’t sturdy though, and she only had the foresight to bring one outfit with her from Cyrus’s house, so she set them aside carefully to avoid them being ruined. She darted down the stairs, careful to avoid glancing at Colin, and in the kitchen ran straight into Eve who was seated at the kitchen table. She seemed to be in the same state she’d been the day before, and Mira wondered if she had gone to bed at all. Her eyes were dark and her face was miserable, but Mira wasn’t sure what else to expect in such a situation.
She touched the poor woman gently on the shoulder, and when Eve looked up to meet her gaze she saw nothing there… just a dark kind of blankness, and Mira tried not to let her discomfort show.
“Let me get you something to eat,” she murmured, and when the woman didn’t respond, she set herself to work making a quick breakfast of eggs and toast. She set a plate down in front of Eve, and one in front of herself, and then both of the women sat silently and didn’t touch their food.
Mira itched to leave the house but couldn’t leave the poor woman alone, and everyone else was absent, so she just sat and tried not to think about her brother’s corpse behind her. She released a sigh of relief when her father emerged from his bedroom, and didn’t even greet him before she darted out the front door and into the fresh air.
She breathed in deeply, enjoying the chilly morning air after the stuffy oppressiveness of the house, and decided to make herself useful. She mucked out the pig pen, and thought as she worked. Before she’d gone to bed her mother had wept on and on about how happy she was to have Mira home again, and her father had taken her aside and thanked her for coming to her senses and returning home. Surely they understood, though, that this was temporary; surely they knew that she’d only come home for the sake of Colin, and now would only stay until he was safely in the ground. She doubted that, though, and the thought bothered her. She didn’t want to hurt them again by leaving, especially not so soon after Colin’s death, but she couldn’t possibly stay in that house forever. She couldn’t possibly ever return to any semblance of a normal life; not after what she knew and had seen and had done.
She should be mourning, and she was, but she didn’t know if she was mourning her brother or her sudden loss of freedom. Even being here for a few days sounded like too much— the house was too small, the air was too still, the farm was too lifeless. She’d grown up and lived nearly her whole life there, but it was too small for her now.
Tarquin ran through her mind repeatedly while she worked, but she shook him away every time, guilt settling over her for even thinking of him at a time like this. She wasn’t sure if she was angry at him still, or just sad, but it was easier to just pretend that he didn’t exist. It was the very slight advantage of being somewhere so isolated from the outside world. When she’d lived here before she hadn’t known he was in the world, and if she paid attention to her work very hard then she could pretend she was the old Mira, the one who hadn’t been changed forever by a dark gaze and a searing kiss.
She returned to the house as the sun was setting, filthy and exhausted and her thoughts no more settled than they’d been when she’d begun her day. She sat through dinner and was pleased her appetite had returned, after a day of labor, but couldn’t help but notice that Eve sat in the same seat she had this morning, and didn’t reach for anything.
“We’ll bury him in the morning,” her father announced as they were nearly finished eating. Her mother broke into renewed sobs, but her father just looked at Mira disapprovingly, as if he already knew she would be leaving soon afterward. She met his gaze, not shying away from it as she often had as a younger woman. Of course she would be leaving. There was no life for her there.
As she watched Eve’s vacant expression, she wondered if there was life anywhere for the miserable mother-to-be.