CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

 

THE DAY AFTER we’d returned home, I could no longer avoid the conversation with Clay about Ava. Her temperature spiked rapidly in time with her cries. I couldn’t deny it any longer: the sunbird had definitely woken in her already.

I could see her life stretching out in front of me, and the dangers she would face struck me with an intensity that buckled my knees and flooded my eyes. Not only would everyone have to be vigilant around her as she grew to ensure she didn’t hurt herself in a fire, she would lose her gift at a terribly young age. By seven, she’d be completely unprotected. If things didn’t improve with the Rain, if she became a target when she was a teenager, she’d have no defenses.

On top of everything else, it was just too much for me to handle.

Clay found me sobbing on the floor of the nursery. I’d been trying to mask the sound of my tears so that they didn’t wake the twins, but I couldn’t find the strength to pick myself up. Almost as if the realization about Ava’s life had caused the opening of floodgates, every emotion I’d been suppressing since Clay’s attack a few days earlier pressed in on me and made it impossible for me to even breathe.

“Evie?” He fell to his knees beside me. “What’s wrong?” He watched the twins, asleep in their crib. “Are Ava and David okay?”

I nodded and then shook my head. Is anything okay?

“You’re scaring me,” he whispered before brushing a strand of wet, tear-soaked hair away from my face.

“It’s . . . it’s . . . Ava. She’s a phoenix.”

He nodded. “I figured as much, she has your coloring and the heat Dad warned me you’d have.”

The casualness in his voice was like a knife in my heart. He didn’t understand about the sunbird; this Clay knew only what his father had told him. His father didn’t know everything; he probably assumed that a phoenix had her abilities from birth to death. My Clay would have known why her heat was so terrible. Why it posed such a threat. The Clay I had to contend with had attacked us and caused her to react, and he didn’t even understand the damage he’d caused.

He wrapped his arm around my shoulder, but I pulled away from him.

“You did this!” I whisper-shouted. My voice was hoarse from the tension of my restrained sobs.

“Did what?”

“She’s not just a phoenix. The sunbird is awake.”

He gave me a blank stare. The words meant nothing to him.

“Goddamn you, Clay! You should know this.”

He wrapped his arm around me again, slightly more forcefully this time, and guided me to my feet. As soon as I was standing, I halfheartedly tried to pull away again, but he held me securely. He led me from the room and then through our house until we were side-by-side on the sofa. Then he folded his arms around me and tugged me against his chest.

“You’re right. I should know what you mean, but I don’t. If it’s something that I should worry about, then . . . well, then you need to tell me. You know I care for Ava.” His voice was low, quiet but forceful. It reverberated through his chest like a hum and forced me to absorb his words through our joined bodies rather than hearing them. “I don’t want to see either of them hurt, especially not by me.”

I fought back my tears and told him the story of the sunbird, including everything he’d learned while he was overseas.

“So the sunbird wakes for seven years?”

“And only seven years.” We’d broken apart somewhere in the middle of the story and now he was leaning forward, resting his elbows on his knees. His fingers scratched along his chin before he dropped his head between his arms and fisted his hands into his hair. “But she’ll always be a target.”

“It’s my fault, isn’t it?” he murmured with a deathly stillness in his voice. “My attack . . . it woke the sunbird?”

My lip quivered as I nodded again. “I think so.”

Instantly, he stood and crossed the room before slapping his hand on the wall with a loud bang. “Goddamn it!” he shouted.

From the nursery, two screams filled the air. Concern over Ava’s heat and the fact that she was still sharing a crib with David twisted my heart with a steely ice-grip and sent me rushing into their room in an instant. Once more, I wondered how we could separate them for their own safety. I’d tried on a few occasions after returning home, but they wouldn’t settle when they were sleeping apart from one another.

Despite my rush to reach them, the twins had already resettled themselves by the time I reached the nursery. I turned back to finish what Clay and I had started, but as I turned, I ran straight into Clay’s chest. As always, his concern over them had been just as instinctual as my own.

Clay lifted his fingers under my chin, guiding it upward so that I had to meet his gaze. “Dad has to pay for this,” he growled as he dropped his hand. “He orchestrated this whole thing. He convinced me to hurt you, but all I’ve done is hurt my family. First Ethan and now Ava.”

“He asked about you yesterday,” I murmured.

Clay’s confusion was apparent. “Dad?”

“No. Ethan. He wanted to know why you didn’t visit with me.”

Clay frowned.

“I made up an excuse, and I think he’s happy for the moment, but it won’t be long before he’ll want to see you. I’m not sure what we should do. I think he’s the person who’s most likely to recognize our deception, and I don’t know if he’ll understand.”

“He and I were fairly close, weren’t we?”

“For the last year he’s probably the person you were closest to.”

“Besides you,” he corrected thoughtfully. He really had no real way of knowing that, except what everyone had told him of our life together, but I conceded with a nod.

“You don’t think I’ll be able to hide the truth from him?” he asked.

“No, I don’t. It’s not that I doubt your acting skills; it’s just that Ethan knows things about you that even I don’t. You spent years hunting together and stuff. I’ve never really asked about most of it because it was your time.” Some of the stuff I was certain I didn’t want to know.

“Maybe we should just tell him the truth?”

The more people who knew, the bigger the risk of something going wrong, Louise knowing was bad enough, but we couldn’t put that cat back in the bag even if we wanted to. “What about the risks?”

“If you think it’s better not to tell him, we won’t. But what will he do if he comes over here and realizes something’s wrong?”

“He’ll want to know more.” There was no doubt in my mind about that. I was actually a little surprised that he hadn’t demanded more to see Clay when I’d visited him, but I thought maybe that was just because he was tired and still recovering. “And he won’t stop until he gets answers.”

“What if we let him in on the secret? How do you think he’ll react?”

I had to base my opinion on what I’d learned about Ethan over the last year or so. He was loyal to his family, as long as they were loyal to him. That simple fact made my decision. Clay was right. We had to tell Ethan. If he worked it out for himself, we’d have bigger problems. “It probably will be safer if he knows, especially if you still want to go through with your meeting.”

“Then it’s settled.”

“When Mackenzie gets back in a few days, I’ll get her to tell Ethan to come over when he’s better.”

Clay nodded and then turned to leave.

“Where are you going?”

“I need to make a phone call.”

“But you don’t know when Ethan will be available.”

“Regardless, I have to deal with Dad before he gets impatient and tries to do something he’ll regret.”

I shuddered at the cool, dangerous tone of his voice. It was a far cry from the murmurs of defense he’d issued before Louise had shown him her scars.

 

IT WAS almost a week later when Ethan called the house to speak to Clay, but I intercepted the call.

“What do you mean Clay’s out? I didn’t think he was allowed to leave?” Ethan hissed the question under his breath, which made my hopes about him being on our side solidify.

“He’s not out out, obviously,” I said, trying to think of a plausible lie on the fly. “He’s taking Ava and David for a walk around the property. We thought they could use some fresh air.”

He hummed in thought. “Can you get him to call me when he gets back then?”

“When will you be able to come visit?” I asked instead of responding to his question.

“Willow says I’ll be okay to leave in three days.”

“Why don’t you come over here for lunch when you get out then? I’m sure Willow will let you go early in the morning if she knows you’ve got a date.”

He hummed in thought. “Okay.”

“Well, we’ll see you soon then,” I said, trying to keep a smile in my voice but desperate to get off the phone before he tried to get me to agree to have Clay call him. The risk that he’d detect the very thing we wanted to tell him was too high—I didn’t want him to think we’d withheld it deliberately, but neither did I think it was the sort of thing that should be dealt with on the phone. I hung up before he could ask again.

 

DESPITE DECIDING to add a bed to the nursery on the first day we’d returned home, we somehow never seemed to get around to it. With each day that passed, it seemed to me to be more of a waste to get one, as it was one day closer to the day Clay would leave.

He never mentioned it either, so I assumed he felt the same way. For twelve nights, we’d slept in the same bed, doing what we could to avoid crossing over an imagined line down the center. At least it had been a desperate effort on my part to not make him uncomfortable during the night.

We were separate entities rotating endlessly around one another, each of us caught in the other’s orbit but both unwilling and unable to bridge the gap. I imagined it was how people desperate for a divorce must feel in the weeks and months leading up to their final tipping point.

When I woke the morning that Ethan was due to visit, Clay wasn’t carefully constrained beside me. Instead, his arm draped across my body, practically pinning me to the bed. When I stirred, he moved too.

He hummed, pressing his nose deeper into my hair and inhaling. “Morning.”

I blinked in confusion. Needing to confirm the sensation was real, I focused on his arm—still resting across my chest. It was as if nothing had changed between us, as if I wasn’t living alongside a stranger with my husband’s face.

Had I imagined everything? Had it all been a bad dream?

His sleepy eyes followed my gaze. “Oh crap, sorry,” he said, yanking his arm away and pirouetting in an almost graceful leap from the bed. The hand that he’d had tucked against my side moments earlier reached around to scrub the back of his neck. “I, uh, was just, well, you were having a nightmare last night, and I didn’t want it to wake Ava and David. I, um, didn’t know what to do, but then I remembered what you told me about your, uh, nightmares and how I was the only one who could help. I wasn’t sure how, but, well, that seemed to calm you.” He nodded his chin to indicate where I was still lying motionless on the bed.

I tried to recall my dreams of the night before, but came up blank. In fact, I would say it was the best, most peaceful, sleep I’d had in a long time.

“I hope you don’t mind.”

Honestly, I wasn’t certain whether I did mind. It was still too early for functioning thought and I could still feel the ghost of the weight of his arm across my body. It’d been nice to be held by him again, at least for a reason other than the fact that I was falling to pieces.

The rest of the morning seemed to continue in an awkward dance between us. We continued our usual rituals, and he helped me juggle the twins through feeding and naptime.

Since arriving home, and after my varied breakdowns, we’d found something of an equilibrium, but waking with Clay snuggled against my side had stirred the emotions I was working hard to fight. Instead of sinking to the depths of me where I’d finally made them settle, during that morning they all lingered just beneath the surface so that I began to question every look, every touch.

I knew I was being ridiculous, he felt nothing more for me than he had the day before. He’d said as much himself—it was only a way to soothe me to sleep so that I didn’t wake the twins with my screaming. Regardless, I couldn’t help myself from overanalyzing everything, and it was exhausting. The perfectly balanced orbit between us had been knocked ever so slightly off course, and that tiny bump had thrown the entire system off-kilter.

I needed to get control of it, and soon, or I would have my heart broken all over again.

With everything I had, I tried not to read too much into the furtive glances Clay kept sending my way, or the way he turned away the instant he knew I’d spotted him. I reminded myself over and over of his words at the court, “I don’t feel that way.” The whole morning, I repeated them to myself as a mantra, running them over and over inside my head until they lost all meaning as words.

He doesn’t feel that way. He doesn’t feel that way.

It was almost a relief when Ethan called a little later that morning to arrange the final details of his visit. Once again, I intercepted the call and we worked out the details together.

On the phone, he seemed ecstatic to get to see Clay, which wasn’t that surprising given that their last encounter had been when Clay had attacked him, and I was certain Ethan wanted to put that behind him.

After I hung up the phone, Clay walked over to me. He put his hands on my shoulders and met my gaze. “Are you okay?”

It really didn’t feel like it was just my imagination that he was going out of his way to touch me during the day. Each of his small caresses was innocent enough: his hand sliding across my arm as he passed me Ava; our fingers touching as we both reached for a diaper. It just seemed like all of them added up to combine into something more. Didn’t they?

He doesn’t feel that way, I reminded myself once more.

I glanced up and saw Clay anxiously watching me. He’d asked me a question and I had yet to answer it. “I’m fine. It’s just that Ethan will be here in an hour. Do you think we’re really ready for this?”

“What’s to get ready for? He’ll either accept it and we’ll have another ally or he won’t and the whole court will know about my lie.”

“I lied too.”

“I lied to you. You were just too caught up in the joy of having your husband back to realize that’s what it was. At least at first.” His hands instantly left my shoulders, and he turned away. “Besides, it’s too late to back out of Ethan’s visit now.” He walked off without even a backwards glance at me.

He doesn’t feel that way, I reminded myself.

 

BEFORE THE door had even fully opened, Ethan was barging through it. He wrapped his arms tightly around Clay’s shoulder. “God you scared me, bro.”

“Come in, Eth,” I said, pointing to the living room. I tried to keep my voice light and free from the stress choking me from the inside.

“Why the serious tone, Evie?”

I had obviously failed miserably. “Just come in, please?”

“Okay, but just know that you’ve got me a little bit worried. Where are the rug rats?”

“They’re taking a nap,” Clay said. “We’ve probably got about another twenty minutes or so before they wake up.”

Truthfully, we’d kept them up a little longer before putting them down with the hope we’d get a little bit of uninterrupted time with Ethan. I didn’t want Ethan to scare Ava if he didn’t react well to the news.

I led Ethan through to the living room and instructed him to sit on the sofa. I sat down beside him while Clay sat on the coffee table opposite us.

“There’s something that I haven’t been entirely honest about,” Clay started.

“We hope you’ll forgive us when you know the truth,” I continued.

“You two are really scaring me with all of this touchy-feely, beat-around-the-bush bull. It feels like it’s an intervention or some crap. Tell me that’s not what this is?”

Clay grimaced. “I don’t know you well enough to have an intervention.”

“What?” Ethan frowned at Clay and then gave me a raised eyebrow. “What do you mean you don’t know me well enough? I’m your goddamn brother.”

Clay scrubbed his neck. “I don’t remember you. I don’t remember any of my life before Alaska.”

“Bull. Shit.” Ethan looked between us again, his face flickering with conflicting emotions. “Why did you tell everyone you got your memory back?”

“That was my choice,” I said. “He saved my life when he could have killed me, and I knew he’d changed. I thought it was because he got his memory back. By the time I realized that wasn’t the case, it was too late. If we admitted the truth, Aiden would have punished him for attacking the house—for hurting you and the fae guards.”

“Maybe he deserved to be punished for those things.”

“Because losing all of my memories of my love, my family, and of my life isn’t punishment enough?” Clay snapped. “Besides it was my choice. I let Evie believe all those things because it was just easier at the time.”

“But I don’t understand,” Ethan said. “If you don’t have your memory, why are you still here? What the hell is going on?”

“He spared my life and helped deliver David.”

“She saved my life and covered for me.”

We’d both spoken at the same time and then stopped and glanced awkwardly at each other. The orbit was kicked a little further out of alignment; it hit like a physical blow to my stomach. Butterflies fluttered wildly in my gut at the look he gave me.

Ethan swung his gaze between us before chuckling. “Okay, I get it now,” he said. “You get a second chance, and the perfect excuse for freedom, and you wind up back in the arms of the same girl. Talk about whipped.”

“No, it’s not like that,” I said, desperately trying to let Clay know that I wasn’t expecting things to go back to the way they were. I was just happy for the help. If things grew from there . . .

No! He doesn’t feel that way and you’re just setting yourself up for disappointment if you try to convince yourself differently.

“It’s not,” Clay agreed, turning to face Ethan. “Once the Tribunal is done, I’ll be footloose and fancy-free again.”

“You really don’t remember anything, do you?” Ethan frowned.

Clay gave him a questioning look.

“Dude, you were never that. You’ve been wrapped up in Evie since high school. Even when I forced you into the arms of other women, plied up with alcohol,” he shot me a quick, apologetic grimace, “you ended up returning home moaning about how they’d never match up to the love of your life. I never heard the end of it. It’s why Dad was able to convince us all it was a spell.”

Clay glanced up at me, but I couldn’t meet his gaze without risking him seeing the tears that had welled in my eyes. Not at Ethan’s suggestion of Clay with other women—I’d long accepted that had been part of his life when we were apart, just like Brian and Aiden had been part of mine—but because of the reminder of how much I’d once meant to him. Of how much I’d lost.

Instead, I focused on Ethan and fought against the catch in my voice that might have given away how close to losing it I was. “We told you this because we didn’t want to lie to you. Will you please keep our secret?”

“You know all of this charade is for nothing anyway, don’t you?”

“What do you mean?” Clay asked.

“Seriously, how can you expect it to work when it’s clear neither of you know anything about a Tribunal?” Ethan asked, his words reminding me of Louise’s request that had slipped my mind in the madness.