2
A deep red stain splashed across the dark, hardwood floor and crept toward the rich, espresso-coloured cabinets with deadly intent. The walls were nearly covered in the crimson hue, and witchlight from an over-turned lamp gleamed up from where it had fallen to cast a shining halo along the blackened, turn-of-the-century cast-iron stove.
"Aww, man!" Aspen Herondale groaned as the growing puddle of paint spread across the floor of the kitchen in Morgenstern Manor.
Hunter Lightwood poked his head through the doorway to the formal dining room and sighed dramatically. "Seriously, Asp? Again?" He rooted through a half-empty, plastic garbage bag in the corner to see if the rags from the last spill were still salvageable. With the much-oppressed air of a parabatai who was rapidly acquiring enough cleaning experience to impress even his formidable Jewish grandmother, he knelt down and started trying to mitigate the damage.
Hunter looked up at where his best friend was desperately scrubbing at the red smear down the right leg of her jeans with a rag from her back pocket and he snorted. "Do you think anyone has ever tested to see if like, a Sure-Strike rune or something can make you better at painting?"
Aspen narrowed her deep gold eyes at him dangerously and tossed her hair back huffily. "I don't know. Do you think anyone has ever tested to see if like, a Quietude rune or something can make you better at shutting up?"
"Yeah," he replied, sticking his tongue out. "You know, I think that's literally what it does, if I'm not mistaken."
She balled up the cloth and threw it her parabatai. Annoyingly, he caught it out of the air in one quick motion. "Just help me clean this up before Rayce sees," she hissed.
"Oh, for the love of Raziel," Hunter swore as he stuffed the scrap into the garbage bag behind him. "Rayce this, and Rayce that," he grumbled. "He. Is. Your. Cousin. Your married cousin."
Aspen hopped down off the step-ladder, temporarily giving up on her jeans, and lunged forward in the blink of an eye to tackle Hunter sideways. They rolled twice before coming to a stop, both teenagers now wearing red-stained tank tops, and she pulled his arms up behind his back almost painfully as she stubbornly sat on his tailbone.
"Yeah, okay there, Hunter," she sang gloatingly as he struggled to free himself. "Like you're not all, 'Oooooh, Sera! Sure, Sera!' all the time."
"Not my cousin," he grunted into the floor. It had been easy to forget Aspen's natural strength and speed while they had both been weakened by the advent of the near-fatal parabatai bond, but she had bounced back even faster than he had.
"She's still married," she reminded him sweetly as she she tugged threateningly on his arms.
"I'm just trying to be nice," he protested, panting. Raziel, she's going to break my arm if she keeps this up. How much of this is from her, and how much of this is from me? "Sera kind of saved our lives, if you remember."
The edges of the permanent Strength rune from Sera across his back were just visible under the thin shirt he was wearing in the early-August heat. The material clung damply to him with a mixture of fresh paint and sweat from the stuffy daytime heat of the manor.
"Yeah, I remember," Aspen said quietly, sobered by the memories of Hunter's pale face in the weak light of Helen and Aline's bedroom lamp on Wrangel Island. She eased her grip on him slightly.
"Is everything okay in here?" Rayce asked from the door that led to the main hall. A half-smile crept up the left side of his face as he took note of the third can of paint that day on its side and his cousin sitting broodingly on her best friend.
Aspen yelped something unprintable in surprise and stood up in a hurry, her face as red as the walls around her as she stammered an apology and promised to clean it up right away.
Rayce waved off her panic. "Don't worry, cousin. It's no use crying over spilled... paint." He winked mischievously and disappeared back around the corner, reassured that no disaster had befallen the teenagers.
"Again," Hunter muttered mutinously as he pushed himself back up to his feet and reached for another rag.
In the drawing room off to the left of the main foyer, Sera lifted another deep green, crushed velvet cushion off the couch and beat some of the residual dust off it with a sigh. White sheets had protected most of the furniture when they had come to open the place up a few days ago, but she was starting to have serious doubts that the manor would ever be dust-free. It seemed impossible to imagine after decades of neglect.
She turned her head as Rayce returned and felt her breath hitch in her chest. It was still hard to believe that she had gotten him back. Hell, it's still hard to believe that I got him, period. She glanced down at where the Morgenstern family ring still rested on her left hand. According to Shadowhunter customs, she should have returned it to him once they had wed, but she hadn't really gotten around to it. Things had gotten a bit... hectic...
"Is everything okay" Sera asked, forcing the image of a dead Faerie's head in a box out of her mind. Definitely not sending a thank-you card for that one.
"That depends on how you feel about having a red floor in the kitchen," Rayce dead-panned. He had been spending some time with Zeke since the wedding, and Sera had to admit that she approved of the effect it was having on her husband. It seemed to be keeping him grounded, and she felt her worry about him slipping back into the darkness of the Hunt fade with each passing day. Mark's tormented face flickered in her mind for a moment before she pushed that thought away, too.
Sighing, she pushed her hand back through her gold and platinum hair and closed her eyes. "Kids."
Rayce slipped around behind her and lowered his face until he could brush his lips along her neck as he laced his fingers with hers and wrapped them around her waist, brushing his thumbs across her still-flat abdomen. "It'll be our turn soon enough," he reminded her gently.
"Yeah... still freaking out about that," she mumbled as her brain struggled to function when his kisses trailed down along the curve of her shoulder and she let herself lean back into his embrace.
He paused and she twisted to look up at him. His brow was furrowed in confusion.
"Aren't you happy about it?"
Sera turned in the circle of his arms and hooked her index fingers into the belt loops at the front of his jeans, confidently pulling him closer. "I am," she insisted, unsure of whether she was trying to convince herself or her husband at this point. "It's just... a few weeks ago, I was single. Now I'm married and going to have kids."
"Me too," he whispered, cupping her face gently and turning it up so that he could kiss her slowly. He parted her lips with his, exploring softly with the tip of his tongue even as he ran his hands up her back wonderingly.
Sera inhaled deeply, savouring the moment for another few seconds before reaching up and laying her hand on his chest to push him back a little. "You won't be the one puking their guts out," she said with a dark look.
He lifted her hand to his mouth and kissed her fingertips as a smile played across his lips. "But I'll be waiting happily at your side to hold your hair back for you," he said cheerfully, dodging a punch from her free hand that was aimed at his side. He folded his arms around her and drew her against his chest. "We're in this together."
Sera felt her throat tighten and her eyes stung with tears. She sniffed and tilted her head back to look up at the ceiling in annoyance. "If these goddamn pregnancy hormones could just not do this to me, that would be great," she sighed, exasperated. "I feel like I need to go kill something. Violently. Before I turn into a soggy mess."
"Did somebody say 'kill something violently'?" Jace asked as he barged into the drawing room with a heavy box in his arms. He shifted the load to his hip and winked at Sera. "You really should go on patrol. I still remember when Clary and Izzy were pregnant with the kids – even I stayed out of their way."
Rayce ducked his head, laughing, but Sera glared at him dangerously through slitted eyes. "Were you just waiting in the hall for a good entrance line?"
The older Shadowhunter grinned in response. "Honestly, I was going to come in when you mentioned puking your guts out, but I figured I would wait a bit longer and see if something better came up."
"Mmhmm," Sera muttered under her breath. "And exactly what do you want me to go out hunting? I thought we fixed that."
"So far, so good," he said defensively. "The research team left for Wrangel Island two days ago to start testing the wards. Aline refused to leave until she had gotten her claws on Magnus and forced him to return all of their furniture. He's been hard to find since-"
A crash from the kitchen rattled along the floorboards and all three Shadowhunters turned their heads in unison.
"What was that?" Jace asked from a slight crouch despite the box in his arms.
"Probably red cupboards," Rayce answered helpfully with a faint smile.
Jace rolled his eyes and went into dad-mode. "I'll go." He twisted sideways as he left, narrowly avoiding a collision with his parabatai as he turned the corner.
"Consul?" Sera greeted him, surprised on several levels. She hadn't seen him since the wedding, and the dark shadow of a beard matched the circles under his eyes. He looked exhausted. "Are you okay?"
Alec waved off her concern. "I'm fine. You know how it is, going back to work after a vacation. You forget how hard you were working yourself."
She exchanged a guilty look with Rayce and he shrugged apologetically. "Never had a job," the half-Faerie prince admitted.
"Me either… and your definition of a vacation needs a serious readjustment," Sera added.
Alec's eyes clouded over with concern and he looked up unconsciously. "Then all of this... I should have thought, should have realized." He rubbed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose as he added one more thing to his never-ending list of things to do. "I'll get the paperwork moving so that you can both start drawing your salaries from the Clave. I didn't even think about how you would afford the restorations for all of-"
Sera grinned unexpectedly. "You need to chill. There are actually some benefits to my gift that don't end up with me getting locked up under Alicante. I've got a pretty nice fortune saved up, to be quite honest..." She saw Alec's brows turn downward as he frowned. "What?"
He cleared his throat. "Are you aware that the law requires a tithe to be paid on all income generated by Shadowhunters operating in the Mundane world?"
Sera felt her stomach lurch, and it had nothing to do with the early stages of her pregnancy. Faintly green, she put on the ghost of a smile. "Um... I guess that depends on whether or not we're on or off the record right now."
A light shone in Alec's eyes for a moment. "And I suppose that would depend on whether or not you're guilty of tax evasion."
"By the Angel," Sera sighed dramatically as she threw her forearm across her eyes and collapsed backwards onto the couch in a puff of dust. Rayce looked utterly lost as his deep green eyes shifted between his wife and the Consul. "It's official," she announced. "The newest Morgenstern is a white-collar criminal, through and through. Blood calls to blood. I'm a villain. And now you're here to cart me off." She closed her eyes and held out her wrists in resignation.
The Consul laughed quietly and felt a bit of the weight he had been carrying on his shoulders for the last week lift. After everything she's been through... His eyes shifted to where Rayce was still standing in bewilderment. After everything both of them have been through... Still... The real reason behind his visit gnawed at him.
"We'll discuss it later," he assured her.
Almost too quietly to hear, he heard her say, "We will?" He chose to leave it alone and buy a bit of time before he had to deal with what he had been uncovering. "I came to tell you that three days ago, Executor Rosales agreed to assign a Centurion task force to search for any trace of the former Hunters."
Rayce's head snapped up at the mention of the Hunt. "Any sign of my brother?"
"Nothing yet," Alec said grimly
Rayce breathed shallowly and felt memories, his own and Gwyn's, of those feral faces rise in his mind. What he could access through his predecessor's recollections had grown more faint and dim since he had been freed, but they were still there, lurking below the surface in darkness, waiting. Kieran's glittering eyes flashed across his vision for a moment and he felt a chill as he contemplated what would happen between them when they fought for a third time. The last time, he vowed to himself.
"Any of the others?" He forced himself to ask, banishing the conniving Faerie from his thoughts. "Or the Unseelie?"
Alec shook his head and repeated gently, "Nothing yet." He glanced sideways at Sera. "If you'll forgive me, Rayce, I would like to speak to Sera in private for a moment."
"Of course, Consul," he answered smoothly, bowing out of old habit and neatly stepping away to leave them alone in the drawing room. Although he could move silently when he chose, he let them hear his footsteps fade down the hall as he went to check on whatever new disaster was waiting for him in the kitchen.
Sera swallowed nervously. This can't be good. What am I in trouble for? Guilty thoughts ran rampant through her mind as her mnemosyne rune reminded her with stunning clarity of all the laws she had broken in recent weeks. Okay, fine, she huffed inwardly, what am I not in trouble for?
"I kind of thought the tax thing would wait a bit longer," she ventured halfheartedly.
Alec's mouth tightened into a thin line and any suggestion that he was going to continue with the light banter from earlier vanished from his face. "I didn't come to talk about that, Sera. I wanted to ask you a few questions about some things that haven't been adding up."
Shit. Sera kept her mouth shut.
"Executor Rosales had some very unfortunate news to report from his team's initial findings during their search for stray Hunters. Are you familiar with a place in Prague called the Bone Chandelier?"
Even her best poker face wasn't going to help her now, and she felt the sinking feeling in her gut drop lower as the Consul continued.
"Some members of the Wild Hunt have been known to show themselves in the popular Downworlder haunt, and Diego felt that they might fall back into old habits once they were released. He was dismayed to find that his request for a meeting with the establishment's long-time owner, Andrej, could not be accommodated, as the ancient vampire had recently been killed by a patron."
Sera could almost smell the dusky, primal, distinctly masculine scent of Andrej again, feel his breath on her neck as the hallucinogen had cloaked him in Rayce's appearance. Shame flooded through her as she remembered her breathless urgency, remembered pulling him closer until he had bitten down and unleashed a torrent of desire that had been amplified by the club's most popular drug. The vampire's hazel eyes had stared back at her in a daze once the illusion had been counteracted with a mouthful of antidote.
What are you? The vampire had asked in a daze from the taste of her blood.
A murderess, she answered him now, feeling the judgement in the Consul's eyes. A liar, she whispered inside as she thought about everything she had been concealing from Rayce.
Selfish, Everett's voice hissed in her mind.
"The most curious part came up when Diego used a favour to speak to a bartender who recalled a beautiful Faerie woman who paid a ridiculous sum for the very last meeting Andrej ever had. A Faerie who, he said, didn't smell like a Faerie at all." He watched her with those penetrating blue eyes, searching for a reaction. When she remained silent, he changed his tack.
"In my own private investigation into what we may expect from the Unseelie Court following the death of their King, I've encountered a great number of creatively twisted answers from our friend Cassius - at least, when I've been able to find him." The Greater Faerie had spent a very limited amount of time in Idris, mostly to stay near Zeke while the ex-Shadowhunter had been spending time with Rayce. Cassius had chosen to remain within the borders of Brocelind Forest to avoid being spotted by any errant Nephilim, but Sera had a sneaking suspicion that the Consul's parabatai would have been more than equal to the task of finding the strange Faerie if asked.
"Ezekiel says even less, and I can hardly compel him to break his silence. He was expelled from the Clave over forty years ago, even if I have a hard time wrapping my head around that concept when he looks the same age as Rayce. But I get the feeling," Alec said with an edge in his voice, "that there's something they aren't telling me about the circumstances surrounding the King's sudden death."
Sera turned her eyes down to study the grain of the dark hardwood floor under her feet. Murderess. Liar. Selfish. She felt the words like brands inside her.
"Before the wedding last week," Alec pressed on, "the Portal map log in the Gard recorded an entry that originated from my sister's home in Alicante and terminated in Santa Monica. Not long after, a second entry reported an error – 'destination not found'. And then a third entry from Santa Monica back to Alicante."
That fucking map, Sera swore, even as she mentally banged her head against a wall for once again forgetting Clary's warning that she had to be careful with her usage of Portals.
"Not only as someone who may have once called him a friend, but also in my capactity as Consul, I know where Mark Blackthorn has been hidden for all these years. So do you. What happened that night, Sera? We were all staying with Simon and Isabelle. You could have asked anyone for help, even Rayce, but I don't think you did. What are you hiding from him?"
She squeezed her eyes shut. This was far worse than anything she had felt while testifying against Everett with Maellartach clenched in her hand. The Consul's tone... he hadn't raised his voice, hadn't thrown a shred of outright accusation at her. He just sounded... disappointed.
"Kieran," she said quietly. She looked up and read the recognition written across the Consul's features. It was a name that he would know from what had happened with all of those damn Blackthorns twenty years ago. "I saw him go after Mark in a dream. He wanted... he..." she trailed off, wondering how much of the tale was really hers to tell, how much the Consul really knew about what had been between the two Hunters both before and after Mark's Unbinding. "I owed Mark, owed him for the pain I caused by tracking him down and asking him to dredge up memories that he wanted to keep buried." She had the good grace to look ashamed. "I had already broken the peace of the new life he had built with his family – I just wanted to stop anyone else from hurting him." Her eyes pleaded with the Consul to understood her desperate need to protect the vulnerable Shadowhunter who had endured so much suffering.
"And then?" Alec's face gave no sign one way or another if he was swayed by the emotion in her voice.
"I killed that Faerie bastard," Sera confessed in a whisper, as if saying it quietly could lessen the harshness of the truth. "I used a Portal to dump his body where it wouldn't be found. I didn't tell Rayce... the two of them have a... history." She saw a flash from the dream that had started it all, saw the hurt in the young Faerie Knight's eyes as the Hunter had screamed at him that he was not a Shadowhunter while Gwyn had dragged the heartbroken Unseelie away. She saw the curling blue and black snake in another dream, watched as it hissed in Rayce's ear and lured him into taking on the mantle of the Hunt. Something in Alec's face told her that her answer wasn't good enough, and she dropped her head in humiliation. "I didn't want him to know that I... what I had... what I am."
Murderess. Liar. Selfish.
The Consul didn't give an inch. "The others?"
Heat rushed to her face and was promptly drained away when her mnemosyne rune showed her the sickly matrix of dark lines bleeding away from the burning runes etched into the Unseelie King's flesh. Murderess.
"Also me." She kept her answer short and prayed that he didn't probe deeper.
Liar.
Alec exhaled and lifted a hand to scrub across the shaded growth of stubble across his jaw. He looked so tired. And it was no wonder, if this is what he had been dealing with all week. Because of me. She would be Stripped, if not executed outright, if she admitted to using Marks to torture and Turn a Faerie into a Forsaken.
Selfish.
"You can't just kill your way through everything, Sera," Alec admonished her softly, moving forward to close the distance between them. "And that's coming from someone who's spent a lifetime bonded to a guy who might actually have 'Kill your way through everything' tattooed on his ass." She couldn't bring herself to match the tiny smile that lifted the corner of the Consul's mouth, and then it was gone.
"Andrej was a very law-abiding Downworlder, and he successfully managed the Bone Chandelier for decades. Prague is one of the premiere cities in the world for the level of cooperation within its Downworld, thanks in no small part to the way that club was run by him. Even New York isn't on par with what Prague has. The only piece of good news is that you at least had the sense to disguise yourself as Fey." He rubbed at his temple for a moment. "At least they aren't clambering for Nephilim blood, though it might cause trouble for what I'm planning later if they don't settle down."
Remorse burned through Sera and her eyes stung. She kept her voice low, but winced when it cracked anyway from the lump in her throat. "Are you... are you going to arrest me?"
"Sera," he sighed. "How can I, after what you did on Wrangel Island? You've put me in a hell of a spot. 'Sed lex dura lex' be damned. The only way I'm going to be able to sleep at night is if I tell myself that you weren't part of the Clave when you did those things, not truly."
His face grew even more serious as he ran his fingers back through his messy black hair. "If you're going to live here, going to start a life here, going to start a family here, you can't hold yourself above the law. You're one of us now – act like it. Other Morgensterns have forgotten that in the past, and I don't want you to fall into the same trap."
She finally felt the tears that had been threatening to fall go streaking down her face. Fucking pregnancy hormones.
Seeing her tears, Alec reflexively reached out to pull her into a hug and temporarily set aside the part of him that was Consul.
"Start fresh, Sera," he said quietly. He felt her face press into his chest as she nodded.
Neither of them heard the light footsteps that would have marked Clary's arrival, so both of them jumped when her voice called from the doorway, "Am I interrupting something?"
"Not at all," Alec replied lightly. He turned to block Clary's view as Sera surreptitiously swiped her hands across her cheeks. "I have to get back, anyway."
Clary looked at him and raised her eyebrows over the heap of bottles and rags in the box she was carrying. "Magnus has been gone for four days and you already look like this?" She clucked her tongue. "You need to take better care of yourself. If Izzy sees you like that, she'll lock you in your room."
"The perils of temporarily living under my sister's roof," Alec lamented. "Maybe I should just start sleeping in my office."
"Don't you dare. I'll set Max and Rafe on you if I have to," Clary threatened.
"I'm sure they're very busy," Alec said hastily under his breath as he squeezed by the diminutive Shadowhunter and made a break for the front door.
Clary's clear green gaze narrowed as she watched him disappear and then she looked back at Sera, discreetly choosing not to see the younger woman's slightly reddened eyes and the tear tracks that had survived her hasty swipe. She hefted the box and gave it a bit of a shake. "I figured you guys might need some of this stuff with Aspen on the loose."
Sera thought she recognized a few cleaning products, possibly even some paint remover if she was lucky. Maybe we won't have red floors or cabinets.
"I guess I should really apologize," Clary said a bit more seriously than Sera thought was warranted.
"It's just paint," Sera said dismissively.
"No, I mean for not showing you the birth control rune when I shared Portalling."
Sera's mouth fell open; she couldn't help it. "What?"
"Oh, come on," Clary huffed. "You have to be a tiny bit nervous by now. I was your age the first time Jace asked me to marry him, and I can't even imagine what I would have been feeling if I'd been pregnant."
"The first time?" Sera asked incredulously. She was more than a little surprised to hear anyone else voice this side of the picture. Everyone else had just congratulated her and Rayce like it was the most natural thing in the world to meet, fall in love, get married, and start a family all within a few weeks. In light of that, she had figured that maybe that was the way it had happened for all of them, and that made her the weirdo by comparison.
"You heard me," Clary laughed. "It's a big commitment and I wasn't ready yet. I had my reasons." Her eyes unfocused as if she were looking back through the years to a different time. "It can all be so overwhelming. Nephilim... we love so fiercely, so hard, that sometimes it feels like you don't have a choice. I wanted to wait until it was my decision, until I was ready, and not just do it because it was what everyone expected me to do."
"I want him," Sera declared with unwavering certainty as she unconsciously curled her fingers into her palms.
"We know," the other woman assured her with a touch on her shoulder to ease the tension. "Why do you think no one objected at your wedding?
"Because everyone had seen Rayce use that staff?" Sera offered innocently, sparking a round of laughter that melted away some of the stress she didn't even know she had been carrying.
"Because we knew you wanted each other, and there isn't a shadow of a doubt that you'd do anything to stay together." Clary's face fell a bit and she directed a meaningful look at Sera's stomach. "But make sure that you're ready for the next step, too."
Sera gave her a weak smile. "I've got eight or nine months to get ready, right?"
"I'll be here if you need someone to talk to," Clary promised with a twinge of sadness.
For the third time that morning, Sera felt her eyes well up. There has to be something I can do about the crying thing. May I should go out and kill something.
You can't just kill your way through everything, Alec's voice chided her again.
I'm beginning to understand the ice cream thing now, Sera thought savagely as she squashed the confusing tide of emotions vying for attention in her mind.
"Thank you," she blurted out to distract herself, "for all the help around here. I know you have your own problems with Herondale Manor right now..."
"Bah," Clary snorted. "I don't even know where to start with all of that mess. We had most of our valuables safely locked away in the family vault, but all the day-to-day things..." She sighed and looked around the dusty furniture and grimy windows. "Sometimes it's just easier to deal with this instead."
Aspen's shriek of laughter from the living room cut their conversation short and both women went to see what was happening now.
They found Aspen doubled over laughing in front of her parabatai, who was just shaking his head faintly. Rayce was red-faced and looked a bit embarrassed near the heavy curtains that covered the bay window, and Jace just looked plain confused.
"Problem?" Clary asked with a delicate arch in her eyebrow.
Rayce refused to answer and crossed his arms in annoyance. Perhaps his patience with his cousin was finally reaching the end of its tether.
"He asked," Aspen gasped, pointing at Rayce, "if we should be worried about Doxies in the curtains."
Later that night, after the Herondales and Hunter had gone back to Simon and Isabelle's home in the city, Sera paused for a moment in front of the cloudy mirror over the bureau of drawers in the master bedroom. A small box containing twin necklaces of Faerie design rested on top of the scarred wood. A small box that she tried to avoid looking at whenever she could. They were a wedding gift from the Queen of the Seelie Court, and Sera was more than a little concerned about what hidden surprises might lay within. She wanted to ask Seraphine to check them out, but her friend had left four days earlier with Magnus to try to learn as much as she could about the unchanging red rings around her irises that were a side effect of the tremendous amount of power that had been channelled through her on Wrangel Island.
"I'm telling you," Rayce said from where he was watching her in the doorway of the ensuite washroom, toothbrush in hand, "I don't think she would send something harmful." He remembered his sister's sad story about the Blackthorn children with a pang. "She's not like that."
But Sera remembered all too well how the cunning Queen had dispatched two brothers with one stroke and hardly a tear to shed for it. She remembered the warning in Kaelie's eyes as the handmaiden had haltingly told her that Arynessa and Solarius were a good match, whatever that meant. The Rift Lord was still a big, fat question mark in her mind, too, for that matter.
"We don't have to worry about it yet," she said wearily as she crawled under the cocoa- and cream-coloured covers and flopped back onto the plush pillows that had been part of the set they had received as a gift from Seraphine with a note that read, 'The first one's on me.' The room darkened a moment later and she felt Rayce slip into his side of the bed on her left.
His side. She exhaled through her nostrils and grappled with her amazement again. Like it's always been like this... but not.
His fingers skimmed down her left arm lazily as he laid propped up on one elbow in the near-darkness. A bit of moonlight filtered through the open window and played off the brightness of his white hair, turning it almost silver in the shadows. The curve of his smile came into focus as her eyes adjusted and she rolled over to face him without interrupting the gentle stroking.
"Why is all of this so easy for you?" Sera whispered. It didn't make sense. She had been working toward this happily-ever-after, albeit without the severed heads and vengeful Faerie warriors, for half of her life, and he hadn't even known that she'd existed until a few weeks ago. Crickets hummed quietly out in the darkness.
He caught her hand and lifted it to his mouth, brushing soft kisses across her fingertips for a moment as he thought carefully about the question. "Perhaps it's because I've felt not only the pain of losing you, but I can also remember Gwyn's pain over losing Veralysia. Centuries worth of it," he whispered back. He paused with her hand poised in his own before saying so softly that she almost didn't hear him, "I've tasted death, and it makes me want to live."
She felt a twinge of guilt. There was still so much that she didn't know about what had happened to him while he had worn the cloak. She trailed the back of her hand down his face. "When you're ready... if you need to talk about... whatever..."
The faint light gleamed across the silver stars of the Morgenstern family ring on her finger as she grazed her fingers down his cheek and his eyes were drawn down to the band.
Sera caught him looking and asked, "Should I give this back to you now? I don't know if I'm supposed to keep it after we did the rune thing..."
She couldn't see the shadow that fell across his eyes as he remembered his own internal struggle against his father's darkness, his own, in truth, but she felt it when he closed her fingers and wrapped his hand around hers. He leaned forward to kiss her forehead.
"Keep it for now. Maybe it'll do you more good than it did me."
Sera laid awake listening to Rayce's breathing slow and even out as he quickly fell asleep, but she found herself afraid of letting herself drift into her dreams. She closed her eyes as if she could block out the faces of those she had killed, but they only stared back at her from her memories.
The ghost of Kieran's petulant scowl made her flinch, and she almost reached out to shake Rayce awake and confess what she had done, but she stopped herself. Not when he's still healing from the Hunt, she told herself. I'm strong enough to hang in there until I know he's going to be okay.
She rolled over onto her side, away from Rayce, and tried to get comfortable. The threads of her gift hung slack in her mind and waited for her to take up the reins to try searching for any sign of what the Unseelie were up to, or to look for the missing Hunters again, but she shrugged away from the lure of dreams with uneasiness settled in her gut. As always, the magic of the Courts blocked her without Rayce there to anchor her visions, and she had had no luck finding even a hint of the Hunters so far without anything to go on.
No. Tonight, with Alec's admonishment still weighing heavily on her mind, she worried about what she might find if she let herself slip into her dreams. Silver and black eyes widened in pain once more and went flat even as she watched the life bleed out of the Faerie again. She wanted to tell Rayce, but she didn't know how to do it without hurting him now that she had already covered it up.
Liar.
She rubbed at her eyes tiredly and willed herself to drop off into a dreamless sleep. As she drifted away into darkness, she tried not to think, but one thought squeaked through.
Who else is going to pay for my lies?