Page 88 of The Mirror of Beasts

“This is where we lived,” I heard myself say. “After you … left.”

Nash lowered his mug, resting it against his knee as he looked around, absorbing the cobwebs, the exposed beams, the beginnings of dry rot. “Librarian took care of you, then? He’s always been a sweetie.”

I nodded, my jaw sawing back and forth as I bit back resentment. It was awful, all of this—sitting here like it was one of our old campfires, hearing the rumble of Nash’s voice, taking in his familiar earthy, leathery smell. His old jacket, the one my brother had worn for years, had been lost to Avalon, and his new one didn’t have that same softness, the lived-in quality that only came after decades.

“You took care of your brother,” Nash said. “I’m proud of you.”

He could not have hurt me more if he’d ripped the heart from my chest.

For years … years … I would have killed to hear him say those exact words. But there was no truth to them now. I hadn’t been able to protect Cabell when it mattered most.

“I saw him,” I told Nash. “Twice.”

“Hmm? Once with the hunt, I suppose?”

“Yes,” I said. “And again at Rivenoak. I tried to talk to him there, but he wouldn’t hear me out. Cabell … he …”

“Go on,” Nash said. His pale eyes were clear, focused, and for the first time maybe ever, I felt he was truly hearing what I was telling him.

“Cab ran alongside the hunt as a hound, and he seemed so … natural. Free.” I traced a finger over the chipped rim of my mug. “Was his curse that he was forced to shift into human form?”

“He’s not cursed at all, Tamsy,” Nash said with unbearable gentleness. “He never was.”

I stared down into the bottomless black of my coffee.

“Is that his true form?” I asked.

“What is true but what we choose to be?” Nash mused. “When I found him on the moors that night, he was a pup, but I recognized him for what he was—one of the Cwn Annwn.”

Despite the heat of the coffee, a chill prickled my skin. The hounds of Annwn.

“Why didn’t you just tell us that?” I demanded. “Why pretend like the curse was on him?”

“You may not understand it,” Nash said, “and I know you think I’m about as trustworthy as an eel, but you were children at the time. And I thought—well, I didn’t want him to long for a place he could never return to. There’s an unkindness to that, too.”

Crossing my arms over my chest, I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye, some part of me still in disbelief that the bastard was here, sitting beside me.

“Gods forgive me, I know I was harsh on you at times,” he said. “That I could be a distant, moody old bastard when it came down to it. I didn’t always know how to give you the affection you might have needed, or how to console you … I’m not a soft man, I know this.”

“I’d say that’s an understatement,” I said, my hands curling into fists in my lap.

“But I didn’t realize how distant I’d been,” Nash continued, “because I never imagined in all my worst nightmares that you’d believe I’d left you on purpose. That you weren’t wanted. I look at myself now and realize I’ve become that thing I always feared most: an old man with regrets.” He shifted, looking down at his hands in his lap. “I’m sorry.”

I drew in a deep breath, not trusting my voice to speak. It was all of the things I’d been so desperate to hear—that I’d felt starved for, that had shaped me as surely as any knife.

There was a time when I’d believed he would come back, and I’d rehearsed what I’d say to him over and over, carefully carving my anger and devastation into arrows. Now that I had the chance to shoot them … I couldn’t.

It hurt. It still hurt so badly.

“Cabell will return to us in time,” Nash said. “But he must choose that form again. That life. He is drawn to Lord Death because of what he is, but he will step away from that darkness because of who he is.”

“He won’t,” I said. “You haven’t seen him. And after what he’s done … the others might never forgive him.”

“Forgiveness isn’t meant to be easy,” Nash said. “It’s got to be earned. But it has to start somewhere. Look for the sign, it’ll come.”

“What’s that you used to say? One swallow doesn’t make a summer?” I said. “You didn’t see what I saw.”

“Maybe so, but I know the boy,” Nash said. “I raised him from the time he was a pup, same as you.”

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