Page 24 of Cathmoir's Sons

He stops walking and shifts his hand to cup the back of my neck. “Yeah, I do. It’s all connected. Caileán woke the power you’d been suppressing. Bromios felt it and sent Kimberly after you. I’m sorry, Rho. You’ve been through hell, and you don’t deserve any of this. I wish I could take the pain away. I hope you don’t think I did the wrong thing, making Caileán bring you back?”

I reach up and mirror his gesture, cupping the back of his neck, drawing him down to touch foreheads. “If you have to drag me back from death a million times just so I can have another minute with you, you’ve done the right thing. I don’t regret anything.”

He squats so he can kiss me, hard and fevered. He’s been worried about me, my kit. It’s been hard for him to watch me recover. But he’s endured it as much as I have. I think it’s made us stronger, more confident in each other. Whatever uncertainties he had about us after I spent the semester courting his fated mate; whatever insecurities I had about not being enough for him and Caileán—they’re gone. We’re solid in a way we weren’t before.

I suck on his tongue before I let him go with a squeeze of his nape. His pupils are blown when he pulls back. I wink at him. “Missed you last night.”

“I slept with Caileán,” he admits.

“I know. I’m glad. You’ve waited long enough.”

“Kellan will be furious if she finds out before all her memories awaken.”

“I’m not keeping anything more from her, Lu. If she asks, I’ll be honest.”

He nods. “Me, too. Caileán showed us a spell to wall off the memory of last night until she’s fully awakened, but we didn’t do it. I think we have to be completely honest with Kellan from now on. That’s the only way she’ll trust us. I just hope she doesn’t ask.”

Me, too, although she’s not speaking to me at the moment, so it’s moot. But I’m going to figure out a way to change that. I understand why she hasn’t come to see me while I’ve convalesced. She’s entitled to her anger. But it’s also killed me. Every time the door opens, my heart leaps. Every time it isn’t her, it cuts a little deeper.

Luca opens the door into his parents’ audience hall with a flick of his fingers. The hall’s mostly empty, with a knot of five people standing near where Cath and Allie have their chairs.

Caileán’s standing with her back to me, wearing her cloak of raven feathers, gleaming purple and black and blue in the winter sunshine. She has her arms around Aine’s shoulders. Aine’s wrapped around her. Aine’s face is hidden within the cowl of Caileán’s cloak. They’re murmuring to each other.

Law’s standing an arm’s length away from his mate and his sister. He’s naked and no one seems bothered by it. How is it that everything about his identical twin turns me on and everything about Law just makes me feel vaguely annoyed?

Probably something to do with the way he’s treated me for three years.

Cath and Allie stand near their chairs, holding hands, watching their daughter hug Caileán. Cath looks inscrutable as usual, but Allie’s smiling mistily.

Law’s eyes flick over me when the door opens. He grunts. “Human.”

“Law.”

He glances at the airspace under my invisible wheelchair. “I’ll get chairs,” he says.

He pulls over the conference table and four chairs, which I think means Aine isn’t staying. Luca offers Law the robe he’s brought, which Law shrugs on but leaves open until Aine steps away from Caileán, wipes tears from her eyes, then throws her hands in front of her face dramatically. “Goddess, I’m blind! I’m blind!”

Law bares his fangs. “Scram, pest.”

“Going, BroNode. Your terrifying, tiny node has driven me away.”

Law rolls his eyes. He pulls out a chair for Caileán, but she holds up a hand. She strides over to me and kneels beside me.She folds my hand between hers. “Rhodes, please forgive my absence. I slept too long.”

I pull our entwined hands to my chest. “I missed you. Luca’s explained ... I missed you so much, babe.”

Calling the Crow Queen, with her burning blue eyes and three-inch-long talons and feathered cloak, “babe” should be strange, but it’s not. She’s as much the woman who made me close my eyes and turn my back so she could change into lingerie and light a cake for our two-month anniversary as she is the goddess who told me she’d returned from true death to fight at my side. Loving her has taught me to stop looking for absolutes. She can be more than one thing. We all can.

She presses her fingertips to my chest. “This doesn’t feel completely healed?”

“It’s better. I just have to take it easy, the healers say. Let the Mother do her work.”

I can’t see any expression with her cloak shadowing Caileán’s face, but the burning blue of her eyes narrows. “Hmm. We’ll see what we can do about that.”

She leans over and brushes a kiss over my mouth. I chase her taste: pennies and sweet wine.

Caileán stands and with a swirl of her claws guides the Air-sling I’m sitting in over to a chair. I’ve never seen a magi take over another mage’s magickal construction like that, but what Caileán can do has stopped surprising me.

She sits next to me. Law and Luca jostle for the chair beside her. Law wins by picking up Caileán and setting her down in his lap. With a roll of his eyes, Luca sits down beside them. I don’t feel bad about where he’s sitting. I’d have enjoyed days of being all over Kellan after our first night together if I hadn’t completely fucked it up. He should be all over her.

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