Page 47 of Drawn in Blood
Odette shook her head as she smiled. “I’ve got plans with Gran.”
“Maybe we can make a plan to figure out who is behind the kidnappings while we’re at it.” Killian grinned as he stuffed his hands in his pockets.
“I think you’re severely overestimating our abilities, Vargr,” Ember replied, as she rolled her eyes. “I can’t imagine Thornsten or his cronies have left behind any evidence that a bunch of teenagers will be able to find.”
“You never know till you try.” Killian shrugged with a grin. “There’s no such thing as a perfect crime.”
After dinnerwith her mum and Theo, Ember spent the remainder of her evening in the barn with her schoolbooks and Maia, who she felt had been completely neglected since she had moved in. The draic nuzzled her face as she purred, making Ember laugh as she tried to record notes for her Elemental Magic homework. She closed the book, petting Maia’s snout as she stood up from the floor.
“How would you like to come in for the evening?” she whispered, quietly slipping a halter and lead over the draic’s snout. Maia let out an excited huff as she stomped her front feet. “But you have to be quiet,” Ember laughed, and Maia noddedher head. It was still so strange to her how Maia seemed to know exactly what she was thinking. She led her quietly toward the house, slipping in the back door and up the steps to her room, allowing Maia to settle in on her bed. Closing her bedroom door quietly behind her, she made her way down the steps and into the kitchen when she saw Theo in the sitting room out of the corner of her eye.
She rounded the corner and sat on the couch beside him, smiling as she signed,“How are you?”
Theo shrugged as he handed her the note she had left for him that morning and looked sheepishly at the ground.
Ember furrowed her brow as she thought back to the sign language book in the library.
“Can you read?”she signed and pointed at the piece of paper in her hands.
Theo’s cheeks turned red as he shook his head, staring at his fingers as he twiddled his thumbs in his lap.
Ember hummed as she nodded and quickly jumped up from her seat and over to one of the bookshelves lining the wall. She scanned the spines, grinning as her finger ran over a familiar title, and plucked it from its home on the shelf. She sat down beside Theo and showed him the book.
“The best way to learn to read is by being read to,”she signed, and then opened the cover. A wave of emotion she wasn’t expecting washed over her as she read the title out loud and signed it to Theo. “The Pegasus and His Boy.”
Theo grinned as he settled in, and Ember felt her chest tighten as she remembered the way she used to snuggle into the couch next to her dad, ready to get lost in whatever magical tale he decided to tell her that night. Her mum had always laughed and told him not to fill her head with fairytales, to save room for practical things like science and arithmetic, but he would just nod and grin. He firmly believed magic and the mundane wenttogether, and now she could see why. Ember felt her heart drop as she realized what all Theo missed not growing up with their dad. He really would have loved him.
Ember crossed her legs underneath one another and laid the book in her lap and began slowly signing as she read. Theo laid his head on her shoulder watching her hands intently as his eyes flitted between her fingers and the book. After a few minutes, Ember looked down and noticed his eyes fluttering closed as he nuzzled his head on her chest. She smiled as she tapped him on the leg.
“Time for bed?”she signed. “You can’t hear the story with your eyes closed.”
Theo smiled sleepily as he patted his head and then her chest.
“Feeling,”he signed and nuzzled his head back against her collarbone.
Ember grinned as she settled into the couch, reading the story out loud as Theo drifted off to sleep. After his breathing became steady, she gently laid him on the couch, grabbing a blanket from behind her and tucking it around his tiny frame. She smiled as tears pricked at the corners of her eyes. How many times had her father done this for her? Reading her to sleep and then tucking her into bed, oftentimes carrying her into her room from their spot on the couch. A wave of emotion washed over her as she closed her eyes, and for just a moment, she was back in their little cottage, just the three of them without a care in the world. Grief was funny like that—it was sometimes triggered by the most minor, insignificant things. Things that held no weight could become as heavy as bricks, and you had no choice but to carry them.
She took a shaky breath as she brushed Theo’s hair out of his eyes and gave him a gentle kiss on the head before tiptoeing out of the room. She couldn’t change the past, couldn’t get backthe years she had lost with her mum and brother, but she could make sure she didn’t miss another moment with them as long as she lived.
Chapter 14
Homesick
The wind whipped around Ember as she walked through the woods, the moon lighting the path in front of her. A crow called out above her, high in the branches of the tree, before swooping down in front of her and flying down the moonlit path. Ember didn’t know why, but she followed it. Something pulled her through the forest, something deep in her bones. The path widened, and a cottage came into view in the middle of a small clearing. It was an old cottage with a thatch roof and a small well off to the left of the front door. Smoke billowed from the chimney, cutting through the canopy above it. The crow flew fast toward the clearing, and Ember quickened her steps until she was running, trying to catch up with it. She stopped in her tracks when she heard a faint noise coming from the cottage.
A song drifted through the darkness that made her blood run cold.
Trí stoirmeagus farraige caillimid cé muid féin,
Ach amháin le fáil ag réalta tar éis titim.
Snámh i dtreo an chladaigh i bhfad i gcéin,
óir níl aon áit caillte againn níos mó.
Ember inched furtherdown the path, and a woman came into view. She had wild, silver curls that fell around her shoulders as she stood hunched over a wash basin. A white hooded cloak blew gently in the breeze as she continued her song, swaying along with her words. She was scrubbing a bloody shirt, something Ember imagined an aristocrat might wear, and continued singing.
Trí fear tareis fás agus foraoisí cosc,
