“Don’t let me go!”
I’d hear that cry forever, feel her hand slipping, skin sliding against mine. One moment, she was there. The next, she was gone.
I couldn’t stop it or explain the storm that had come out of nowhere. The way it rose as if conjured by magic, waiting to claim her, then vanished the instant she fell.
Nothing about that last day made sense.
All I knew was that sound, and that loss, followed me into the day until I drowned them in a bottle of spirits. Numb for a moment. Until the dream returned.
It took a long time, but I’d finally found the strength to stop numbing the pain. Time didn’t heal all wounds. And it hadn’t silenced her screams.
I'd joked once that she’d haunt me. Every day, she did. Three years and counting, but it may as well have been a lifetime.
And if I had it my way, she’d never stop.
A small fist pounded against the door.
My eyes snapped open, and I dragged in a breath of cold, salty air. Every morning was the same. My heart raced behindmy ribs, slowing only as her screams faded beneath the rhythmic crash of the waves outside the window.
The fist pounded again.
I swung my legs over the side of the bed, planted my bare feet onto the wooden floor, and dropped my head into my hands.
“Uncle Gavin, are you awake?”
“Go back to bed, Annie. It’s too early.” I groaned and rubbed my bleary eyes. “Better yet, go pound on your parents’ door. See how they like it.”
Annie heaved a dramatic sigh from behind the door. The kind only a kid could wield when she wanted to get her way.
“You know I’m not allowed to disturb them until breakfast. But that's not for another hour, and I’m hungry now.”
I blew out a breath and blindly reached for the crumpled pair of pants under the bed. Asking her to wake her parents had been an empty request, and one I didn’t expect her to follow, even if the headache that pounded behind my temples hoped she would. Her mother, Liana, was seven months pregnant, and Bowen guarded her sleep like a feral gargoyle.
Which usually leftmeto watch Annie, the kingdom's earliest riser and a notorious troublemaker. A trait I swore she hadn’t picked up from me. I was a courteous and well-mannered house guest.
Ask anyone.
Except for the people who lived here.
Definitely don’t ask Bowen.
Three years ago, after we returned from finding Incantus, neither of us was in any shape for polite company. We’d lost Marin. Then, a week later, we lost the treasure. It was stolen before we could deliver it to our benefactor. A man who took out his fury on Bowen with knives, scarring his face and body.Turning him into a recluse. The people of Ever, who once celebrated him, called him a beast.
Losing one of our own, followed by the vengeance against Bowen, shattered what was left of our crew. We parted ways. None of us could stomach another hunt.
Bowen hid in his manor, tormented by the fallout. And I needed a place to stay where no one would stop my self-destruction. So I stayed. I slept in a guest room at the back of his estate, and drank through the day, and scoured the alleys for trouble at night. It was the perfect plan.
Until Liana.
The beast was no match for her. And when they adopted Annie and her brother, William, the wall of grief Bowen had built around himself finally crumbled. A happy ending, one he deserved.
My wall held fast.
But thanks to a nine-year-old misfit who asked ten thousand questions a day, and insisted on calling me her uncle as if I were truly part of her family, there were some chinks in the rock.
I'd stopped drinking myself to death and even faked a smile once in a while. It wasn’t much of a life, but it was the only one I could manage.
Cramming my feet into my boots and pulling yesterday’s shirt over my head, I shuffled toward the door. When I yanked it open, Annie blinked up at me with a brilliant smile. She’d tied her brown hair into messy pigtails and wore a dress already streaked with sand.
