“I’m glad you did too, you wilful little sprite.”
My words were tellingly hoarse and her laughter, in turn, a little watery. We stood there for a long time, breathing through the threat of tears together before I finally pulled back and took her face in my two hands. I took a breath, but faltered over my words at the sudden dawning in her eyes. She spoke before I could.
“You’re going to make me leave,” she said, voice cracking.
“Not because of this,” I said at once. “Don’t get me wrong, I wish you’d told me from the start, and I need you topromiseme you won’t pull anything like this again–”
“You’re going to make me leave,” she said again, crying now.
“Sorcha.” I released her face and took her hands in my own. My voice was thinning dangerously, and I had to swallow against a hard and painful lump before I went on. “I should have gotten you out of Stormsby the moment the Kingsmen arrived. I might have a chance now. Your mother ishere, just on the other side of that border, ready to bring you back east. To bring you to safety.”
“And what about you?” Sorcha just about managed to force out the words, her breath tight and shaking. “What aboutyoursafety?”
I paused, unsure how honest I should be – how to edge around the truth.
“I can’t leaveThe Mage and Rose.”
But Sorcha saw right through me. Her pained stare turned shrewd; all too perceptive as she pored over my face and something dawned on hers. My Flame gave a nervous little shiver before it ducked beneath my heart.
“You mean you can’t leave the Captain,” she said slowly.
It wasn’t a question. She spoke with total assurance and though I didn’t respond, that was damning in itself. We hadn’t had the time for idle chit-chat of late; she had never asked me to explain what she’d walked in on the morning after Yule, just like I hadn’t asked her at what point Brennan had become her living shadow. But for as much as we’d left unsaid, it clearly didn’t go unnoticed. My cousin blew out a long breath, wiped the heel of her hand beneath her gleaming eyes and steeled herself.
“Roz,” she began. “Do you know how I found out about your parents’ Soul Song?”
I tried to shake my head, but the muscles in my shoulders had abruptly tensed at her leap from Caelan to my parents’ bond.
“Your mother wrote to mine, and despite everything she’d ever told me about my aunt and the evil firecoven – my mother kept those letters. Foryears. I found them snooping around her room, and I can’t blame her for holding on to them. She kept them because they were beautiful. Because her sister found something most of us could only ever dream of, and even to read of it was more than she might ever know.”
Something must have crossed over my face despite my frozen nerves, because Sorcha squeezed my hands and said softly; “Did your mother tell you about it? How it felt?”
My throat was dry, and the‘Yes’I forced up was tellingly hoarse.
Sorcha nodded thoughtfully, and once again it struck me that she appeared much older than her nineteen years with that gentle, sage look on her face.
“In her letters, she said that she brought life to everything she touched. She couldn’tstopthe flowers from blooming at her fingertips. It sounds rather annoying actually.”
I laughed, alarmed at how watery the sound came out.
“It does, doesn’t it?”
I glanced away, trying to subtly catch a stray tear with my sleeve as it rolled down my cheek, but when I turned Sorcha was still regarding me with that knowing expression.
“It’s not the Soul Song,” I said firmly.
“Why not?”
“Because it can’t be.”
“Why?”
“Because.He’s human, and that’s – it’s unheard of.”
“Unheard of isn’t the same as impossible.”
I shook my head, tears beading under my lashes when my eyes closed of their own bidding.
I didn’t want to talk about this.
