See? He wants to touch us, but he doesn’t know how to ask. Tell him he can rest his head in our lap and you’ll play with his hair again. Or he can play with your hair, you’ll just have to warn him he might lose a hand in all the matting.
I snort out loud. Noush has certainly not grown any less sassy during our separation.
Finch is watching me with a curious expression, and I suppose I’d better actually open my mouth and say something. The sooner we get this over with, the sooner I can get back to bed. Snuggled between the two men that wanted me, mate bond or no mate bond.
Just like Kit did. We were friends before the fake bond and still wanted each other without it.
Something prods at my chest, and I clutch my hand to the point, frowning. When I peer up at him, Finch’s tentacle is now pressing at a specific spot just over his heart.
... and I can feel it at the same location inside my chest.
“About the mate bond,” I start to say right as he also speaks,
“Now, can you tell me where—”
I snap my mouth shut.
Well, shit.
The two of us aren’t exactly in sync. Finch furrows his brow, giving his tentacles a little slap as one prods at his—and my—chest again while the other reaches for my hair.
“Can I tell you what?” I ask, deciding to leave the mate bond conversation to one side for now.
“Kit,” he says slowly. “I’m wondering if you can tell me where the hell my brother is and why we’re travelling north? I’ve been informed it was under your orders that we change direction.”
Ah.
I suppose, of all the issues to dive into, that might be the easiest to explain.
“Kit disappeared at some point after the ships appeared, while we were all distracted. He and Jack were there one minute and gone the next, and none of us knows what happened to them.”
Whether it was a coincidence that the overload of power blew out the wards right as the king’s ships appeared and Kit and Jack disappeared remains to be discovered.
Finch rubs the furrow in his brow. “But you know where they both are. That’s why we’re heading north?”
I nod, tapping my chest. “I can feel them both. Even stronger than last time.” Licking my lips, I tentatively ask, “How about you? Can you... feel either of them?”
I know from both Torin and Aster that the two of them can feel each other. We’re all a total mess of bonds with crossed wires all over the place.
Finch nods slowly. “It’s faint, but I can sense them both. That’s the bond you were talking about that I’m sensing?”
“It is. I can’t tell exactly where they are, just the general direction.” I tug on the ends of my hair, jiggling my foot. “I probably overstepped in telling the crew to shift course, but I didn’t want to waste time. Not when we don’t have any idea what’s happening.”
The glimmers of Kit’s emotions I’ve experienced have mostly been surges of irritation and boredom, while I haven’t felt a single thing from Jack. I don’t know whether to be concerned about that, so I’m settling for a general feeling of unease about the whole damn thing.
“You did right, love,” Finch says. “You made a bold choice, but I’d have said to do the same thing if I was in any fit state to give orders. This bond of yours is a strange thing,” he continues. And I feel the moment he tests it out, plucking at it like it’s the string of a guitar.
“I can pinpoint my brother’s exact location in a heartbeat.” He shifts from his desk, rolling a gigantic map over the surface and tapping his finger at a point.
“They’re in Ashwick,” I reply. Something I hadn’t been certain of until he confirms it with a single nod.
The kingdom’s capital. Home of King Wildrake.
“And so that’s where we’ll go.”
Chapter 26
Reva
