So did Nicole.
‘All I know for sure is that he loves us,’ Dylan said after a few long moments. ‘And that evidently, the Wake have so much more of our personal history to answer for than we knew. They took our mother. They bound our father, after stealing his ideas and power and who knows what else.’ He shook his head, jaw working.
Bells’ eyes filled with tears and she blinked them back. ‘We need to end this.’
Amid the emotion singeing her airways like fire, Nicole found the curl of a bitter smile on her lips. ‘We will. We’re close.’ She had to believe that. ‘Our entire lives have been built on always telling the truth within the bounds of our home, and always lying to the outside world, and the Wake have kept that truth from us by binding him.’
‘We need to break the oaths,’ Bells said. ‘So we can hear it.’
But those answers were with a reclusive Druid Kyan would need to retrack and the hope that an Old God still walked the earth.
Exhaustion began to press Nicole to the couch. She fought it, forced her mind to sharpen.
But her father had said that the only way to break the oath was death, and the reminder of it rang in her mind with damning certainty.
She prayed he was wrong.
CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR
Kyan
‘YOU SHOULD CHECK THE TORC,’NICOLE SAIDWHEN KYANcame back inside with a concerned Remi. ‘It’s yours.’
He pulled it from the bag inside his jacket and Bells grabbed one of the plush red pillows from the couch, placing it on the coffee table. Callum was still out watching Ronan elsewhere in the hotel.
The artefact near hummed in his hands, but he couldn’t tell if it was the memories of what it represented, or the thought of what might be hidden inside.
‘Should you try it on?’ Nicole asked.
The neck piece was a series of interconnected ropes of metal, wound together then stacked and capped at the two ends with great circular terminals, decorated with delicate winding vines and stars.
With a breath, Kyan pulled off his jacket, body tight. Then, before he could think too much, he slotted the torc around his neck.
The moment the weight of the terminals sat on his collarbones and the rest settled against the back of his neck, cold and roped, the memory of its forging returned to him.
The great form of the being that had carved it.
The steady presence of his mother and the lush cape she’d shrugged off in the heat of the gods’ mountain forge.
The times he’d worn it in battle, the terminals a steady weight on his collarbones, reminding him always of his duty to his people, of the history, and the honour of wearing it.It ripped through him with emotion that felt so much clearer after his night with Nicole.
Nothing else happened. No unravelling, no clues as to the supposed blood inside.
Nicole’s eyes were now dark and fascinated, her lower lip wet from where she’d bit it in concentration. He pulled the torc off and placed it on the cushion, like a royal bed, the gold winking in the lamplight.
He was momentarily reminded of the Wake’s symbol.
The circle.
‘It feels …’ Nicole began, mesmerised.
‘I know,’ Kyan said.
The thief would have known it was special from the moment he picked it up. No wonder he didn’t want to hand it over.
‘I can’t smell or feel if there’s any blood in it.’ Nicole touched the terminals.
He marvelled at the way it looked in her gentle researcher’s hands – a piece of his earliest life, his people’s. History he was able to share with her that he never thought he could.
