A Tune to Make Them Follow (Severed Realms, #2)

by T.A. Lawrence

And here I am, several jobs later, employed by a pretty girl and her sister.” I allowed myself to chuckle this time. “And which one’s which?” I asked. “Oh, I know better than to answer that question,” he said, even as his gaze lingered over the curve of my mouth.

“Do you ever see your family?” I asked, clearing my throat. The question had the desired effect. He glanced away as that same shadow fell over his face. “Not anymore.” “Why not?” I ventured to ask. “Because there are consequences to doing nothing.”

The enemy of man, he’s called, There’s something that he’s lacking. Gift him one of yours, And he’s sure to keep attacking.

“Then what does your music usually do?” I froze. My words got caught somewhere between my mind and my mouth, as if they had skidded to a halt and retreated. Marcus’s eyes went wide, though the teasing lilt to his voice remained. “What? You haven’t been forcing people to walk off cliffs or something, have you?” “No, of course not.” I grasped for my composure, for something, anything to say. It had been so long since I’d used my gift for anything other than kidnapping. “I just, well, I use it to find people who are lonely. People as lonely as I am.” The words startled me as they came out, the raw truth of them. And that I had admitted them to Marcus before I’d admitted them to myself.

“Why can’t you go back home, Marcus?” He didn’t answer, and the silence stretched taut between us, so I tucked my head into a rolled-up coat next to Amity, while Marcus turned back to watching the forest. “Because the next time I go home, I’ll have to tell my parents that their youngest is dead.”

“Maybe you’re right. Maybe you don’t need a man to take care of you. But you know, just because you don’t need a man to take care of you, doesn’t mean it wouldn’t feel good to let one every now and again.”

Definitely shouldn’t have helped her. I told myself it was for Amity, that, after today, it would have been foolish for me to think I could protect that little girl on my own. Arrogant even, with the threats we faced in this forest. I told myself I needed Piper’s arm to heal, and that having it hang limp like that, straining tissue and sinews, would only leave her limited in her ability to defend herself. Limited in her ability to defend Amity.

I cared. I cared because she cared. Because, earlier tonight, when I’d told her my secret, when I’d revealed what a coward I was for not returning home, right in the open for the heavens and Fates and stars and the pretty girl with pointed ears to hear, she’d crawled over to me and placed her delicate hand on mine. “You carry the truth on your own so they don’t have to,” she’d said. No judgment. Just pure understanding, undiluted by pity or that incessant need most people had to try to make it better, make it hurt less.

And then she’d curled back up with Amity as if she hadn’t shattered me then put the jagged pieces back together again all in a few words. As if those words weren’t the ones I’d been waiting for someone, anyone, to whisper. I cared. And that was going to be a problem. I’d cared enough to nudge her awake, though I’d known better than to think that she’d truly been sleeping. I’d cared enough to dress her wounds, to refashion a sling from my own tunic. And when my fingers had brushed her hair, I hadn’t been able to help allowing them to linger, to comb just barely through those vibrant curls. I’d allowed them to graze her collarbone as I’d tucked the curls over her shoulder. I’d relished the feel of her soft skin, and I’d been tempted to trace that bone all the way to her neck, to cup my thumb under her chin and caress the line of her jaw, to press my fingers into the nape of her neck and relieve the headache that she had to have been experiencing after a day like today. It had been a line, carefully crafted in so many ways. The implied promise of wanting more, of wanting to take care of her. That had been my strategy, after all. Flirt. Woo. Seduce her into the illusion of safety in my presence.

Was it fear of the evils that lurked in the forest that had her instincts protecting the child, even in sleep? Or was it the knowledge of the life she’d be handing the child over to once she reached Nettlewood? I knew which one I wanted it to be. And that was going to be a problem, too.

Was it helpful to offer a piece of one’s self in the hopes that the hurting person would feel a sense of solidarity? Or would they perceive it as selfish, steering the conversation back to my own troubles? I never knew.

Gigi wished that Marcus would kiss Piper and just get it over with. The swooshy feeling in Piper’s stomach was starting to make Gigi seasick. Besides, Piper’s bowels tended to loosen whenever she was nervous, and that wasn’t good for any parties involved. At least it was entertaining to watch the two lovebirds pretend they weren’t lovebirds. Piper had gotten such a stabbing feeling in her gut when Marcus had danced with that other girl. Gigi hadn’t liked it much either, even if Marcus’s gaze didn’t linger on the other girl’s mouth like it did Piper’s. And what a pleasant shock it had been when Gigi’s tune, the one she and Piper usually played for the children, had made Marcus drop that annoyingly pretty, giggly girl. Gigi had never seen anything like it, that tune affecting a human adult.

She never wore her hair up, always let those wild, glorious curls run rampant, so I’d never seen it, the tattoo that stained the bone behind her ear. It might as well have been a brand marking her for judgment. For there, sketched in ink thinner than spider silk, a compass pointed east. And on its face, staring back at me with lifeless eyes, was a glawackus. The shock had barreled through me, and I’d knocked the teacup over in the process. My soul shattered before the ceramic did. Her face had flushed with embarrassment, and she’d glanced at Amity, the Fates affording me just enough time to steel my expression, to warp the disgust, the agony, into embarrassment and apology. It hadn’t been difficult to tell her it would have been a mistake. Not even when the light fell from those enticing eyes. Green. The color of poison. Not even when her neck heated, flushing the broken compass with color, with the undertones of blood. For that’s what the tattoo was anyway. A reminder she’d branded into her flesh of the blood, not her own, that stained her very being. Cheyenne.

My gut reeled, but I swallowed the bile in my throat as I slumped into the sheets, willing my breath to slow, to go shallow. Just as she expected it to after drugging my tea. She didn’t know I’d replaced her anesthetic—the one I’d found the night I’d looked through her satchel to help her dress her wounds—with a benign oil that had no medicinal value two nights ago. Didn’t know I’d expected her to flee in the night any day now. That I’d been debating asking her to stay, admitting that I knew the truth about her profession, that I didn’t care. This was what I got, what I deserved, for being so consumed with my desire for her that I’d forgotten—no, chosen—to rid myself of any sense of decency and to forget them. Forget the children whose lives she’d ruined. To forget her. To forget Cheyenne. Even Piper hadn’t forgotten her, inking her skin forever with her memory. My chest was hollow. Nothing beat inside it. Dead. My sister was dead. I’d found that bloodied cloak myself, shredded, the compass I’d gifted her strewn across the clearing, the glass cracked, the string which she’d used to secure it around her neck snapped and frayed.

Her blood had been everywhere. Dead. She was dead, and that was why Piper had marked her skin in her honor. Why she’d inked the memory of my sister there on her pale skin. I had to clench the pillows to anchor myself, to keep from launching across the room and ripping Piper from her mat, from throttling her and demanding she tell me the story. Every bloody detail of what happened to my sister. Every mistake she made that led to the carnage in that clearing. Years of relentless training, the same training I’d sought out after finding her cloak, after needing something, anything, to erase the scent of her blood from every breath I took, stilled me. Calmed me. No, I wouldn’t kill her tonight. Not in front of Amity. Because while Piper was the...

“No high fae’s ever hurt me.” But a human has. And now a half-fae has. The shards of her words and what they implied punctured my stomach.

“Clean up your mess, Piper. We can’t afford any leaks.” Clean it up? I knew what that meant, although my mind buzzed in a thousand different directions, trying to make it mean something, anything, else. Bronger nodded toward his left side, where he’d apparently wrenched Marcus’s bow off his back and tossed it to the floor. “Use his own bow.” My hands froze. “Piper,” was all Bronger had to say. I risked one last look at Marcus, willing into existence some look of understanding, some look of forgiveness, but all I got was a shard of flint. My legs trembled, barely holding my weight, as I kneeled and took the bow in my hands. Cerulean arrows spilled from his quiver. I grabbed one of those, too. The bowstring pinched against my fingers as I nocked the arrow and stood.

My entire body trembled now, and I hated it. Hated how my fear, my anguish, displayed itself to all those I’d pretended to be strong for. I glimpsed Amity’s face, white as a specter. She’d joined the crowd of children that had surrounded us, the silent figures I hadn’t noticed swarming us as Marcus had admitted his true intentions. She was close enough to see everything. I bent my head slightly, gesturing to the tip of my arrow. She followed my gesture with her eyes. I snapped my forefinger and thumb together under the cold stone arrowhead. Close your eyes. Her eyes went wide for a moment, and I knew then the pain it caused her, to see the signal her mother had invented to keep her safe. She turned her face toward mine and our gazes locked. Then she forced her eyes shut. I turned. The bowstring sliced into my fingers as I drew back. Marcus stared into the shaft of the arrow. Not with the loathing I expected, but with utter disinterest. Apathy. As if the idea of an arrow going straight through his eye was a mildly unsettling dream compared to the nightmare of losing his sister. Of failing her.

Bronger chuckled, his low rumble taunting me, pulling the strings of my muscles and memory, just as it always had. Family, he’d said. It might have worked, too, wielding that word I’d so often dreamed of coming from Bronger’s mouth. Except lately the voice in the dream hadn’t been Bronger’s at all. It had belonged to a man with a giggling girl perched upon his ...

I hissed, hating the sound coming from my mouth. The one directed at my friend. “Get out of the way, Elias.” His face went stiff, then determined, and he leaned in and whispered something in my ear before stepping out of the way. Marcus and I cleared the tunnel just in time to hear James howl. I didn’t even have time to process Elias’s warning. Lay low. James isn’t the only one hunting you.

“Why would they try to take Cheyenne?” he asked. My legs stopped. I couldn’t will myself to propel them forward. This was it. The most incriminating truth of them all. The one I’d forced down, down, down into myself. But no matter how deeply I’d buried it, no matter how many memories I’d piled on top of it, nothing would muffle its screams. “Because he thought she was me. They thought she was the one with the gift.” “Why would they think that?” Marcus’s voice went dry, cracking and feathering like the lies I’d told myself all these years. That I wasn’t that bad of a person. That I took the children from unsavory homes for their own good. As if I wasn’t paying coppers for a debt counted in rubies. “Because I told them she was.”

She’d just been about to reach out and touch the cluster of dewdrops when it happened. When Piper decided her mortal life was no longer worth living.

“Piper.” Something cold and lonely dulled his tear-stained eyes. “Please give me a reason to forgive you.” “There’s not one,” I said, my voice breaking. “Please.” “Why?” “Because, if I can’t find a reason to forgive you, how I can I ever forgive myself?” The tears cut silken paths across his cheeks now, no longer pent up by whatever force of will had detained them. “Please.” I bit my lip and lowered myself to the ground, crossing my legs and facing him this time. “All the children, they came from homes where... where they weren’t being taken care of. Not the way children deserve, at least. And not because the parents were just too poor to give them a good life. I took... I told myself what I was doing was okay, good even, as long as I only took the children whose parents hit them, starved them...” “And the like?” he asked. I nodded.

If Cheyenne was alive, would that change anything? I swallowed the thought immediately, guilt swelling within me. My sister might have survived the attack I’d thought had claimed her life, and here I was wondering whether her survival would give me the permission I wanted to be with the woman I loved.

So instead I dwelled on the woman with the ivy eyes and the pointed ears and the hesitant laugh that I’d become so fond of tempting. I couldn’t have her; I knew that. But there she was shivering, and here I was, lacking the self-control not to care.

What if I’d given him false hope, driven the final nail through the heart of the man I loved?

Amity put a hand out expectantly, into which Van deposited her blade. “This is going to hurt, but I promise it’s going to make everything better, okay?” The wolf flinched, but that was as much as it could do before Amity drove a poisoned blade through its heart. Moments, minutes, hours later, the fae king awoke, his icy blue eyes twinkling with wonder. “Now, sir,” Amity said, scratching behind his ears, “you’ve got to think about being kinder to the humans. You’re making a lot of enemies when you could be making friends. It’s silly, really.” So I stood back and watched as little Amity lectured the fae King of Avelea as she tended to his wounds.

So if Piper decided to run, that would be just fine with me. I’d been preparing my whole life to keep up.

She was just so used to being on the outside, she didn’t know how to recognize when she was being invited in. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I was just conflating what she wanted with what I wanted. But I didn’t think so. And I certainly wasn’t about to let her disappear into the night without finding out. “You really did time your escape poorly,” I found myself saying, the words coming out harsher, colder than I meant them. She startled and scanned for an exit, but before she could flee across the grounds, I stepped in front of her, blocking her path. “Where exactly do you plan to go?” I asked, my jaw bulging despite myself. Just moments ago, I’d convinced myself not to be frustrated with her, not to let her inability to accept that other people might care about her rile me. Her breath fogged in the night’s chill, and she straightened her spine, rearing up for a fight. “Anywhere. That’s the thing. I’m free. I can go anywhere I wish.” Fates, she could be so stubborn. I stepped toward her, and she retreated, pressing her back into the stone statue behind her. “Anywhere? And what do you expect to find in this vague anywhere of yours?” She ruffled, though I had a sneaking suspicion it wasn’t due to the breeze. Closing in on her, I continued. “There’s a little girl upstairs crying for you.”

You loved him, but you saved me. And a woman who is capable of making such a sacrifice deserves better than to believe the people who love her would rather she walk off into the night and disappear.” The people who love her. Love.

“Can I tell you a secret?” he whispered. “I’m not all that practiced at not being alone, either.” I giggled, but it wasn’t long before the panic took hold. “And what if we fail?” I asked. Marcus nuzzled my cheek with his nose and smiled. “Then I’m sure Amity will pick us up and put us back together.” I laughed, and Marcus grinned. “Can I take that as a yes?” I choked through the tears and nodded. His soft lips traced my cheek on their way to my mouth. And then Marcus kissed the tears away.

“Piper. I, Marcus Arivaden, vow to protect you despite how little you’re able to pay.” I choked on the sob that emerged in my throat as I laughed. “Really, it’s obscenely little. But that’s all right,” he said, squeezing my hands. “Because I promise to love you no matter how destitute we become, especially if we have any children, who I imagine will rob us of any money we might have saved up for our old age.”

“But most of all, Piper, my friend. I promise to be your family...” I lost it, my tears soaking my cheeks. He thumbed my chin and lifted it, leaning down to kiss the tears on my face. Then he whispered in my ear, “I promise to be your home.”

“Piper,” Elias said. “Meet Lydia, Princess of Naenden.”