He wished he could’ve spared George and Jack the same fate. Once again he was watching children suffer and unable to do anything about it.
The last dock ended. In the distance, waves broke against Kelena’s Teeth, splashing against the stone bases of the towers. The tide was low, and crests of sand surfaced here and there. Richard took a chance and jumped. The water came to his knees.
He waded through to the nearest stretch of sand, heading toward the closest tower. A trail of paw prints pockmarked the sand. Cat footsteps, no claws. The trail led to the tower.
Kelena’s Teeth had keepers, who monitored the weather and activated magical defenses when storms came. They stood watch in shifts inside the towers. Richard broke into a run, moving at full speed, devouring the sand in long strides.
Ahead, a stone block slid aside in the tower wall, about twenty feet above the water. More stones slid from the walls, winding in a spiral around the tower, leading down. A man ran out, his eyes wild, and sprinted down the newly formed stairs.
Richard reached the tower. Finally.
The keeper splashed through the water toward him. “There’s a changeling in the tower!”
Richard reached into his pants and pulled out a half doubloon. “There is no changeling.”
“I saw him!” The older man waved his arms. “A huge cat as big as a horse!”
A horse was pushing it. A pony at best. Richard took the man’s hand, put the coin into it, and looked into his eyes. “There is no changeling,” he repeated slowly.
Understanding dawned in the man’s eyes. “I didn’t see anything.”
“That’s right. I’ll need to borrow your tower for a few minutes, then I’ll leave, and it will be safe for you to go in.”
Richard started up the stairs.
“If he breaks anything, you’ll pay for it!” the keeper yelled. “And don’t touch anything either!”
Richard clambered up the stones that formed the stairs and ducked into the entrance. It was amazing how quickly fear subsided when gold became involved.
A spiral staircase wound about the stone inner core of the tower, illuminated by the light from many windows. He climbed the steps, higher and higher, until he saw a gaping door at the end of the stairway.
A raw, pain-filled sound came from upstairs. It wasn’t a feline snarl or any other sound one would expect a lynx to make. Halfway between a howl and a cry, gut-wrenching and brutal, it vibrated through the air. If Richard had hackles, they would’ve risen in response.
Richard sat down. There was no need to go in. The boy required privacy.
Another cry followed, wordless and filled with grief and guilt.
Richard leaned his back against the wall. Jack and he, they were both men, and men had unspoken rules.
Many years had passed since his father died, and for many of these years his aunt Murid had taken care of him and Kaldar. He was almost an adult when she took him in, but he remembered how much it hurt. He felt abandoned, terrified, guilty for not being there, but the only emotion the rules allowed him to display was anger, and so he raged like a lunatic. Aunt Murid handled his pointless fury with the same expertise she’d handled Kaldar’s obsessive stealing. Both of them had gone out of their way to do dumb shit just to remind themselves they were alive. But even in their darkest moments, both of them knew they were loved. They had a home. It wasn’t the same as the one before, but they were grateful for it.
When he was thirty-two, the Hand had attacked the family. In the final battle with Louisiana’s spies, Murid fell. He hadn’t seen her die, but Kaldar had. Richard vividly remembered looking at her savaged body. He remembered his chest hurting and the look on Kaldar’s face, the glassy-eyed gaze of a man whose every emotion had drowned in profound grief. They didn’t talk about it. They stood next to each other at the funeral, stone-faced, because that was the thing to do. After the funeral, they drank together as was proper for a Mire family and went their separate ways within the Mar house.
He’d come up to his room, thinking he would read a book. Instead, he sat in his chair, catatonic, staring into space, until he realized he was crying. Kaldar must’ve mourned, too. Neither of them would ever admit to his grief. They’d never spoken about it.
The woman who had taken care of them, sheltered them, and guided them, filling the shoes of both parents at once, had died. But he couldn’t bring himself to comfort his brother even though he knew both of them desperately needed that comfort.
Now Jack and George had lost a woman who loved them and sheltered them, and they followed the same pattern. Jack’s running out was probably for the best. If George wanted to grieve freely, he could, because Charlotte was a woman, and her presence wouldn’t be a deterrent. And Jack . . .
Another forlorn howl rolled through the tower.
He would talk to Jack when the boy was done. There were things he had to say, things he wished someone had said to him or Kaldar years ago.
Whatever differences he and Kaldar had, they were brothers, Richard reflected. They had dealt with their guilt and pain in the same way. Kaldar channeled it into an insane obsession with destroying the Hand. Even marriage to the woman he clearly loved beyond all reason did nothing to knock his brother off his path. Richard, on the other hand, had chosen to go after slavers. There probably was a hint of insanity in what he did. No, perhaps not insanity. Fanaticism.
“Fanatic.” It was an old word originally meaning “inspired by god,” and its first meaning was to describe a person possessed by a god or a demon. It was a very accurate description, he reflected. He was possessed, not by a demon, but by the need to correct a wrong. He was a true believer, his cause was just, and he had given all of himself to it without regret. But at the core, it was about helplessness. When Sophie had stopped showering, then stopped talking, then ran away when he tried to ask her why, he could do nothing. He had never felt more helpless in his life, not even when his wife, Marissa, walked out on him.
He’d loved Marissa completely, with absolute devotion, and when she’d left him after two years of marriage, his whole world shattered. He had decided it was a good lesson, eventually, once he had crawled out of the deep, dark hole where he’d existed for months. He thought the experience had cured him of the longing for female company just as he’d thought that the road he was on had burned all capacity for emotion out of him. But here was Charlotte, and she stirred something inside him that compelled him to respond. He couldn’t help himself.
If he’d met Charlotte before this started . . . It was an intriguing but fundamentally stupid thought. If he had met her, she wouldn’t have given him a second look. She was a blueblood and a healer, probably highly respected, while he was a Mire rat with no name, no status, no rank, and very modest means of support.
And yet he couldn’t stop thinking about her. That’s how it started, Richard reflected grimly. Thinking about a woman, wondering what it would be like, picturing it. A purely physical attraction he could handle, but he’d seen her in a moment of vulnerability. He knew exactly what it cost her to follow him. She was courageous, in the true sense of the word. Experience and training had given him an edge, and he rarely experienced acute fear when facing an opponent. Most of the time, he didn’t even feel anxiety, as if his soul had developed calluses. Perhaps he simply didn’t have anything to lose.
Charlotte had no combat experience. She hid her fear well, but he was learning to read her. When she raised her chin and squared her shoulders, Charlotte was afraid. She had been alarmed when they met Jason Parris, scared when they faced the thugs, and frightened when the mob chased them. Yet she kept going, overcoming her fear every time. That strength of will was worthy of both his admiration and his respect. Her very humanity made her fascinating and drew him to her. He wanted to know more about her. He wanted to spare her that fear. He wanted to remove whatever was causing her discomfort. Yet there was no way to do it without cutting short her involvement, and he had made a promise to respect her mission.
Jack emerged from the room. He was nude, and his eyes were red.
Richard offered him the clothes. The boy dressed.
Richard rose. “There is no shame in grief. It’s human. You didn’t do anything wrong. It doesn’t make you weak, and you don’t have to hide it.”
Jack looked away.
“You couldn’t have prevented your grandmother’s death. Don’t take any of the guilt or blame on yourself. Blame those who are actually responsible.”
