Forgotten (29 page)

She let her hair drop in front of her face, but not before he saw the tears. Guilt twisted through his stomach. It didn’t mix well with the alcohol.

“I could always tell before,” she murmured. “But you’re different now. I don’t know what you are anymore.”

“I’m a survivor.” His voice was thick. It wasn’t the booze.
“Just like you wanted me to be.”

Peren made a strange noise, not quite a laugh or a sob but some combination of both, and her hands disappeared under her curtain of hair to cup her face. “He’s our son, Kaie.
Our baby boy.”

He stared into the bottle. He didn’t know if there was enough of the smooth fire to make him forget this conversation, but he was damn sure he was going to find out. One
swallow
at a time. “I don’t know what you want from me, Peren.”

“I want you to tell me why.”

Kaie sighed and rubbed his head with his empty hand. It didn’t matter what he said. He knew the reasons, whispered them to himself every night. They weren’t enough for
him,
they wouldn’t be enough for her. Understanding wasn’t going to make it any easier.

“There was never any saving her. As soon as she stepped off that damn ship, she was going to die here. I couldn’t stop it.”

“Don’t tell me that,” she cried. “You fight fate constantly! It’s all you ever do! Why couldn’t you do it for him?”

“Because it was pointless.”

“Do you even care?”

It was just a whisper. It would’ve hurt less if she used a knife.

He slammed the bottle on the table, making the bowls rattle. “She was
never
going to give him up! He was all the power she had left! You can sit over there blaming me all you want. Just remember, you’re the one who let her take him!”

She gasped. For a second, he thought she was going to reach across the table and hit him. But that wasn’t Peren. There was nothing dangerous about her, nothing violent. She was strange and quiet and thoughtful. She was strong. But she wasn’t fierce, and not even Keegan was enough to change that.

Instead, she flew back up the stairs. He watched her go with a sense of loss that surprised him. He didn’t want it. It made the sense of spinning out of control so much worse.

He downed several swallows of the booze, and came up coughing.

“Kale does not handle his brandy well.”

He wasn’t sure how much time passed since Peren. The room was spinning now. The euphoria wasn’t back yet, but Kaie was sure he was just another half a bottle away. If the damned women would just leave him alone for a minute, he would find it again.

“What do you want Mola?”

“This girl wonders
,
does he make all the women who love him cry?”

Kaie frowned at her, trying to sort out why she was at the table instead of by the stairs like she was just a second ago. “Don’t talk about Peren.”

Mola sniffed and leaned against the table, snatching the bottle from his hand.

“That’s mine!” He shouted lamely.

She shook her head. “A thief can’t claim what they don’t own. This belongs to the people.”

“I’m not a thief,” he answered. “At worst, I’m a looter. And I’ll claim whatever I want.”

Her mouth pursed. “Is that what he thinks he will do with the greatest city? Claim it
for his own
? He wants to take what can never be his!”

Suddenly, he wasn’t irritated with her anymore. He was back in that moment, the one Judah interrupted upstairs. He didn’t remember climbing to his feet, but he was standing inches from her, one hand wrapped around the bottle and the other around her free wrist, keeping it away from the knife on her hip. He saw the inferno in her eyes and he didn’t flinch.

“Then stop me, Mola.”

He pressed his lips against hers with a ferocity that he would never dare with Peren. She
growled,
a primal sound that sent shivers down his spine, and leaned into him. He shoved her backward onto the table and her legs wrapped around his hips. He released his hold on her hand, wrapping his fingers into her hair and jerking her head backward violently, nipping at her neck with no thought of gentleness. She clawed at his shirt, tearing the fabric in her haste to get it off him.

The bottle slipped from their hands, forgotten, and shattered on the floor. Neither one of them noticed.

A sharp pain in his back demanded immediate attention. Kaie woke, finding
himself
laying in a puddle of brandy. His shirt was in tatters and his pants were twisted around his ankles. The room was dark, but a bit of light flickered down from the stairs. It was enough. There was no sign of Mola. For a second he entertained the hope that the whole thing was nothing more than another fantasy, wildly enriched because of the alcohol. But the scratches on his chest told him there was little chance of that.

He rolled out of the puddle and away from the bowl he was laying on. The pain wasn’t gone, but it got much more tolerable. The smell of spilled booze was making his eyes water and his bare ass was cold, but for just that moment Kaie couldn’t be bothered enough to care about either one. He pulled up his pants, wincing as the liquid absorbed by the cloth hit his thighs.

It was stupid. He didn’t regret what happened. Mola slithered up underneath his skin months ago, and Kaie couldn’t pretend he wasn’t absurdly satisfied to have finally had her. And he wasn’t broken. He had proof of that now. She touched him, he touched her,
he
fucked her.
All without any trace of the panic.
That knowledge brought a small piece of calm to the storm in his head.

But Peren was upstairs. There was no question she heard what happened. Kaie knew it hurt her.
That was, he admitted to himself, a part of why it happened.
He’d wanted to hurt her, to make her suffer for her accusations.

“Better this way,” he muttered to himself. But it wasn’t.

“Are you trying to break my sister?”

Kaie scowled at the foot of the staircase. That was getting annoying. Why couldn’t the stairs squeak or give him some other warning people were coming to attack him.

“No.”

Vaughan didn’t react. He just stood there, unmovable and unemotional.

“No!” Kaie snarled. “I don’t want to hurt her at all.”

The blonde’s lips pressed into a thin line, but he still said nothing. Against the silent accusation, Kaie felt his anger deflate.
“Alright.
I wanted to hurt her yesterday,” he admitted. “She hurt me and I hit back. It’s what I do.”

“Now.”

He shrugged.
“Yeah.
Now.”

“That’s not how you survive,
Bruhani
.”

He sighed and picked up one of the chairs he and Mola knocked over. Tugging the tatters of his shirt tight across his chest, Kaie dropped into the seat and gestured for Vaughan to take the other one. After a moment of hesitation, the blonde joined him at the table.

“I’m tired of surviving.”

Vaughan shook his head. “No you’re not.”

“Surviving’s cost me everything, Vaughan. I think I’d rather go down in flames.”

“It hasn’t cost you Peren.
Or… or me.”

“Not yet.”

“Not yet,” Vaughan agreed. “But trying to destroy yourself will.”

Kaie spread his hands out on the table and stared at them. They were coated in dry brandy and months of grime. Mixed in there,
somewhere,
was the blood of a man who was his friend, once.

“Someone should. If she won’t do it, it might as well be me.”

Vaughan’s eyes grew wide. “You want… you want my sister to destroy you? That’s why you’re treating her so badly?”

“It should be her,” Kaie sighed. It would never be her. They both knew it.

“Why?
Because she still loves you?”

Kaie chuckled bitterly. “She doesn’t know me. I can’t be the man she loves. I don’t even remember how.”

Vaughan reached out a hand. It hovered over his arm for a moment, a breath away from a comforting pat. The blonde pulled back. Kaie let out a slow breath of relief. He didn’t want the comfort or the contact.

“I understand.”

He looked up at Vaughan, ready to snap at the small man for his presumption. But when his eyes met the watery blue ones, the anger dissolved again. They were the same shape and size as Peren’s, but they were so different. He always thought of her as the wise one, but Kaie saw insight in him. A kind Peren was incapable of.

“Don’t.”

Vaughan blinked. “What?”

“Don’t tell me you understand like it’s the same. I didn’t choose it.”

“No one does,” the blonde said softly. “Not the first time.”

“So that makes it alright? What happened to me is ok because it happens to other people?”

“That’s not what I…”

“Why aren’t you angry?” Kaie asked quietly. “Why are you accepting what they’ve turned you into?”

Vaughan shifted in his chair. “What would anger get me? Does it make you satisfied?”

“Honestly? It makes me tired.” Kaie rubbed his head as if the action would relieve the ache building behind his eyes.

“Tired.”
Vaughan leaned forward.
“And alone?”

“I’m not trying to hurt her,” Kaie muttered.
“Aside from yesterday.”

“So… so the part where you treat us both like you can’t stand around us is because you care?”

He was quiet for a long time. A lie would be easy. He couldn’t get it out of his mouth. He decided to blame the hangover.

“She can hurt me too much.” It burst out of him before he could stop it.

Vaughan’s eyes couldn’t possibly grow any larger. “You think either of us would hurt you?
Ever?”

Kaie sighed. He folded his arms on the table and dropped his head between them, blocking out the world. “You will. Sooner or later, everyone does.”

He heard the other chair scraping away from the table and the sound of Vaughan walking back to the stairs.

“There’s another… another choice, you know.”

“What?”

“One other, besides giving up or destroying yourself.
There’s a third choice. You could win.”

Kaie snorted, but he didn’t say anything. After a while, he heard the blonde head back upstairs.

He quit believing he could win a long time ago. The gods were just too good at stopping him. Like now, trapped in this house while his miserable army was left to
their own
devices. But what if the blonde was right? What if there was still a way out of the city?

He was so damn weary. Drained from surviving, and just tired in general. The last time he felt anything but the growing exhaustion and fury was when he lost Keegan. Longer,
since he last felt anything positive. After so much time, he almost didn’t recognize the glimmering thing trying to be born inside him.

Hope.
Tiny and stunted, but alive.

What if he could
win.

“Better this way,” he muttered again. And this time, maybe it was.

“Better what way?

Kaie drew in a sharp, surprised breath. He scrambled to his feet, hoisting up his pants with some difficulty. The cloth was soaked with the brandy, and when the cold liquid hit his skin he sucked in another. Mola, her features half swallowed by the darkness, gave a throaty laugh as she watched him struggle.

“Where in the Abyss did you come from?”

She shrugged. “The gods set this girl here to punish Kale for his wickedness.”

Kaie couldn’t help chuckling. “You’ve got an odd idea of punishment.”

Her teeth caught the light, reflecting it back and making her smile ghoulish. “The boy might think differently, once he knows what Mola intends.”

His eyebrow lifted. “What’s that?”

She considered him for a while,
then
shook her head. With that simple movement, the moment passed and she was normal again. “The boy must come. Lady Dau summons him.”

Kaie didn’t waist a second. “I’ll be right back then.” He tied his pants in place and headed upstairs.

Henry and Judah were both back at the windows, looking like they never left. More likely, Kaie managed to sleep the whole day and it was their watch again. Peren and Vaughan were both sitting on the bed shoved as close to the far wall as the circular room would allow. Their heads were so close together that their white-blonde hair mingled together.

A board creaked beneath his weight.

Both siblings blinked up at him. Kaie was struck at how different they looked when placed beside each other. Vaughan’s lines were softer, perhaps even more feminine, but Peren held the beauty of the two. She was like a sculpture given life and her misery only enhanced it. The dark shadows under his eyes, the ruddy color to her cheeks, they all made her seem more alive.
More vibrant.
Her brother lacked any such color. Even his eyes seemed pale and washed out. It suited him, Kaie supposed. Vaughan could easily fade away and only he and Peren would notice the loss.

Peren turned away and locked her eyes on
a spot
on the bed. Vaughan stared a moment longer before turning back to his sister, leaning in close enough to hide any words he might be mumbling to her.

Kaie swallowed against a pang of loss as he realized he didn’t feel the weight of her gaze on him anymore.

Judah and Henry weren’t so quick to release him. The giant glared at Kaie with undisguised anger. Henry was grinning at Kaie like he just found a new toy. “
Gotta
say, Whoreson, I’m impressed!” He barked. Kaie tried not to cringe. The man’s voice was like nails driving through his skull. “I didn’t realize you could get it up for lady parts! So did you have to close your eyes and think of Gregor, or…”

The glare he shot at Henry must have been a good one, because the man shut up. The smirk didn’t go away.

“Lady Dau wants to talk to me.”

The giant said nothing. Henry’s eyes went wide. “What? So the brown girl’s delivering messages now? How could the crazy bitch even know that? She’s got a way out of here?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Kaie said lowly. “I’m going.”

“The Abyss you are!” Henry hissed.

A knot formed between Judah’s brows. Kaie could almost hear the problem swirling in the other man’s head. The soldier still didn’t trust him. But he nodded.

Kaie didn’t listen to Henry’s protests. He grabbed one of the dark cloaks they used from the pile made days ago,
then
turned back to the stairs.

Vaughan stood in his way.

The blonde didn’t say a word, just stayed there like an unmovable door, blocking the path to Mola.

“Get out of the way.”

Nothing.
Kaie shifted his weight back and forth, tempted to barrel through the smaller man. “I’ll be back,” he blurted in frustration. “Then you can be as much of an asshole as you want. Until then, find something useful to do, will you?”

“You abandoned her once already,
Bruhani
.”

Kaie flinched. “I’m not abandoning anyone. I’m coming back.”

Vaughan nodded slowly. Kaie couldn’t shake the sense that something deeper than he intended just passed between them. But the blonde stepped out of the way. He hurried down the circular staircase, too happy to be free of all the tension in the room to give it any further thought.

Mola was waiting for him. Kaie took just long enough to tug the hood of the cloak over his hair, then followed her out a door built into the wall just left of the cabinets.

It didn’t lead into the passes, but out into the streets. For a second, Kaie was certain she was betraying him. But they weren’t standing in front of the building claimed by the Fourth. They were on a different street entirely, and hidden from the enemy by a row of houses. Mola waited for him to take it in, then darted off ahead.

Within moments, they were in another of the small courtyards with a defaced statue. A second after that, she was prying up part of the cobbles and gesturing him into the opening below. It made him suspect each house had some similar door.
Maybe every single building.
The planning such a project would require was inconceivable.

It also made it obvious that Callo’s claim about the reasons for the passes wasn’t the whole truth. Whatever purpose the tunnels served, it was much larger than that.

This wasn’t the time to sort it out, though. He dropped down into the pass. A strange smell hit him. It was familiar, but he couldn’t place it.

When the door closed over her head Mola threw herself at him. Still on the stairs, Kaie fought to tumble against the only wall. Once his back hit it, one of her knives was at his throat. He growled at her but the sound cut off in shock as he felt her other hand at his pants. Forbidden memories surged against the walls he’d spent weeks building, and panic sunk its claws into him.

Furious, he shoved her without any thought to the blade. He felt a sharp sting just under his chin. He slammed his body down on top of hers. They fell against the steps together, and she let out a soft cry of pain as her shoulders hit one of the ledges.

“What are you doing?” He snarled.