“Why bother, she can’t get off the island,” Arden says, though I note the hint of uncertainty in his voice.
“I agree, but she’s also stubborn and has a reckless streak. If anyone would try to escape, it’d be her,” I say, acknowledging what we’re both thinking.
“I underestimated her,” Arden says, snaking his fingers roughly through his hair.
“Wouldn’t be the first time,” I say.
He doesn’t argue because he knows I’m right.
“I’ll check downstairs.”
“I’ll do upstairs.”
He spins on his heel, and I call after him. “She’s here somewhere.”
The brief nod he gives me is the only indication he’s heard what I’ve said.
By the time I reach the kitchen, the last room to check because it’s the furthest part of the house to where I started, I’m cursing how fucking huge our home is and how many hiding places there are. Like Carrick suggested, this could’ve been a fun experience if there wasn’t so much at stake, and I can’t help but recall how we enjoyed a little game of cat and mouse when we were teenagers. Well, we enjoyed it, I can’t speak for Cyn.
Pushing those memories of our time at Silver Oaks Institute aside, I open the kitchen door only to find her standing right before me.
“So this is where you’ve been hiding,” I say at the sight of her. She’s wearing an apron wrapped around her waist and a sheen of sweat across her forehead as she stirs some liquid in a large iron pot on the kitchen table. “What are you doing?”
She glances up at me, her expression calm as she jerks her chin towards the seat at the end of the table.
Sit, she silently demands.
“You do realise Carrick is out in this shitty weather searching for your broken body at the bottom of Briars Point,” I say, glancing at the darkening sky through the kitchen window as I pull out the stool and sit down, refusing to look too closely at how my body slumps in relief. It’s probably fatigue. I haven’t slept well in years, pretty sure insomnia is a condition designed to bring down even the hardiest of men.
She gives me a blank look that says nothing and everything at the same time. This fucking woman. How many times have I received that very same look from her over the years? Too many to count, I can assure you. She intrigues and frustrates me in equal measure.
“So what’s the deal?” I ask, picking up a twig from a pile in front of me, wondering what possible use it has.
Cyn can make something out of the randomest of shit. She’s gifted, some kind of genius in the art of herbology and has an encyclopaedic brain when it comes to knowing everything there is to know about every species of plant, flower, shrub and funghi. Not to mention minerals and precious stones.
Arden believes she’s an alchemist, a person who is able to turn base metals into precious metals, and who is connected to the spiritual and metaphysical world in a way other people aren’t. He believes she can manipulate the chemical makeup of any object and turn it into something else.
Carrick believes she’s a cailleach, a witch. He took an immediate dislike to her the moment they met back at the institute we all attended as kids. That hatred has twisted into something even more dangerous.
And me? I believe she’s a healer, someone who has an innate ability to understand what ails a person and goes out of her way to help them even if they don’t deserve it. Even if they’re men like us. She’s selfless and kind, proving that time and again over the years.
She’s everything we’re not.
Either way, she’s an obsession none of us are able to shake for differing reasons.
She’s trouble.
“You barricade yourself in your room for a whole day and night and then suddenly this morning you wake up and decide to start…”
In my periphery, Cyn picks up her pen and jots something down in a leather-bound notebook before she grabs the lined pad next to it and scribbles a message, then holds it up for me to read.
I didn’t barricade myself in. The door was unlocked this whole time.
“It was?” I can’t help but laugh, shaking my head at her tenacity. “Carrick just kicked the door down.”
She shrugs, placing her notepad on the table and returning her attention to the huge pot of liquid. If she could speak, I’m pretty sure she’d be calling us all eejits right now. She’d be right too.
Peering at the dried herbs and flowers scattered across the table, I ask, “What are you making anyway?”
Dipping her head over the pot, she inhales deeply. Her eyes flutter shut and her cheeks pink up as she breathes in the scent, which frankly smells less than pleasant. But my olfactory sense takes a back seat when the sun breaks through the clouds and douses her in a golden halo, somehow making her seem impossibly beautiful.
Swallowing hard, I drag my gaze away.
Like I said, she’s trouble.
It's tea. It will help me to remain calm, focused. I’ll need it if I’m going to fulfil my debt, she writes across her notepad, her expression neutral despite the grief she must be feeling.
“That’s fair,” I reply, choosing to take the road less travelled and remain neutral, if not exactly friendly. Arden and Carrick will more than make up for it once they find out she’s been here all along. I know my best friends, despite her doing nothing other than what comes naturally, they’ll want to punish her.
Why?
Because she made us feel fear.
And the Deana-dhe aren’t afraid of anything or anyone.
Except maybe her.
Arden fears the thought of anyone, including her father, using her gift for their own gain. As far as he’s concerned, Cyn is our property. She’s valuable, and whilst we’ve always prided ourselves in putting worth in things other people don’t, like information, we understand that her value is something that cannot easily be bought, or found elsewhere.
Carrick fears her abilities, what she can do. It’s unsurprising given she managed to kill him back at the institute when we were teenagers. The fact she warned him not to taste the tincture or that she brought him back to life with her quick thinking is neither here nor there. He blames her for the nightmares that have haunted him every night since.
And me? I’m afraid of how much I like her. I can’t bring myself to hate her like Carrick, or keep her at arms length like Arden. Carrick thinks I’m putting on an act. I’m not. I like Cyn. I always have. But liking someone isn’t part of the Deana-dhe's modus operandi.
We intimidate, scare, bully, overpower. We rarely hold out the hand of friendship.
Chewing on the inside of her cheek, Cyn holds the pad in her hand, her pen hovering over the paper like she’s trying to decide whether she wants to converse with me more. Eventually, she seems to make up her mind and scribbles something down.
Do you want to try some?
“Of your tea?” I pull a face. “It doesn’t smell good.”
It’s delicious.
“I’m not convinced.”
She shrugs.
“Did you make this for The Masks before we took you from them?” I ask, wanting to know what her relationship with them looked like, needing to understand how someone like Cyn, so pure, so good, could end up being friends with those sadistic bastards.
Cyn looks at me, her expression a blank mask just like it always is when we mentioned her childhood friends. It’s the first time I’ve brought them up since we took her from them a few days ago. We might’ve called in her debt giving her no choice but to come with us, but let's not be mistaken, we did it to seek revenge on The Masks as much as we did for our own personal gain. The look on their faces when we arrived at their castle and called in her debt was worth all the trouble finding their secret lair.