“Well, did you?” I insist.
She refuses to respond, her loyalty to the three men angering me.
“You and I both know that the world is a better place now that they’re no longer alive in it,” I remark, noticing how she flinches at my words.
Regret instantly makes me want to apologise, not for speaking the truth but for hurting her, but I swallow it down because I will never understand her friendship with those despicable fucking men. Their deaths, as well as the death of their father, Malik Brov, a couple of years prior, was a blessing. Good fucking riddance to them all. My only regret is that it wasn’t one of us who had the pleasure of taking their lives.
“They deserved everything they got, Cyn,” I add, hating how her love for them still exists despite knowing how evil they were.
But just like she’s so adept at doing, she ignores me, compartmentalising her emotions. If she feels grief, she doesn’t show it. Instead she places her pad and pen back onto the table, picks up a ladle and scoops up some of the liquid, pouring it over a sieve and into a jug. She does this several times until the jug is full, then she pours herself a glass. Even the colour is off putting.
“Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to drink something that’s a hazardous neon yellow?” I ask, watching her curiously as she takes a sip of the tea.
Her expression changes from one of masked indifference to satisfaction as she licks her lips and offers me the cup with a jerk of her chin.
“No. Definitely not,” I say, looking from the cup to her face and back again.
Go on. She urges with her eyes.
“I was never a fan of yellow, it makes my skin look sallow,” I deadpan.
The tiniest hint of a smile plays about her lips and I’d be a liar if it didn’t do something to me.
“Fine!” I say, reaching for the cup. I take it from her, then hold my breath and raise it to my lips, hesitating when Cyn’s eyes flick away from me and widen in horror. From her reaction I know who’s just stepped into the room.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?!” Carrick shouts as he smacks the cup out of my hand and it flies across the kitchen smashing against the cabinet on the other side of the room. “Have you lost your mind?”
One minute Carrick is glaring at me, his black eyes wild with rage, and the next he has Cyn pinned against the kitchen cabinet, his actions snuffing out that brief moment of happiness I witnessed moments before.
And that angers me.
Later when I think about this moment I know I’ll question my actions, and the sudden well of protectiveness that shoved my deep-seated loyalty to Carrick and our brotherhood aside as though it meant nothing. But for now I act.
“Get your hands off her!” I shout, grabbing his shoulder and yanking him backwards.
He stumbles, releasing Cyn. His cheeks are ruddy with cold, but his enmity is an inferno as he turns on me, his best friend, his brother.
“You really think that this act you’ve got going on is going to get you in her knickers, huh?”
“No.”
“Because it won’t,” he snaps, jabbing his finger into my chest. “She didn’t want to fuck us before and she doesn’t want to fuck us now. The only reason she gave us her virginity was because we were high and she could curse us whilst we were under her spell. Have you forgotten the agreement we made after that night?”
“No, I haven’t,” I respond, doing everything in my power to keep myself under control, because like it or not he’s hit a nerve.
I do want to fuck her. On the rare occasions that I’ve managed to grab a few hours of sleep, I’ve dreamt of nothing else but her. That night we took her virginity and sealed our pact is forever etched into my fucking memory. For years I’ve craved the taste of her skin, thought of nothing else but the way she silently came, her body shuddering with pleasure as we fucked her. It was literal heaven on Earth, and no one I’ve been with since has come close to making me feel the same way.
No one.
“You’re acting irrationally. It’s not poison. I watched Cyn drink it herself,” I argue.
“And? She’s smart, she could’ve taken something before you got here to counteract whatever that fucking poison is!” he shouts.
Admittedly, I hadn’t thought of that. Carrick’s right, she is smart, but is she really that cunning or that devious? In truth, my instincts tell me no, that her goodness couldn’t allow her to behave that way. She was friends with The Masks, for fuck sake. Those men were evil personified. She had to be a saint to be friends with those motherfuckers.
Or evil herself…
“You’re letting your dick lead you by the nose, you fucking eejit!”
Before I’m able to respond, Cyn lifts the wooden ladle and slams it against the kitchen table, efficiently drawing our attention back to her.
“What, cailleach?” Carrick sneers, though I see the surprise in his expression.
It isn’t often that she demands attention. For the most part she exists in a state of quiet calm, and I don’t just mean not speaking, but her whole way of being is quiet. She rarely does anything to draw attention to herself. She dresses plainly, she doesn’t make any big gestures to make up for her lack of sound. She just exists, like a wraith.
Haunting us with her presence.
But not this time.
This time everything about her is big, loud, attention-seeing, and we’re both enraptured. Most likely for differing reasons, but enraptured nonetheless.
With her jaw clamped shut, Cyn picks up her notepad and pen, and scribbles furiously across the paper. Her anger is a series of bold and violent lines across the page, forming words that stun us both.
You’re right. I could kill you. I’ve thought about it for years.
“SEE!” Carrick roars, lunging for her.
Cyn dodges him, running around the table with her notepad and pen grasped in her hands.
“Back the fuck up!”
Carrick falters, giving me time to restrain him whilst Arden steps into the kitchen. It doesn’t take him long to figure out what’s happened.
“So this is where you’ve been hiding,” he says, his voice eerily calm.
I watch how Cyn reacts to his presence, the way she straightens her spine further as though readying herself for a fight, yet her chest and cheeks heat, indicating a deeper emotion. There’s always been something more between them, some kind of attraction. Maybe it’s because they’ve both been gifted with extraordinary talent, or perhaps it’s the unexplainable magic that runs in their veins. Because if Cyn is a witch, then Arden’s a seer, just like all the Dálaighs in his family are.
“You’ve helped yourself to the herb selection I bought for you,” he says.
She nods. Yes.
“Do you want to tell us what’s on your mind?” he asks, calm as fuck on the outside, but I know him well enough to see how much she affects him. The tiny muscle twitching beneath his right eye is his biggest tell. He’s barely holding onto his restraint.
Her eyes drop to the pad she’s holding and her face screws up in concentration as she writes. A moment later she holds it up for Arden to read.
I will honour my debt. I will make diamonds. I will do what you want. But I cannot do that if I’m having to watch my back all the time, she says, pointedly looking at Carrick.