Fallen Ward (Deepwoods Saga Book 3) (24 page)

Siobhan’s eyes fluttered open and she stared blindly ahead. Weeks ago, she had been hit with the question: Could she ever see Wolf as a man?

Now, in this moment, the question was suddenly answered: Yes.

For the first time, Siobhan was acutely aware that she was a woman, and she was being held by an incredibly attractive man. In fact, her feminine instincts were chastising her for not realizing all of this sooner. All of those days thinking about this seemed like such a waste of time when the answer had been sitting in front of her all along.

There was only one real question left. She’d been told, people had assumed, but until she heard it directly, Siobhan could not act. So she gathered up her courage, and sat back enough so that she could look up.

The light from the moon was barely enough that she could see it when he looked back at her, but the expression on his face was nothing but a blur of shadows. It was his voice, and the flex of his arms, that told her what he was feeling. “What is it? Not working?”

“It’s working,” she answered, picking her words carefully. “I have a question.”

“Alright.”

“Erik. Answer me true. Are you in love with me?”

His breath caught, body tense with surprise. For a full second they stayed locked in that position before he responded with quiet resolution, “Yes.”

“Good.”

“Wha—mmph.”

Siobhan’s kiss caught him by surprise, but Wolf was a master of turning the moment into his favor, and he responded with alacrity. They spent several enjoyable moments entangled together before he separated enough to pant against her mouth, “If you’re doing this as a distraction, because Rune and Tran are scaring you, I’ll go kill them right now.”

“Not,” she denied cheerfully. “I’ve known for weeks that you were probably in love with me. You’ve been my friend for so many years, it took a while for my head to work around the concept of being more. It all just clicked.”

“Just now?” he asked dubiously. “While we’re on a rooftop, in this war-ravaged place, with Tran baying at the moon?”

“You know, put it like that, and it’s terribly unromantic.”

“You understand my confusion, then. Especially since you’ve been acting skittish around me for weeks.”

“I told you that Sylvie asked me a question?”

“The question being…?”

“If I could see you as a man or not. Well, I finally figured out the answer. I
did
promise you’d be the first to know.” She would have explained, but even Siobhan wasn’t sure why her heart had reacted so strongly to this moment. It just had. “Are you confused enough to stop kissing me?”

He didn’t even pause to think about it.

Wolf kept her pleasantly distracted for the rest of the night.

ӜӜӜ

Rune’s eyes were excellent in the dark. It was a side-effect of his former profession. Being in bad lighting like this was hampering him some but he could see a respectable amount. Still, when he glanced up to check on Siobhan and Wolf, he doubted his eyes for a moment. In fact, he blinked several times, not sure if they were playing tricks on him or not.

“Tran,” he hissed, motioning sharply for the man to climb up.

It took Tran a few minutes to find hand and footholds enough to climb the one story building, and then the rest of the way to the little balcony Rune had perched on. When he managed it, he whispered back, “What?”

Rune pointed toward the two on the rooftop two streets over.

Tran stared in that direction for a long moment, leaning forward as if straining to see clearly. “Those two…are they kissing?”

“You see that too?”

“Ahh,” Tran sighed in happy satisfaction. “So they are. Good.”

Rune was relieved as well. Wolf had waited a long time for that to happen. Still…he glanced around and had to wonder, “How did Wolf get her in the mood
here
, of all places?”

“I don’t know and don’t care.”

“You had a bet with someone, didn’t you.”

“Grae,” Tran admitted shamelessly. “We renew it every six months. I won.”

“Just Grae?”

“No, Sylvie too. But she won that one.”

Rune considered that. “Does Sylvie ever lose a bet?” He’d never seen it.

“Very rarely.” Chortling, Tran rubbed his hands together briskly. “We’ll tease them about this later. For now, we have a guildmaster to torment.”

Right. They best get back to that. Even as Rune shifted, heading toward the ground, he stole one more glance at the new couple. His cheeks hurt, he was smiling so widely. It made him happy, in a way he couldn’t readily explain, to know that their hearts were finally in sync with each other.

Thinking of ways he could tease them about this later, Rune lightly landed on the street, his focus already switching to the job at hand. So far, he and Tran had made the usual knocking noises that people linked with ghosts, Tran had sung that very creepy song, and they’d played phantom between the buildings. Alexander was crying, and sometimes begging, for someone to come rescue him.

According to Conli, that was what they’d been waiting on.

Tran sneaked up to a second story window, placing himself just below the windowsill, and breathed out in a hoarse, unearthly voice, “Rescue?”

Alexander had both arms around himself, head swiveling back and forth as he tried to pin the source of the voice. Rune could see it from where he had hid himself around the corner of the building. Even though Tran was on the other side of the wall where he was squatting, Rune’s instincts were sending up flares because of that voice. The man had an amazing range.

“Rescue?” Tran repeated. They had no script pre-written, so Tran was going with the flow and making things up as he went along. “We prayed for rescue. Like you are now. We prayed for rescue. No one came.”

Alexander did not look reassured that the ‘ghost’ was sentient enough to have a conversation with him. In fact, he pedaled backwards on his hands until he slammed into a building, and kept going, as if he were trying to press himself through the wall.

“No one came. We prayed. And fought. And no one came.”

In a very low murmur, Rune warned, “Tran, you might want to ease up.”

“Too much?”

“Maybe a tad. He’s spooked out of his mind right now.”

Neither man spoke for several minutes. They kept an eye on Alexander but he didn’t move from his new spot, just continued to rock himself, and cry. Rune was surprised the kid had any tears left. Seemed like all he had done for the past three days was cry. Or yell.

A long time passed, perhaps an hour, and the crying stopped. Rune waited for him to move, but he didn’t. Instead, he sank all the way to the ground, knees folded and tucked against his chest, head resting on his kneecaps. He stayed slumped over like that as if he hadn’t the slightest inclination to stand and face the ‘ghosts’ haunting him.

Rune frowned. This was not the reaction he was expecting. “Tran?”

“He’s not moving.”

“Strange, right?”

“
I’d
be moving,” Tran said fervently. “For the nearest city gate.”

“I would too.” Thinking about it, he rubbed his jaw before offering, “Maybe we should do the footsteps now?”

“You or me?”

“You sound louder.”

“That’s because you can’t break your habit of sneaking everywhere you go.”

True. Rune didn’t see a need to break that habit, either. Scaring people on a daily basis was one of his pleasures in life.

He tracked it by ear as Tran left the building and came out onto the street. To make it simple, he just went one street over from where Alexander was hunkered down, then ran full speed down the length of it. In this absolute stillness, the sound of his boots striking pavement was raucously loud.

Alexander didn’t jump to his feet and start running, as Rune predicted. He just lifted his head, listening, then dropped it again when Tran stopped.

Straaaaange. Very strange.

Deciding he was too far away to gauge the situation properly, Rune heaved himself onto the nearest roof and skittered his way across until he was just above Alexander’s head. It was only then that he heard the litany that Alexander was saying to himself.

“This is my fault,” the child guildmaster was saying to himself in a steady monotone, voice shaking. “This is all my fault. This is my fault. Mine. My fault. Myfaultmyfaultmyfaultmyfault—”

Yup. They had probably pushed the kid too far. Rune eased back and regrouped with Tran on the other side of the street. Tran had eased one eye around the corner, not that he could see much of Alexander at that angle. “He’s saying something?” he asked Rune as the former assassin landed next to him.

“He’s saying it’s his fault. Over and over.”

“Ahhh. Then I’d say our work here is done. We got the message across.”

Rune gave a grunt of acknowledgment. “Should we maybe get Siobhan now?”

“If you’re willing to interrupt them, be my guest,” Tran invited in dark amusement. “I won’t help you when Wolf comes after your hide, though.”

Good point. Excellent point, actually. Rune valued his own life over Alexander’s sanity. He was staying right here until dawn.

The kid was on his own.

Sometime in the early hours of the morning, the noises died down. Siobhan didn’t see a trace of either Tran or Rune, so she could only assume that Alexander had been scared enough. She probably should have gotten up and checked on the situation herself but two things stopped her: one, she was no longer sure where Alexander was in the city and was afraid that she would stumble across him in the dark, and two, Wolf was entirely too comfortable. The grip he had on her also told her that Wolf had absolutely no intention of letting her go that night. He had waited ten long years for this to happen, and now that it had, she was not going anywhere.

All of that was fine by her. Siobhan did not relish the idea of stumbling around in a dark, potentially haunted, city. No, much better to snuggle with her new lover instead.

Neither of them felt comfortable enough to actually sleep, but they curled up together and fell into a light doze until dawn broke.

As the sky lightened a hand came up over the edge of the roof waving a white handkerchief. “Don’t kill me,” Rune requested. He was half joking, but half serious too.

Ah, Rune must have caught sight of them at some point during the night. Otherwise he would not be so cautious in approaching them this morning. Amused, Siobhan called out a reassurance. “It’s safe, come up.”

“No offense, Siobhan, but it’s not you I’m worried about.”

Wolf’s chest rumbled in a silent laugh. “Come up, kiō.”

Only then did Rune’s head pop into view. He was streaked in dirt and ash, and Siobhan was not sure if that was deliberate or because of all of the sneaking he had done that night, but he had a satisfied smile on his face. “Can I say congratulations?”

“You can,” Wolf told him with a very smug grin.

Rune’s expression said it all. It was filled with joy on their behalf.

Siobhan did not ask because that face made it obvious that he had caught a glimpse of them together sometime during the night. Her mind was already switching to more practical matters. “If you are here this early, I take it that things went well?”

“We actually stopped about three hours ago. The kid is just sitting there muttering to himself.”

Uh-oh. That was not a good sign. Siobhan scrambled to her feet, demanding, “Why didn’t you get me earlier?”

“Because I’m not suicidal.”

Wolf poorly disguised a laugh by pretending he was coughing. Siobhan was not fooled and gave him a Look even as she headed for the street. “Lead me to him.”

It turned out that she was not very far, only two streets over from where Alexander was hunkered down. The sun was just barely strong enough to light the streets and after spending a night in darkness it was more than sufficient to pick a path with.

Alexander was scrunched in on himself like a turtle without a shell. When she was close enough she could tell there was a fine tremor shaking him from head to toe. Siobhan did not try to disguise her footsteps, but even though he could clearly hear her approach he did not look up.

Siobhan came to him the same way that she would a wounded animal. She stopped two feet away, sinking onto her haunches, and spoke in a soft tone. “Alexander.”