Chapter 50 When We Finally Spoke Honestly

Chapter 50 When We Finally Spoke Honestly
Brea's POV

The door slammed. The sound of the city cut off instantly rain, Drake's voice somewhere behind the glass, all of it gone. I sat in the sudden quiet and tried to remember how to breathe normally.

Rayne was in the seat beside me. Looking forward. His jacket wet from the instant rain that began, but he was too composed for someone who had just hoisted Drake off the ground by his throat.

The car pulled away from the curb.
"Stop the car," I said.

He didn't respond. "Rayne." My voice came out tight. "Stop the car." Nothing. The city moved past the rain-streaked window.

I turned to look at him. At the profile that gave nothing away. At the complete absence of any acknowledgment that I had just said the same thing twice and been ignored both times.

"Were you monitoring me?" I said. "Is that how you found me?"
He turned his head slightly. "Are you finished?"

"No," I said. "Answer the question."

"I have a city to run, Brea. I wasn't watching you." He adjusted his cuff. "Elias activated a Nikolai Emergency Beacon before your teleportation jump. It's standard protocol for any registered occult practitioner operating inside royal borders.

It's an automatic distress signal that routes directly to my security network." A pause. "He called for help before you both left the ground."

"He didn't tell me that."

"No. He wouldn't." Something almost moved in his expression. "I was already at the Low-Sector border. My sensors picked up the Void-Drop surge the energy displacement from your jump registered as a potential Coven attack on my eastern boundary. I was in an armored convoy investigating." He finally glanced at me.

"The attack turned out to be you."

I looked at my hands in my lap. The bandage on my palm. The grey world that was slightly less grey than it had been.

Then, we were both silent. It wasn't comfortable being Sileby.

Rayne looked forward. Unhurried. Like we were taking a scenic drive through a rainy city at midnight and nothing in the last several weeks had happened.

Something about that specific unbothered quality finally cracked something open in me.

"Aren't you going to say anything?" I said.
"About what?"

"About..." I stopped. Started again. "The square... The knife." My voice came out quieter than I intended. "I know what it looked like. I know what I did."

"You’ve said that already," he said. "I saw what it looked like."
"Then say something about it." He turned to look at me then. Just once. Brief.

"I know it wasn't you," he said. I stared at him. "You know."

"Yes."

"And you're not..." I searched his face for something. Anger. Accusation. Anything that matched the weight of what had happened. "You're not angry?"

"No."

"How?" The word came out almost frustrated. "I put a blade in your chest, Rayne!"

"Anger," he said, "is for things that surprise me." He looked forward again. "You don't surprise me, Brea."

The car moved through the rain. I sat with that.
Something about the way he said it.. not coldly, just factually, like it was simply true loosened something in my chest that I hadn't realized was still knotted.

It was only then, in the quiet after it, that the other thing surfaced.

"I shouldn't have been possessed by the nine witches," I said. Then stopped. "I don't know why I'm even telling you this."

He said nothing. Just waited in that particular way he had not pressuring, just present, like he had all the time in the world and intended to use it.

"There's something in my blood," I said, quieter now. "Something that made me a target. Made the circle respond to me. Elias called it an Anchor." I looked at my hands. "I didn't know any of it until recently."

He turned to look at me. "I was already aware," he said.
I looked up. "You were?"

"Since the square," he said. "The moment that blade landed I felt what was behind it. Magic leaves a mark on a wound. That one didn't feel like a human strike." He looked forward again. "I knew then."

"And you said nothing."
"You didn't ask," he said. I looked out the window. The rain against the glass.

The quiet stretched again. Different this time..not the angry kind, just the kind that exists when two people are sitting with too many things unsaid.

Then I thought about the bed. About Seraphine's hair spread across the pillow beside him. About the fact that she had been the one beside him every night since the square while I was forty-three floors up in a penthouse learning to summon sorcerers.

"Seraphine," I said. He said nothing.
"She's always there," I said. "Isn't she. Right beside you. Every room."

"She's my Guardian," he said. "That's her function."
"Her function," I said. The word sat wrong. "Right."

"Brea.."

"She's possessed," I said. "Since the square. When Elias scattered the smoke it found her.... Isadora's soul, the witch from some centuries back. It relocated into Seraphine. She's been inside her since that night. Using her access to you. Your blood-keys. Your wards. Everything."

He was quiet. "Rayne."

"I heard you," he said. "Then say something."

"What do you want me to say?" His voice was flat. "She's my Guardian. Three hundred years without a single act I can point to and say that was betrayal. If something entered her at the square that isn't her fault." He looked at me.

"Unlike someone else in this car who put a blade in my chest and I'm not holding that against either." The comparison landed exactly where he intended it to.

"That's not the same," I said.

"Isn't it?"

"She's going to use you," I said. "Your blood specifically. Rayne, I'm the anchor and you're the fuel and if Isadora completes the ritual through Seraphine's body she becomes permanent... she becomes what she was trying to become in 1745 and she cannot be stopped after that."

He looked at me for a long moment. “You’re describing what I already prepared for,” he said.
“Stop saying that.”

The silence in the car was the kind that had pressure in it.
I looked at the door. The car was moving. Rain on the windows. The driver behind the partition, not looking back.

"Stop the car," I said in a loud tone. The driver didn't respond. I looked at Rayne. He was looking forward again with that absolute composure that I had spent weeks misreading as indifference and had never fully learned to tolerate.

I kicked the door open. The rain hit me immediately cold, hard, the pavement rushing past below. I had one second of understanding that this was a bad idea before Rayne's hand closed around my arm and his voice went to the driver and the brakes engaged and the car screamed to a stop in the middle of the wet road.

I wrenched my arm free and got out.

The rain was still at its peak. I walked. I didn't know where. Just away....

"I'm done," I said. To the rain. To nobody. "I'm done with you."

His boots hit the pavement behind me. His hand closed around mine and turned me around.

I looked up at his face rain running down it, the composure finally, finally showing something underneath.

"I'm jealous, Brea." He held my arms.

I didn't want to look at his face "I cannot bear to watch another man hold you." His voice was rough in a way it never was.

"When I saw Drake carrying you out. I wanted to burn the entire district down. Every street. Every building. Everything he'd ever touched that you'd also touched."

"Rayne...."

"The night I got my memories back," he said, "I came to apologize. I stood at your window and I saw you crying on his shoulder and I left because I couldn't stand in that room and be one more thing asking something from you." His grip on my hand tightened.

"I am a King. I have never begged for anything in my life." His eyes stayed on mine, rain and everything. "And I am standing in the middle of a road in the rain begging for one woman who will not stop running."

The sob came before I decided to let it.

It broke out of me, I turned as I pressed my face against his chest and felt his arms come around me and held on.

His mouth crashed into mine. No hesitation. No softness. Just raw, desperate need. The rain poured down around us, but I barely felt it.

All I felt was him in his hands gripping my hair, my fingers fisting in his jacket, the heat of his body against mine in the middle of the empty road.

I kissed him back just as hard, pouring every ounce of fear, guilt, and longing into it.