Chapter 40 40

Chapter 40 40
Lena's POV

Demi ate like someone who had not seen a proper meal in months.
Which, based on what she had told me in the hour after the gate, was exactly the situation.
She sat at the small table in the guest room Percy had prepared and worked through everything on the plate in front of her with the focused intensity of a woman who had decided that food was the first priority and everything else could wait its turn.
I sat across from her and watched her and felt something in my chest that kept cycling between relief and fury and back again and could not settle on either one.
Relief because she was here.
Fury because of everything that had made here necessary.
"Stop looking at me like that," Demi said without looking up.
"Like what," I said.
"Like I am going to disappear if you look away," she said. She picked up the bread. "I am not going anywhere. I am eating."
"I know," I said.
"You are doing the thing," she said.
"What thing," I said.
"The thing where you hold very still and show nothing and think very loudly," she said. "You have always done it. It is extremely irritating."
I pressed my lips together.
She looked up.
Studied my face.
"You thought I was dead," she said. Not a question.
"Cain told me you were dead," I said. "Specifically. With detail."
Something moved through her jaw. "Cain," she said, in the voice she used when a word needed to carry more weight than it technically contained.
"Yes," I said.
"He knew the whole time," she said. "He knew Rael had me. Rael used him as a go between for the first year. Messages, location updates." She set the bread down. "And then when Cain's usefulness ended Rael cut the communication and Cain went away and I stayed where I was."
"Did he hurt you," I said.
She looked at me.
"Rael is not that kind of man," she said. "He does not damage things he considers assets." A pause. "It was not comfortable. But it was not that."
I breathed.
"I am going to do something about Cain," I said.
"Cain is already dealt with from what Percy told me," she said. "Ashwood is gone. He has nothing."
"That is not enough," I said.
"Sera," she said.
"It is not enough," I said. "He told me you were dead. He described it. He looked me in the face and he—" I stopped. Pressed my hand flat on the table. "It is not enough."
Demi looked at me for a moment.
Then she reached across the table and put her hand over mine.
"Okay," she said quietly. "We will deal with Cain."
I looked at her hand over mine.
At the thinness of her wrist that had not been there before.
At the small scar on her knuckle that was new.
All the evidence of three years written on her in ways I was still cataloguing and was going to be cataloguing for a long time.
"I looked for you," I said. "In the beginning. Before Ashwood. I spent four months trying to find out what actually happened and every door I opened had nothing behind it and eventually I—"
"I know," she said. "Rael was careful. He is always careful."
"I should have kept looking," I said.
"You were being hunted yourself," she said. "Corvin did not let you go easily either."
"That is not the same," I said.
"No," she said. "It is not. But it is also not your fault." She held my gaze. "Sera. It is not your fault."
The guest room was quiet.
Outside the window the morning had fully arrived. Sun on the mountains. The sound of the fortress going about its day, ordinary sounds, the kind that did not know or care that everything had changed at the gate before dawn.
"Tell me about him," Demi said.
I looked at her.
"The Lycan King," she said. "Damon." She picked up the bread again. "The mark on your neck. Tell me about that."
"It is complicated," I said.
"It did not look complicated," she said. "From where I was standing at the gate it looked extremely simple."
"You were at the gate for four minutes," I said.
"I have known you for twelve years," she said. "I do not need four minutes. I need four seconds." She looked at me over the bread. "You like him."
"Demi."
"You more than like him," she said.
"Can you focus on eating," I said.
"I am eating," she said. "I can do two things." She pointed at me with the bread. "You more than like him and it is scaring you and you are managing it the way you manage everything that scares you which is to keep moving fast enough that you do not have to stand still and feel it."
I looked at the table.
"I have been here for weeks," I said. "Things have been complicated."
"Things are always complicated with you," she said. "That has never stopped you from knowing what you wanted." She set the bread down. "Do you know what you want."
I thought about the study. The morning light. Leaning down and pressing my mouth against his.
His face afterward.
"Yes," I said quietly.
"Then what is the problem," she said.
"There is no problem," I said.
She looked at me.
"There is a woman named Lena in a secured room and a man named Rael riding away from this gate and an elder named Croft who I had to go confess my entire history to at midnight and a deed that spent six hours missing and—"
"None of that is the problem," Demi said.
I stopped talking.
"All of that is noise," she said. "Real noise, important noise, but noise." She held my gaze. "The problem is that you have spent three years being a person with no fixed point. No home. No one thing you were building toward." She paused. "And now you have one and it is terrifying because fixed points can be taken away and you know exactly how that feels."
The room was very quiet.
I looked at her.
At the person who had known me for twelve years and had apparently spent three years in Rael's custody getting even better at seeing straight through me.
"I hate when you do that," I said.
"I know," she said. She picked up the bread again. "Go find him."
"It is seven in the morning," I said.
"So," she said.
"He has been awake all night," I said.
"So have you," she said. "Go."
I stood up.
Looked at her.
At the thinness and the new scar and the short hair and all the ways three years had written themselves on her.
"After you finish eating," I said, "Percy will take you to see Rendal. He needs to debrief you on Rael's operation. Everything you saw, heard, everyone who came and went."
She nodded.
"And then you sleep," I said.
"You sound like someone," she said.
"I know who I sound like," I said.
She smiled.
It was the same smile.
Exactly the same as it had always been, underneath everything, under all of it, the same Demi smile that had been the fixed point of my life for twelve years before I lost it.
I had it back.
I turned before she could see what that did to my face.
Walked out.
Closed the door.
Stood in the corridor for a moment with my back against the wall.
Breathed.
Then I walked toward Damon's study.
The door was open.
He was at the desk. Of course he was. Papers in front of him, jacket off, the look of a man who had not slept and was not going to sleep until the last thing on the list was handled and the list kept growing.
He looked up when he heard my footsteps.
Read my face.
"She is alright," he said.
"Yes," I said.
"And you," he said.
I looked at him across the study.
At the desk and the papers and the morning light coming through the window behind him and the man sitting in the middle of all of it who had opened the gate without hesitating and had put his hand on my arm when I was shaking and had said my name in front of a full room of pack leaders like it was the simplest thing in the world.
"Damon," I said.
"Yes," he said.
I crossed the room.
Came around the desk.
He turned in the chair to face me and looked up at me with those dark eyes that were not doing the wall thing at all, had not been doing the wall thing for a while now, and I was done pretending that was not something I had noticed.
I put my hand against his jaw.
He went very still.
"I am not managing this anymore," I said. "Whatever this is. I am done managing it."
He looked at me.
"Good," he said.
It came out low and certain the way everything he said came out and it landed in my chest and stayed there.
I leaned down.
He met me halfway.
And the kiss was not like the one in the study the night before, brief and fast and something I had walked away from before I could overthink it. This one had the whole morning in it. The gate and the deed and the three years and Demi eating bread across a table and every corridor and crisis and midnight conversation that had been building toward this specific moment.
His hand came up to the back of my head.
I grabbed the front of his shirt.
Outside the window the mountains were gold with morning sun and the fortress was going about its day and none of it stopped.
When we finally broke apart he was looking at me with that expression I had decided I was never going to get enough of.
"The papers can wait," I said.
"Yes," he said. "They can."
"And you need to sleep," I said.
"So do you," he said.
"I know," I said.
He stood up.
And from the corridor outside the open door, at the exact wrong moment, Percy's voice.
"I am so sorry," Percy said, in the voice of a man who was genuinely sorry but was going to say the thing anyway. "Rendal needs you both. Now."
Damon looked at me.
I looked at him.
"Rael," Damon said to the corridor.
"Rael," Percy confirmed. "He stopped two miles from the fortress. He is not riding away." A pause. "He is setting up camp."
I closed my eyes for exactly one second.
Then I opened them.
Damon was already reaching for his jacket.
I was already turning toward the door.
Some things did not change.