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She wasn’t surprised. She was just another person he’d pushed away. Just another person who had left him.
So, she didn’t actually need anything from the attic. All of Graves’s clothes were higher quality and better fit. It was the closure that she needed.
“You have to tell her,” Gen hissed.
“Tell me what?” Kierse asked, coming back to herself.
“I’m . . . I’m going to stay,” Ethan said.
Kierse blinked. “What do you mean?”
“I mean,” he said, breathing in deeply and then releasing it. He was actually afraid to say this. “I’m going to go train with Lorcan.”
This time, Kierse froze completely. “Come again?”
“He said he could train us . . . me. I’m a . . . Druid,” he said as he floated his hand over his coils nervously. “I don’t know what that means. I don’t even know how it’s possible. But he has answers. He has them now, Kierse.”
“He’s going to play you,” she said. It was hard to keep her tone light.
“He’s not Graves.”
“No, he’s not,” she said, and it wasn’t a compliment.
“He’s going to go whether you approve or not,” Gen said. “So just be happy for him.”
“Happy for him,” she repeated. “He tried to kill you. Both of you. He almost did kill me.”
“I know,” Ethan interjected. “But I want this. I have magic; I want to know how to use it. So, I’m going to go train with him. You made your deal with the devil. Let me make mine.”
She didn’t want to. She wanted to beg him not to do it, but she couldn’t make his choices for him.
“Of course,” she said instead. “Of course, if that’s what you want.”
Ethan blew out another breath. “You . . . you could come, too.”
“I couldn’t,” she said. “I need my own answers. Not ones that come with strings. I hope he gives you what you’re looking for, and if he hurts you, remind him that I will kill him.”
Ethan laughed before clearing his throat when he realized how deadly serious she was. “Yeah, I’m sure he’ll love that.” He turned to Gen. “And you?”
“I agree that you should do what is best for you even if we disagree,” Gen said quietly. “But I’m with Kierse.”
He nodded. “I figured.”
“We’ll be back, though,” Gen insisted. “Can’t keep us away forever.”
Gen beckoned Kierse in, and she let her friends hug her. This triskel, as Lorcan had said, that had created between them. She knew they were stronger together. The thought of Ethan going off with Lorcan was . . . wrong. And yet, she couldn’t stop him any more than he could stop her. But she felt bereft at the thought of his absence.
Gen patted Kierse’s arm and then followed Ethan to the door.
“Kierse,” he said over his shoulder. “Until next time.”
She smiled back at him, fighting down tears. “Until next time.”
When he was gone, she let the tear track down her cheek. She swiped it away angrily. Ethan had made his choice. That was all there was to it.
A creak on the stairs brought her right back to reality. She whirled around, hoping that he’d changed his mind, but against all odds, the figure that walked into the attic was Graves.
She inhaled sharply at the sight of him. He cut a sharp figure in a stark black suit. His wound must have fully recovered, since he wasn’t even in a sling. No one else would ever know that he had been stabbed less than a week earlier. But Kierse knew. She could see it in the tilt of his head, the clench of his jaw, the weight of him. She knew him too well not to see the strain. It hit her so much harder, knowing that. That she did know him.
And her tangled feelings made it all so much worse.
“I never thought I’d see you in here,” she admitted as he came fully into the attic.
“I wanted to see you before you left.”
“You didn’t send a car? Or wait for me to show up?”
“I came to you,” he answered simply.
Kierse looked away from him. “It’s not much, but it was home.”
“I understand its importance in your life.”
“Well, are you going to ask me to stay?” she asked, glancing up at him again.
His eyes were soft. “Would that work?”
She laughed slightly. “A question for a question. How very Graves.”
“Stay,” he said, a note like pleading in his voice.
“I can’t,” she told him.
She had wanted those words from Graves. She had wanted him to want her like that. To need her in that way. She had thought for a time that they were the same. And at their core, they were.
They fit together not just because he was the Holly King and she, his wren. But because they were two broken pieces of the same tapestry, and being with him was like being sewn back together. Only he’d sliced his sword down that mended seam. And she didn’t quite know how to repair it.
