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Sooo not helpful.
“What’s this?” she asked as she took what he offered with trembling fingers. “A postcard?”
She really wished people would stop handing her shit like that.
Quaint picturesque brick buildings with mismatched russet and black roofs huddled together in the old-timeyest of old-timey city squares against the sunset backdrop of a lava sky. A bulbous cathedral stood sentinel above the tiny cityscape. In the background, the cable-stayed Vanšu Bridge she used to sketch pictures of in high school stretched along the Daugava River, shuttling travelers into Latvia’s capital city of Riga.
Talk about random and breathtaking.
“Why are you showing me this? This isn’t a stand-in for basic open-mouthed communication. I’ve had three weeks of silence from you and now you’re sending me a literal postcard? You went to Europe. Congratulations.”
He had the base-level decency to look chagrined at the picture her connected dots revealed. “Probably could have worked on the delivery a bit.”
“You think?” Then she tossed the card onto the counter. “Why are you here, Brass? To hurt me some more? I’ll give you the heads-up now that I’m standing in a room of very sharp knives and I’m ambidextrous. Expertly two-handing a set of Benny’s meat cleavers is most definitely a skill I possess, in case you’re wondering.”
His eyes shifted to the knife blocks for a beat before returning to her. “Because you need to know I love you and I fucked up.”
Molly cringed. “You fucked up because you love me?”
“What? No! I fucked up because— Mages, dammit, that’s not what I meant.”
“Then what did you mean?” she challenged with a hand on her hip.
Brass pinched the bridge of his nose. “I mean, I was afraid of losing the one person I can’t live without because of what might happen if you learned of your magic and one day decided to use it against me.”
A different chasm opened up inside her, separate from the one that had swallowed her happiness. “You really thought I would hurt you? That’s why you kept your knowledge of my magic from me?”
Shame, hot and fresh, darkened Brass’s features. “Yes,” he said quietly but still forced himself to look at her. “Ragana’s curse, it . . . it did something far worse than I think even she ever intended. Males who wield magic, they’re always ruthless, but they’re also always the same. Predictable in their offensive attacks, outward displays of power, you name it. But Ragana? Her ruthlessness was in her patience. Her magic was a slow, drawn-out torture that I hadn’t been prepared for. It ruined me and sent me to a dark place I didn’t think I could ever come back from.” A shattered breath rattled out of him, stripping away his defenses as well as some of her own.
“When I first sensed that you had magic, I went back to that dark place. The worries, the concerns, the paranoia. I kept wondering, what if you would eventually be the same? What if, after you’d learned of your abilities, you’d figure out a way to manipulate the men around you? Mages know you have more than enough reason to do so, especially after how so many of them treated you. How I treated you.” He took a deep breath and stepped closer. “I was wrong. So very fucking wrong, Molly. Your magic wasn’t this evil poison I thought it was solely because you happened to be a woman. Ragana was the poison, not all women, and certainly not you.” He risked a step forward and dipped his forehead low to caress hers. “Never you.”
But before she sank into his heat, a worried prickle pulled her back. “You lied to me. Humiliated me in front of your family . . . a family that had begun to feel like mine, too.” Heat flared beneath her cheeks, forcing some of the mortification she’d worked so hard to forget to come bubbling to the surface.
Brass rushed to grab her hand and wouldn’t let it go when she tried to pull away. “I lied to myself. And believe me, my brothers were more than happy to call me out on my bullshit. Chrome melted down my favorite gun, saying he’d make me a new one after he finished training you on how to use it.”
A small snort left her nose, interrupting the groveling session, but Molly sucked it back in and steeled the rest of her features. Just the mention of Chrome and the others was enough to cast a pall over a life she’d worked too hard to illuminate. “I miss him. I miss Drea, too, but I can’t bring myself to look at either of them now. It hurts too much.”
“They’re waiting for me to fix my fuck-up before they can bang down this door and snatch you up again and are more than happy to vote my ass out if I can’t get the job done.”
Molly stared at him with a renewed interest, trying to ignore the spark that was beginning to brighten within her chest. Feeling a change of subject was better than examining how she was further hurting, she gestured toward the picture on the counter. “What’s with the card?”
Brass’s chest lifted. “During the past few weeks, I’ve been thinking about family a lot. How I have one that’s willing to melt me down into literal scrap, and you’ve just found out your ancestral family was blessed by a Baltic deity. So, armed with knowledge about your family I didn’t have before, I did a little digging.” He leaned over the counter and pointed at a moderate-sized building not far from the cathedral. “That’s a hotel in Riga. Small place, but as it turns out, the owners are from a town not far from where you were born. They, uh, knew your parents. Your birth parents, I mean. Remember them.”
The dam holding back Molly’s impossibly large wave of emotions was a hairbreadth away from creating a civilization-ending event. “You found where I’m from?” she said in disbelief.
He nodded with the certainty of a man who had decided long ago that there was no going back. “The hotel is not far from a museum dedicated to, get this, Baltic mythology. I’ve been in touch with the museum director, and he’s been putting me in contact with the right people to set up some hikes and tours of the area.”
“Tours?”
“Well, not, like, on a bus or anything. I was just given some guidance on the best places to see and how to get there. The travel’s all on me.” A sly sparkle played in the amber depths of his eyes. “There’s no better way to see the countryside than flying above the treetops around it, especially while I’m holding you close to me.”
Molly’s jaw lowered. “When you say, ‘the travel’s all on you,’ you mean . . .”
“I want to be your guide, Molly. I want you to be in my arms and beneath my wings as we discover the forests, seas, and countryside of your ancestral homeland. I want to give you back the family you lost and the family that loves you. I want to learn and explore your magic right along with you.” He stepped closer and gathered her hands against his chest. “I want to clean up every single dish that comes out of your kitchen and bounce every single fool customer who doesn’t deserve your talent. There are lifetimes I’ve missed out on. Entire species have grown into existence and succumbed to extinction in the time I’ve been in the mortal realm. And I’d endure all those long eons again if you’d only be waiting for me at the end of them.”
“I’d never ask you to do that,” she said, still reeling from the shock of his words.
“Family doesn’t ask, and neither do mates,” he said, lifting her face to his. “It’s my job to anticipate your needs, to care for you as the other half of my soul. I love you. Nothing will ever change that, whether I have your forgiveness or not.”
