The Splendour Falls (46 page)

‘The circle involves trust,' he said, and I shivered, because the surface of his statement was reassuring, but there was a darker thread beneath. ‘I put in my paper. I trust you all to stick to the plan. So let's get on with it.'

I could visualize the scene startlingly well, the TTC all putting their wishes in the pot, like votes at the Vatican. I steeled myself as the chant began again, the
voices of the circle joining a bit raggedly, like you might expect from a bunch of teens. Then they knit together and intensified, and I heard Shawn start to speak. I couldn't understand what he was saying, but the words trailed down my spine like frigid drops of water, spreading the cold of fear.

My pulse beat light and fast under my prickling skin. Anything seemed possible in the building energy of the night. I started to rise from my crouch, just to peek, like looking under your bed when you were sure there was a monster there. I hadn't done more than shift my weight when someone reached out of the shadows and pulled me back down, covering my mouth as I sucked in a terrified breath to scream.

‘Shh.' Rhys whispered in my ear, too softly to carry through the screen to the circle inside. ‘Just stay here.'

I wasn't going anywhere with his arm holding me so tightly to his chest that I could feel his heart thudding against my back, as if he was as afraid as I was. His breath stirred my hair against my face, and I realized how still the night was.

‘You're here,' I whispered inanely.

‘So are you.' He didn't sound angry, though. He sounded relieved, and I realized that what he meant was ‘You're not inside.'

Shawn's voice continued over the ebb and flow of the chant, raising gooseflesh on my skin. ‘What language is that?' In the movies it was always Latin, but this was different.

Rhys listened for a moment. ‘Really bastardized Welsh, I think.'

‘You
think
?' Wouldn't he know?

‘His accent is so bad it might as well be Greek.' His arm tightened around me in warning as the chant paused, as if for collective breath. I stayed still, muscles braced and tight, until the sound started again. After his one exhale of relief, Rhys spoke in my ear. ‘Let's get out of here.'

I didn't argue as he tugged me to my feet, pulling me with him across the shadowed lawn until we were hidden in the rustic palace of the towering oaks. The woods seemed to knit around us, but not in the terrifying way they'd fooled me the other night, when I'd seen Hannah here. This was comforting shelter, not a claustrophobic maze.

When we were well into the trees, I shook my fingers free of his grip and came to a stop, panting even though we hadn't run very far or fast. ‘What
was
that?' I asked in a ragged whisper.

Rhys ran a hand over his face, looking almost as shaken as I felt. ‘You said it yourself the other night. Magic.'

‘Thinking it is a lot different than feeling it.' My brain whirred with fight-or-flight adrenaline, trying to hold onto as many details as possible and fit them into theories, all while dealing with
holy crap, magic is real.
‘And you know about this stuff? I mean, not just this here, but—' I made a wide, encompassing gesture, since this was so much more than I could yet wrap my mind around.

He shook his head, scattered and distracted. ‘My experience has been similar but different.'

‘Different how?' My whisper was harsh with demand.

He paced a few steps, then back. ‘Different like rugby is from American football.'

‘Sports analogies aren't going to work for me, Rhys.'

With a long exhale, he seemed to collect himself, centre his thoughts on me and the here and now. ‘They're both about running a ball through to a goal, but the details are different.'

‘Like Russian and French schools of ballet.' Alike enough that if you were a novice, you couldn't tell the difference. Football was football, magic was magic. ‘But
how
do you know about this at all?' We were standing close so we could whisper, and at my question, I felt his tension step up, even above the stress already vibrating between us. ‘Rhys?'

‘In Pembrokeshire,' he answered shortly. In the tree-filtered moonlight, it was hard to see his expression. ‘You said Dad told you about the mine collapse.'

A new wave of shock rushed over me. ‘That was caused by magic?'

‘Indirectly.' His tone was taut with reluctance, as well as an obvious tight grip on a whole backlog of emotions. ‘But that's how I recognized the signs, in the history and the … the atmosphere here. What Shawn is doing, it messes with the balance of things.'

The air was warm and humid, but my insides were icy, and I wrapped my arms around my middle. ‘So even if Shawn and the council are doing good for the town, it might cause something bad to happen?'

He looked at me, still tense, his tone guarded, his shoulders braced. ‘Do you think Shawn is doing right?'

Some part of me still wanted to think that Shawn's intentions were good. But put to the question, I had to say, ‘No.'

From what I'd overheard, there was room for selfish requests, though Shawn clearly held the reins tight, with Addie his second in command. But even if everyone asked for things with no downside, what if something bad had to happen to bring it about? Something like – an awful realization curdled in my stomach – a surveyor falling in the river.

‘Oh my God.' I looked at Rhys, who waited, expectantly, warily, for me to work things out. The bruises on his face had almost healed, but I could see them vividly in my mind's eye. What if it was magically expedient to have Rhys out of the way too?

‘And you thought I could be involved with this?' My voice rose indignantly, and I wrestled it back down to a whisper.

Rhys leaned forward, matching my challenging – but quiet – tone. ‘What was I supposed to think, with Shawn awaiting your arrival like you were his ordained priestess. That's why Addie hates you so much. You were meant to take her place.'

‘I didn't know
any
of this,' I protested.

‘Which I realized,' he said, in that too-patient way that betrayed his impatience. ‘Except that you were so obviously hiding something.'

I stiffened, amazed there was any room in my
tangled emotions for hurt or offence. ‘I thought I was losing my mind, with all the things going on here. Like you, being all secretive—'

Rhys caught my arm and I broke off with a startled gasp. ‘Let me finish, Sylvie.' He stepped close, where he could speak in an unvoiced whisper. ‘You started working in the garden, and I saw the way it thrived and how you were flourishing too, and it seemed impossible that you could
not
know who you were and what you could do.'

‘What are you talking about?' Frustration and fear tumbled together in my head. I was so confused, and his words were sprouting buried insights – the way I could soothe my anger with my hands in the earth, weed by touch, bring the garden back to life.

Rhys watched the play of realization on my face, and when I met his gaze, he asked gently, ‘Sylvie, have you even noticed you're not limping any more?'

My mouth opened to speak, but there were no words.

His hand still grasped my arm, but lightly, and his thumb stroked the inside of my wrist in a way that perhaps he meant to be soothing, but which, with his words, sent shudders of reaction to the heart of me. ‘There
is
magic here. Shawn is using it through his circle of friends. You're doing it through the garden. When I saw that happening, I knew you were the one that Shawn thought you were. Are.'

‘So you thought I was planning to hook up with him and rule this little corner of the world with our Davis-Maddox superpowers?' We were standing very
close, and my whispered indignation didn't have far to carry.

He didn't apologize. ‘Wouldn't you do anything to dance again?'

His words punched me in the stomach, drove the breath out of me. Because they were true. Rhys mercifully went on, not making me acknowledge it aloud. ‘In any case, the night at the river convinced me you were naïvely going on instinct.'

I looked up at him with a challenge. ‘That's why you suddenly
liked
me after I proved my innocence by nearly plummeting to my death.'

His expression turned rueful, almost sheepish. ‘I
liked
you before, but I didn't want to.'

My eyes narrowed. ‘You let me think it was just me.' And I meant everything. The liking. The feeling of connection, of familiarity.

‘I was an idiot,' he said, brushing back my tangled hair.

My pulse fluttered, and I fought the temptation to lean into him. He was so close I could feel the warmth of him even in the humid air. ‘That much I did know.'

Nothing was settled, and few of my questions were answered, but it was a struggle to straighten my spine and stiffen my resolve. ‘But what's
your
part in this?' I asked, too breathlessly. ‘Why couldn't you just tell me, or ask me outright? Did you come here knowing about the TTC, or did you just stumble on them?'

He looked pained by my badgering, but not annoyed. ‘That's a lot of questions, princess.' His fingers
traced lightly down my arm, to skim over my palm and finally tangle with mine. ‘Which will take a while to answer.'

A magical potential of our own was building, and my questions, while vitally important, seemed less
urgent
at the moment.

I asked one more, my eyes on his, looking for evasion. ‘Are you trying to distract me?'

With a small smile, he admitted, ‘Maybe a little bit.' He drew me closer by our linked fingers, until my arm was wrapped around his waist, his hand holding mine, unresisting, at his back. ‘Would that be so bad?' he asked, brushing my cheek with his other thumb.

‘Just this once,' I whispered, already knowing it was a lie. More than ever, there was the past, present and future in the touch of his lips to mine.

He kissed me softly, and after one gently enquiring pause, kissed me again. And that was the end of asking anything. I tugged my hand from his, but only so I could wrap my arms around him properly and he could draw me even closer, which he did, without hesitation. For all the confusion he'd caused me, there was nothing equivocal about the way his mouth caressed mine, the way his fingers slid into my hair to cradle the back of my head.

The timing was bad, but the kiss was so right. Not just the feel and taste of him, but everything – the sheltering woods, the water rushing nearby and the green, wet scent all around us.

Too soon, but too late for me to ever be the same again, Rhys pulled back, setting me away from him as if
he needed to break the connection or go mad. I knew how he felt.

‘We do not want to do this here,' he said, his hands still on my shoulders, his thumbs tracing my collarbones. My shirt was crooked and out of place, but not as much as I wanted it to be.

‘OK,' I said, still breathless. ‘Where do we want to do it?'

He accepted the invitation, pulling me close again, hands spanning my waist. I twined my arms around his neck like the vines that wrapped the standing stone in my garden. One endless kiss, new and familiar as the last, then the world spun and we were falling onto the thick carpet of pine needles and oak leaves. They scratched my skin as my shirt rode up, but the feeling anchored me to the earth, like Rhys's welcome weight, his arms still around me.

My head reeled with sensation and emotion, not all of which I could sort out. His and mine, and some memories that seemed overlaid from some other time. I felt a dread of being caught, but it paled next to this longing.

It was that specific dread, not of anyone living, that made me finally pull away – put cool, damp air between us. There was more in that moment somehow than my brain could hold, and I felt that if I let the kiss continue, if I let my
thoughts
continue, I might splinter.

‘Don't,' I whispered, when he would have drawn me back down. ‘I have to get back. The Colonel is watching.' I was oddly aware it was a nonsensical thing to say,
that I was losing the division between myself and the echoes of the past.

‘I don't care,' said Rhys. He ran his fingers through my hair, combing out the pine needles and letting the tangled strands fall around us like a curtain. ‘He's just a ghost in a window. He can't hurt you now.'

‘Then why am I so scared of him?' I breathed the question, trying not to let him distract me. ‘Whenever I feel that awful, freezing cold in the stairs—'

My mind snagged on a thought, and I pushed my hair back so what moonlight filtered through the trees illuminated his face. ‘Have you
seen
him?'

His eyes narrowed warily, as if he didn't like where this might be headed. ‘Not exactly. A hint, maybe. A bit of cold.'

I pushed myself up with a hand on his chest. He winced, and I remembered his bruises, but didn't let remorse dull my anger. ‘It would have saved me a world of anxiety if you had mentioned that sooner.'

‘I
did
tell you that you weren't crazy.' He propped himself on his elbows. ‘If
you'd
told me you were seeing things, I would have reassured you sooner.'

‘Now I remember why I was irked with you.' I sat up, straightening my clothes, wishing I could do the same with my dignity. ‘Even after the river, you
still
didn't trust me.'

‘Sylvie,' he began. I thought – hoped – he would try and smooth things over, but he just said, ‘Keep your voice down.'

That was the pin that popped the last bubble of the dreamlike interlude. The right answer was ‘I trust you
now,' or even better, ‘I was a jerk.' It was
definitely
not ‘Be quiet.'

‘I'll do better than that,' I retorted – in a whisper – as I pulled myself up off the forest floor. ‘I'm out of here.'