Feargus

  After checking to make sure Rhian hadn’t returned to Oskari when I wasn’t looking, I spent the better part of two hours scouring the forests of Amalia. She needed me; I could feel it. Not to mention, it was her twenty-first birthday soon, and with Faust gone, I was hoping we’d spend some quality time together. It was the same story every year. I’d insist we celebrate, she’d insist we don’t. I’d always win. This year, I couldn’t wait to give her the gift I’d bought her in Delphia.

  She was going to hate it.

  With Alexander now having instructions to cease assisting us immediately, I wasn’t sure how that would affect our relationship, but he was the one who’d known where Rhian was living in the forest, so after circling back around, I made my way to the estate.

  Alexander answered the door, and he spoke before I could.

  “Rhian’s here,” he said.

  “Oh,” I answered. “Wait—why?”

  Alexander urged me in, and we stood in the atrium by the big curvy stairs leading up.

  “Because she was alone, exhausted, and filthy.”

  I didn’t like the sound of any of that. I glanced up the stairs. Where was she? The way our voices echoed off the marble, she should have been able to hear us if she were anywhere nearby. She’d come straightaway because, like I said before, she needed me.

  “I’ll rephrase,” I said. “I thought you weren’t supposed to be helping us anymore?”

  “If a tree falls in the forest.” Alexander gestured toward the stairs. “She’s asleep in the pink and gold room.”

  “I don’t want to wake her,” I said.

  “She was having great difficulty sleeping, so I offered to intervene. It would be almost impossible to wake her.”

  With that, I rushed up the stairs, but I stopped at the upper landing, turning around to ask, “Say, Alex—can she hear anything?” Alexander didn’t smile often, but he let a small one slip by, and when he shook his head, I bolted for the pink and gold room.

  I opened the door carefully anyhow.

  As always when she slept deeply, Rhian was curled up on her right side and snoring quietly. True story: my sister hated the colour pink because she said it reminded her of organ meat. But, like our good friend Alexander, Rhian was a bit of a masochist, and so that’s why, even though there was a green room—her favourite colour—she slept in the organ-coloured room. She could never let herself get too comfortable, even in a room full of fluffy pillows.

  Especially in a room full of fluffy pillows.

  I closed the door behind me, took off my boots, and climbed in into the pink and gold bed, lying on my left side, facing her. She looked more clean than I’d seen her in a long time, but that made sense—Alexander had a fancy bathtub.

  Clean, but I was right. She definitely needed me.

  “’Ey, Rhi-rhi.” I gave it a moment just in case, but when she didn’t move, I fixated on my favourite freckle on her left cheek. It was perfectly round and bigger than the others. I was anxious—itching to know why she was living in the forest alone.

  I hoped everything was okay with her and Strauss. I asked, but she didn’t answer.

  “I’m so sorry I haven’t been there for you.”

  Along with the snoring, for every third or fourth breath she took, Rhian’s nose whistled faintly. Her pillow was a bit high for her preference, though. I worried she’d have a sore neck when she woke up, so I adjusted the angle a little bit, and she still didn’t move.

  “I want to know everything that’s going on with you, and I really wish you could talk to me because I don’t want to talk about myself…”

  “…I’m kind of tired of myself at the minute…”

  “…actually.”

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  I rolled over on my back and tucked my hands behind my head. “I guess we could talk about Strauss again. Or Michael. Or…”

  “…Poor Varis…”

  “I wish I could tell you—”

  I blinked up at the ceiling, and then I turned back over on my side, and then I slowly crawled out of bed. “But I can tell you, can’t I?"

  "I can tell you...”

  “…about that time when we were five…”

  I began slow pacing.

  “I don’t know why, but I was thinking about this yesterday. That time you found a rip in your favourite pants—well, your only pants. I lied and said you must have done it when you tripped and fell the day before. But actually…”

  I paused, halting with my hands for the punchline.

  “I ripped your pants on a jagged rock when I was trying to wash them for you. I don’t know why I didn’t just tell you that. I made you shoulder the blame, like it was your fault…”

  “…and then I ripped my own pants so we’d match.”

  “…I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

  I wandered over to the vanity and picked up a comb. I tapped it against my hand a few times and put it back down. “It’s my fault you were arrested. I froze in a bush. I was there but I wasn’t there, and I couldn’t do anything for you. I just kept thinking about the first time we killed someone together.”

  “…That a crazy thing to say out loud, isn’t it? Why doesn’t that sound like a normal thing to say out loud? But it’s normal… right?”

  “…Well, I don’t know.”

  I wandered back over to the bed and peered down. Sometimes I wished we looked alike. I loved my parents, but when it came down to it, I barely knew them. Rhian was my family. I wondered what she’d look like with curly hair, or if I’d look better with a nose like hers.

  “…”

  “…”

  “I saw what happened in Istok. I was there for you, even if I couldn’t be there for you. You were so brave, and I didn’t get to tell you. Derek saw it, too. And then he left me. Because of him, not because of you. But I don’t know if I’ll be able to tell you that when you’re awake…”

  “…I hope I can.”

  I sat on the edge of the bed and slouched forward.

  “I miss you so much. Everything’s easy when we’re together. It just is. I know everything about you, and you know everything about me. Except—not anymore.”

  “…and except, I probably know more about you than you know about me now, because I’ve been spying on you for Faust, Kelly, and Hall since you got here…”

  “…almost.”

  “There were those six days when I quit.”

  “…”

  “…”

  “I danced open a secret door.”

  “I eat Strawberry Rhubarb pie almost every night…”

  “…and I’ve secured an alliance with a creepy doll who’s also my stalker.”

  “I have regular sex with Ivana the innkeeper.”

  “She’s dead, and five hundred years old.”

  “…I really like her.”

  “And then there’s Derek, who I loved—love. I love, love Derek. Not like you and Strauss, but—he’s gone now, and he’s not only a legend and a drug dealer, but he’s kind of goofy and genuinely nice, and I like who I am around him. He’s also married, and I slept with him and his wife. And Ivana. All three at the same time, actually. All of them dead and old."

  "I liked it.”

  “Come to think, I know a fair few dead people now.”

  “…”

  “Oh—I got a job at a brothel as a bartender. I was undercover at first, and then I wasn’t.”

  “And I’m trying to recruit Adeline Blanchett for you.”

  “…because somehow I’m a secret spy, doing so many intricate spy things. And she’s your mate. I feel like you could use that. And someone to blow things up with.”

  “I met your father. He saw me dig my hand into a customer’s cleavage in public—look, she asked me to—and then we formed a pact of mutually assured destruction.”

  “He’s a lot like you, but his eyes are sad. I think you’ll love him...”

  “…once you’re done hating him.”

  “…”

  “What would you call this shade of pink? Barely Bloody Kidney? Really Rosy Lung?”

  “I have a secret cabin in the woods. I can’t wait to show you.”

  “I reckon I’ll paint it pink.”

  “…”

  “Oh, by the by, Lemon Pound Cake is equally as delicious as Lemon Meringue Pie.”

  “And we’re being used and manipulated on two—no, three—aye, at least three levels.”

  “Also, sometimes I worry about going bald…”

  “…but then I think I’d just embrace it, honestly, as long as l still had my beard.”

  “Do people go bald in the face?”

  “…”

  “I still don’t know what’s wrong with me, but I feel so much better now.”

  “I love you, Rhian.”

  ??

  I love you too, Gus.

  Forever, mate.

  ??