Back Door Into Purgatory by Rory Ni Coileain

Author:Rory Ni Coileain
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Riverdale Avenue Books
Published: 2019-10-02T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seventeen

Blankness. Gray blankness. And silence.

Is this all that’s left of me?

No. The gray was the Stone floor under Kevin’s hands, in front of his nose. And the silence was a ring made up of the surviving members of the Demesne of Purgatory, standing around him at a careful distance.

There was more to the silence than that, though. It was a listening silence, the thunderous nothing of his straining to hear an answer to the cry that was still burning raw in his throat.

Someone broke the circle and knelt beside Kevin, staring at the same spot on the floor. Maelduin, Tiernan’s nephew—and his geal’le’mac, his almost-son.

His image, too. Kevin couldn’t bear the sight. He flinched away—only slightly, but more than enough for a Fae to notice.

“I should have gone.” The words stuck in Maelduin’s throat.

He’s mourning too. Even the thought was flat and dull.

Kevin didn’t answer, because what could he have said?

Slowly he sat back on his heels. He still couldn’t make himself look up—couldn’t meet the eyes surrounding him, all the paired sets of eyes. And he couldn’t look away from the place where the world had opened and yanked his husband in.

As long as he didn’t look away, it wasn’t over.

“Conall. Cuinn.” The sound of his own voice startled him. “Can you open it back up? Long enough for me to get through?”

“No.” The mage and the Loremaster answered together, but it was Conall who went on. “There’s nothing there to open anymore. Without the Pattern on the other side, the nexus isn’t a portal.”

“Then he’s gone.”

No one said anything.

Kevin staggered as he stood up. Maelduin sprang to his own feet and caught his elbow, but dropped it like it was hot when Kevin tensed.

“I have to get out of here.”

“Kevin—”

Josh stepped into Kevin’s field of view, hand outstretched, finally forcing him to look up. The bare patch on the tattoo artist’s colorful chest where Areán had been was a vivid reminder of his own loss, the other piece sacrificed in the Marfach’s endgame.

Kevin couldn’t make himself take the outstretched hand. “I’m not going to do anything stupid, don’t worry. But I—I can’t stay here.”

Again, silence greeted him. Kevin thought he understood. No doubt relief and horrified fascination were the order of the day, gratitude at having been spared Kevin’s fate, or Tiernan’s, coupled with a hefty dose of so that’s what half a soul walking looks like. Not even a Fae was likely to have words appropriate to that situation.

A breeze rose, heard but unfelt; unseen moonlight trickled through branches like rain. Like tears.

“I, too, have a heart buried among my roots.”

“These aren’t—”

Yes. These were his roots, the roots of the man he’d become in response to the love of a Fae.

But that didn’t mean he could stay where his husband—his heart—was buried.

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