Chapter Twenty-One
Standing in the foyer with his brothers, Tohr had a bad feeling about the way the night was going to go. Then again, he'd woken up from that dream of his Wellsie and the young, the one he had had from time to time, but only truly understood since Lassiter had provided the context. He knew now that the two were in the In Between, huddled under a gray blanket in the midst of a dark gray landscape that was cold and unyielding.
They were gradually moving off into the distance.
The first time he'd had the vision, he'd been able to pick out each individual hair on his shellan's head. . . and the quarter-moon whites at the tips of her fingernails. . . and the way the blanket's rough fibers caught the strange, ambient light. . .
As well as the contours of the tiny bundle she cradled against her heart.
Now, though, she was yards off, the gray ground between them something that he tried to cross, but was unable to cover. And just as dire, she had lost all color, her face and hair now tinted with the gray of the prison she was trapped in.
Naturally, he'd been insane when he woke up.
For fuck's sake, he'd done everything he could to move on in the last few months: Put the dress away. Gone down for First and Last Meals. Tried cocksucking yoga, transcendental bullcrap, and even gotten on the Internet to research grief stages and other psychobabble bullshit.
He'd attempted to not think of Wellsie consciously, and if his subconscious burped up a memory, he quashed it. When his heart ached, he pictured those f-in' white doves released from cages, and dams bursting, and shooting stars, and a bunch of other dumb-ass metaphoricals that belonged on motivational posters.
And still he'd had that dream in shades of gray.
And still Lassiter was here.
It wasn't working -
"Tohr? You with us," Wrath barked out.
"Yeah. "
"You sure about that. " After a moment, Wrath's wraparounds swung back to the rest of the group. "So we do this. V, John Matthew, Qhuinn, and Tohr on me. Everyone else in the field, ready to come in as backup. "
There was a shout of agreement from the Brothers, and then they were all filing through the vestibule.
Tohr was the last through the door, and just as he got to the jambs, something made him stop and look over his shoulder.
No'One had stepped out from somewhere, and stood on the edge of the depiction of the apple tree in the floor, her hood and robe making her seem like a shadow that had suddenly gone 3-D.
Time slowed and then ground to a halt as he met her eyes, some strange pull keeping him where he stood.
In the intervening months since the spring, he had seen her at meals, had forced himself to speak with her, had pulled out chairs and helped to serve her as he did the other females in the house.
But he hadn't been alone with her, and he'd never touched her.
He felt like he was touching her now, for some reason.
"No'One?" he said.
Her arms unfolded from out of her sleeves and her hands lifted to the hood that covered her face. With grace, she revealed herself to him.
Her eyes were luminous and a little scared, her features as perfect as they had been back in the spring at the Sanctuary. And down lower, her throat was a perfect, pale column of flesh. . . which she touched lightly with fingertips that trembled.
From out of nowhere, hunger struck him hard, the need reverberating through his body, lengthening his fangs, parting his lips -
"Tohr? What the fuck?"
V's sharp voice broke the spell, and with a curse, he looked over his shoulder. "I'm coming - "
"Good. 'Cuz the king's waiting for you, true. "
Tohr glanced back across the foyer, but No'One was gone. As if she had never been.