19. Solomon’s Seal

nineteen

Darkly stepped forward, glaring at his sister. “Get out.”

“Well.” Lou met Milla’s gaze. She tipped her head in Darkly’s direction with a small, conspiratorial smile conveying a sense of You see what I have to deal with? before addressing her brother. “You’re in a mood.”

“Wonder why that is, Lou.” He brushed past her, whipping the towel from around his neck and dropping it on the back of a chair. Bare-chested, flushed, and sweating, every muscle in his torso and arms was flexed. Beneath the waistband of grey joggers, the Adonis belt at his hips was even more pronounced than Milla remembered, and not in the “he’s been working out” sort of way, but more a “the vinefica said he hadn’t been eating and wow isn’t that obvious” sort of way.

Still, his movement was smooth, almost liquid, as he opened a cupboard and reached for a glass. Milla couldn’t look away from the flex and roll of muscles in his back. Mad as she was at the witch, it wasn’t worth denying how Horned God-damned attractive he was.

He filled his glass from a pitcher, turned, and dropped against the counter. Every bit of Milla’s attention went to the bobbing of his throat as he drank. The bead of sweat rolling from his temple and catching along the sharp cut of his jaw. The tiny little pant he let out when the glass was empty.

When he was finished, Darkly raised an eyebrow at his sister. “You’re still here?”

Lou pressed her lips together, nostrils flaring. After a long, awkward moment, she said, “Well,” again and strode into the living room. “Ludmilla, I assume you know what to do?”

Milla jerked her attention away from Darkly, but not before catching the smirk dimpling his cheek. A sarcastic snort carried into the living room, and her skin flushed.

“Unfortunately,” she mumbled. One touch was all it would take. Maybe she could smack him. “How much of me did you take?”

“Just your Way,” Darkly rumbled. “Unless Lou’s been withholding?”

“And ruin the surprise?” she sassed him over her shoulder, then addressed Milla. “I’ll leave you to it. Training begins tomorrow. We only have a few weeks to prepare you for Beltane, and there are the mystery rituals to contend with, so the sooner you get this over with, the better.” Lou patted her on the shoulder and strode away.

The door closed, and a butter-thick silence filled the room. Milla turned slowly, tensing when she met Darkly’s intent stare.

He had not moved from the counter, gripping the glass in one hand and drumming the fingers of the other along the edge. Milla swallowed, too angry to speak first, too nervous to move. He had bottled himself for her. He had undergone a seriously invasive scouring and ritual to get her out of the cells, to get her here, and Milla did not know how to navigate this.

It did not erase his lies, and it did not come close to making up for giving her location to C.R.O.W., but it was still the single most romantic thing anyone had ever done for her.

She scrubbed her face with her hands and groaned. “Something is so wrong with me.”

“Beg to differ,” said Darkly.

She slid her hands lower, peering at him over her fingers, and again, that thick, heavy silence condensed between them. It was less a tension and more a suffocation of words and accusations unsaid. Apologies unspoken and the one big question that would capture every tumultuous thought and feeling in her tired body.

Why?

As if she’d said it aloud, Darkly flinched. The glass tinked against the counter, and he took two quick, long strides out of the kitchen. Closer to her.

Milla threw her hands out, teetering off balance. She landed on the couch cushions and rolled to the side, popping to her feet and backing away. “Wait.”

She needn’t have said it. The instant she toppled backward, Darkly had stopped, half-reaching for her. He slowly fisted his hand and lowered it to his side. A muscle ticked in his jaw. “How bad is this about to be?”

“How—how bad?” Milla huffed in disbelief. “You used me as bait for a raw-head.” He pressed his lips together. “You turned me in! How bad do you think this is going to be?”

“Milla, I—”

“I don’t want to hear it, Keir.” He flinched, and she threw her hands up, stomping in an angry circle. It was easier to give over to the fury burbling in her blood than admit that his bottling and his body threw her. Goddess, that body. Long and lean and sweaty. She wanted to hex him to desecration as much as she wanted to feel his weight crushing her against the wall, if only just to feel him. To touch his skin and know the thrum of his heartbeat beneath her hands.

Her eyes burned, and her chest felt tight. How could she be so angry with someone she wanted so badly?

“Goddess, there is something so wrong with me.” She whirled around, appealing to him instead of trying to figure this out alone. He was the bottled one, after all, and well overdue in answering some questions. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do here. I mean, I know what I’m supposed to do, but I don’t understand why you did it.” She threw her hand out, accusing or pleading, silently begging him to take it while holding him off all at once.

He took an uneasy step forward, longing written over every line of his body. “Is that not obvious?”

“Nothing about this is obvious!” She rolled her shoulders, trying to get her suddenly uncomfortable sports bra to sit right. To let her breathe. “Your closet is stuffed with flannels and skinny jeans. Your bed is covered in silk, there’s this whole metro-goth aesthetic to your room that makes no sense, and you’re Irish? ” Why that was the direction her brain went, the Horned God only knew. Milla could hardly think in a straight line, much less decipher why she’d latched onto the nonsense of his bedroom. But whatever it was, it was where she’d landed, so that was where she would focus. “What happened to all the Chinos?”

Something about that made him smile, and the appearance of that infuriating dimple made her rage.

“You lied to me,” she accused through clenched teeth.

“That right, Ludmilla Lightner?” The smile fled, and his face settled into cold anger. “Seems you lied to me first.”

“Technically,” she mumbled.

“And more often.”

“Debatable.”

Darkly scowled, the twist of his lips more rueful than anything else. He took another step closer. And another, crowding Milla against the wall while staying out of reach.

Her heart raced, pounding out a thousand beats per minute. She pressed her palms flat against the wall, holding his eyes when all she wanted to do was curl into a ball and wait for this all to blow over. “I don’t know what you want ,” she managed. “I don’t even know you! I’ve never known—”

“Ken you’re gonnae learn a lot about me in the coming days, but know this first: I want you.” He stated it clear and sure as fact, as if it should have been obvious when it was anything but. “All of you.”

“Keir.” His name came out at the tail end of a breath, weak and desperate, the fight sucked out of her by the overwhelming desire to smack him, kiss him, hold him.

He frowned. “Please, dinnae call me that.”

“It’s your name, right?” She didn't know why it mattered, only that it did. If she was supposed to trust someone, shouldn’t she at least know their real name?

“Aye, that it is,” he conceded. “Turns out I enjoy being Darkly more than I ever liked being Keir.”

Goddess, who could argue with that?

“Keir doesnae know what Marie said to you in New Orleans, or what you told Darkly in the back of that minivan, or did to him in that woman’s bedroom. I want to know, Milla. I want to think of you without it hurting.” He pressed the base of his palm against his shorn skull, brows cinched together. “Knowing your Way isnae enough when I know something’s gone, and I want it back. I want you back, and Darkly had you .”

Somehow, he’d gotten closer without her noticing. The angst and the need in those words tilted her head back until she looked up into bright green eyes limned in red.

“Please.”

And that was it. No longwinded explanations, no groveling, no arguing. Just one little word uttered from that gorgeous mouth, and every bit of Milla’s anger crumbled away.

“Darkly…”

He swallowed, eyes dancing over her face, and raised his hand, ready to cup Milla’s cheek. “I never meant for any of this to happen.”

Aaaaaand nevermind.

“You never meant? ” She batted his hand away, ducking under his arm and darting across the room. “Never meaning implies intent, you asshole.”

Milla spun around, ready to continue reading the damn fool witch his rights, and froze.

He hadn’t moved. He just stood there, staring at the space where she had been.

“Darkly?”

His head whipped toward her, he blinked, and then six-feet-and-change of lanky Dark Witch crumpled to the ground.

“Darkly, get up.” Milla toed him in the side. When he didn’t move, she did it again. Harder. A tiny grunt left his mouth, but whether it was from her prodding or the result of the awkward angle at which he’d fallen, she had no idea. She crouched low and shook his shoulder. “Dude, come on.”

Nothing.

Not even a sleepy grumble.

Milla rose, puffing scraggly, overgrown bangs out of her face, and chewed her lower lip as she mulled over what to do.

One touch was all it took to unbottle someone, and apparently, for once, C.R.O.W. hadn’t been lying. She’d barely touched him, just swept his arm away, and his brain had shorted out, resulting in … this.

“Well, shit.”

Backing away, Milla scanned the living room and peered into the kitchen.

No phone. Of course there was no phone. She hadn’t seen one in his room, and Horned God only knew where her phone had ended up. How in the nine rings was she supposed to call for help?

Her eyes landed on Darkly, crumpled in the narrow space between the wall and the couch. He’d gone down like a Southern Belle with a fainting spell, landing with the side of his face smushed against the carpet, torso twisted, and knees bent. An odd, bulky outline was visible in what she assumed to be the pocket of his joggers. It was just the right size to be a phone and one hundred percent too close to his groin.

“Double shit.”

The last thing she needed was for him to wake up with her hand down his pants. Knowing Darkly, he’d get ideas, and Milla would have another lapse in restraint, and where would that get them?

Somewhere fun.

“Shut up, brain.”

She stomped into the kitchen, making a half-assed attempt to wake him up by slamming cupboards, clanging pots and pans, filling his glass, and flicking his face with water.

Nothing.

Not a flinch or a flutter of eyelids, though he had started drooling.

She downed the glass and set it beside the sink, gripping the counter’s edge as she thought. Someone had to come back, eventually. The vinefica, Rai, was staying here; that much was obvious, and also, what the fuck, Darkly . And hadn’t she mentioned someone was coming back with food?

Wait.

“The vinefica.” Maybe she was still here. She’d gone out through a backdoor; maybe she was biding her time until Darkly was unbottled and Milla had left so they could— no. Nope. Not going there.

She skidded into the hallway, only half-tracking how familiar the layout of this house was: the bedroom at the top of the stairs, the landing, and the narrow stairwell. The glass pane in the front door. Even the open concept flow from the living room into the kitchen through an arch.

Like a mosquito bite she’d forgotten about, the itch came roaring back a half second before she stepped out into a humid Floridian sunset. Pale green petals burst from the limbs of a witch hazel tree in the corner of the shared yard, and the setting sun illuminated the deep purple sheen of out-of-season lilies.

Milla rushed to the edge of the porch, catching herself on the railing as a cry rose in her throat. This was impossible. It was insane. It couldn’t be real, and yet it was. From the cockle-bell blooms of the Solomon’s Seal beneath a bay window to the little bundle of hay rustling through the shrubs.

“No, nonono.” She hopped down the stairs, her knee buckling and ankle twisting as her foot hit the ground. Threads of power shot up from the earth, latching onto Milla and winding in among her bones. She gasped, tears bursting in a mixture of relief, pain, and horror. No obnubilari was this good, no illusionist this skilled, but she had to know. Had to see for certain.

They get stronger the deeper we go. Wasn’t that what her guard had said?

Grass poked and prickled her bare feet, and every step across the yard sent a warble of pain up her leg. But she kept on, scraping nails along the woodgrain in the porch rail, gripping the worn steel handle on the gate, and hissing as splinters cut into her palm.

Because the gate always stuck. The wood was warped from years of humidity and sunshine, and it stuck, so you had to brace the fence and yank to open it.

They couldn’t know that. There was no way C.R.O.W. could know that; no witch was so thorough unless they’d lived here for as long as Milla had, which meant this was real.

She sobbed, confusion and anger warring for space in her body, and yanked open the gate, nearly colliding with a motorcycle as she launched herself into the gravel side yard. Pebbles bit into the soles of her feet, and she darted around the classic bike, down to the sidewalk, and into the middle of the street.

A white SUV screeched to a halt, and someone called her name, but Milla only had eyes for the butter-yellow slats and faded trim of the Victorian duplex before her. The left half was dark, electric candles flickering in the front window as a beacon for the wandering and the lost, while the right half glowed merrily, the muted talk show still visible on the television screen.

She took it in, clasping her hands on top of her head and taking one deep breath before yelling, “What the fuck .”