Chapter 756: Fate Of The Gatekeeper
Trill was waiting for me at the kitchen table when we arrived home. Rose and came to me, hugged me.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I wish we could have been there to help."
She was the first one I'd allowed to say such a thing to me. Hit me like a slap across the face.
Sorry. She was sorry. They all were. I could feel it now, a blanket trying to smother me and, for a moment, I fought against it with all the energy inside me.
Not much left to fight with. Their need to comfort me finally won, the power of my family hugging me where once they felt like doom. Love seeping through until, at last, I shook myself and woke up.
And realized I wasn't broken, lost. Not anymore. I could handle their sympathy and sorrow. Didn't need the numb, after all.
I'd survived Liam's death.
Now I just had to survive living.
"You did everything you could," I said. Turned to Mom, Charlotte, Shenka, Gram. Meira. Sassafras with his drooping ears, Galleytrot, head low. "All of you. Thank you. But no one is to blame. No one but Ameline."
That's right, Syd. Better believe it.
I left them in the living room, talking, drinking tea and eating cookies Shenka whipped up in about five seconds. She followed me with a pair of steaming chocolate chip mounds on a napkin, but I turned on the stair, kissed her cheek, shook my head.
Went to my room.
I lay down, but couldn't sleep. My mind refused to stop, showing me the fire, Mia, Liam, winding them together, night and day and sun and starlight, blue flame, rainbow, Mia's smiling face, Liam's quiet.
I tried a hot shower, cursed softly into the steam as my body ignored the temperature I once adored. Paced and wrung my hands, going over and over what happened, wondering if there was anything I could have changed, done.
Forced myself to stop. Sit. Breathe.
The numb remained, waiting. Eager for me to embrace it.
I banished it with a sigh as my vampire's voice spoke in my head.
Why are we here? She prodded me gently. There's somewhere else you'd rather be.
My demon rumbled her agreement. Shaylee sighed in answer even as the family magic urged me up.
Up.
And to my door.
I slipped into the hall, felt for the sleeping minds surrounding me. Charlotte in my old room, still here. Trill and her brothers in the back yard, tucked into their rusting caravan. Mom in Shenka's room, my second on the couch.
Gram.
Easy to creep past them, down the steps, into the back yard. I paused by Gram's door, felt Sass sleeping, but knew she was wide awake. Felt me going.
Let me.
The night was oddly cool for August, my breath showing in front of me the only real indication. I could have ridden the veil easily enough, but I chose to walk instead, allowing the quiet of the darkness to swallow me whole and wash me clean.
Town Hall loomed in the distance, brick walls lit by cold florescence. I passed through the side door, the lock giving way under my fingers as I entered easily, as always. Familiar, this pilgrimage, filled with memory and expectation.
Down the hall to the back stairs. Into the basement.
Pausing by the wall where the Sidhe wards waited.
For Liam.
I gulped air, forced to bend over in half, hands on my thighs, to keep from dry heaving the wash of sudden grief gripping me. Panting, sweating from the effort, swallowing down bile begging for release, I pressed my forehead to the cinder-block wall and choked on air.
Pulled myself together.
Walked through the wards.
Galleytrot looked up, groaned softly as he saw me. Waited for me to cross to him where he lay before the Gate. I felt a tingle as I approached, knew who was calling from the other side. Shaylee opened the way, the big Gate's sorrow as real as mine as it slowly, slowly released and swung back.
Thalion stood in silence on the Sidhe side, a face so dear and familiar beside his I had to clap both hands over my mouth to keep from screaming.
Fergus, Liam's grandfather. Who looked so like my dead husband, Liam.
Sidhe had no empathy. And yet, Thalion's face showed his grief and I was grateful for that.
Fergus bowed his head to me. Held out one hand. "Syd," he said in Liam's voice. "He loved you so much."
I couldn't do this, not tonight. Staring into Liam's face, hearing his voice. And yet.
And yet.
When I let it, when I finally stopped fighting, seeing Fergus brought me the most comfort of all.
"We are now without a Gatekeeper." I could have hugged Galleytrot for the distraction.
Thalion nodded, sighed. "Truth," he said. "Liam O'Dane was the last."
My eyes met Liam's-Fergus's-again. "Can we have you back?" I tried a little smile, found it worked, my lips moved, turned up.
Amazing.
But Thalion shook his head. "He's too long in our realm now," he said. "His mortal form was already dying. Any attempt now for him to go back to your plane will end in his death."
I shivered. "Not going to happen," I said.
Galleytrot chuffed softly. "We could simply try to find a way to dispense with the knock." Every year, the Sidhe power called to the Gatekeeper. And every year he had to answer or the wall between our planes would fall and they would be one with us again.
Thalion's shrug was elegant, graceful. "It is part of the realm and not ours to control. But Sydlynn is maji," he said. "It is possible."
Okay, disaster averted. Maybe.
I'd deal with it later.
"I fear," Fergus said-oh, good, Syd, you called him Fergus-"you will need Cian to do so, Sydlynn."
Yet another reason to hunt down Ameline.
Like I needed one more.
Thalion bowed, Fergus waving as the Gate sighed shut again, leaving Galleytrot and I alone.
I sank to the stone floor as he stretched out beside me, head in my lap while I crossed my legs and leaned my elbow on my knee. My free hand stroked his soft ear, both of us staring at the Gate, lost in thought.
"Syd," Galleytrot whispered, "how can you forgive me?"
I looked down into his eye, a tiny ember of red burning in its depth.
"Silly dog," I said. "What's to forgive? You didn't hurt Liam."
"I failed to protect him." Galleytrot's eye closed, soft whine rising in his chest. "For the second time, she came and laid me low. And for the second time, Liam paid the price for my weakness."
I knew I didn't have a corner market on guilt or blaming myself. But I'd forgotten all about the big hound and just how badly he'd be feeling after Liam's death. I guess it was understandable, my lack of attention. But as I bent and hugged his big head, resting my cheek on his, I let him feel how I felt through a surge of magic.
"This is not your fault," I said. "Fate decided long ago." I thought of Max and the blind maji woman I now fought very hard not to hate. "There is always choice, but we are made to make them the way Fate designed."
Galleytrot sighed, a chest-heaving doggy sigh. "What are we going to do without him?"
"I don't know." The last word came out in a flood of tears, tears I quickly dashed, letting out a sigh of my own. "I'm too tired to think about it right now." More flickers of images, of Max, in particular. His betrayal hit me harder than I thought it would. Why? Maybe because I felt such a kinship to the drach.
Or maybe because I would never betray a friend.
Fate be damned.
And Mia's loss weighed on me, despite the fact I knew her spirit was free, happy. And with Liam's death, all layered on top of each other so quickly, right after victory was mine...
Bed.
Covers over head.
World go away.
Not a solution. But one I considered as I sat there with the sad hound whimpering like a puppy.
"Was any of it worth it?" Despair almost carried me away right there and then, the tears coming back with a vengeance. Would I never run out of them? Surely there was a moisture limit my body could tolerate, a point where they would dry up. Where I would.
Or risk crumbling to dust.
Galleytrot didn't answer, just reached for me with his Sidhe power.
And a flare of heat reached back.
Just the barest point of light, but powerful nonetheless, stretching, warming me in the pit of my stomach.
No. Not my stomach.
I knew this heat, felt it the moment Liam and I said "I do". Had felt it again when we'd made love.
Understood it now as the tiny little life hummed its happiness inside me.
A soul, soft and kind and loving, budding with possibility.
Part of me. Part of Liam.
My tears flowed further, but this time with hope and happiness I never thought could come again. I burrowed my face into Galleytrot's fur, laughter bubbling, giggling out of me as he looked up, red fire flaring in his eyes.
I wiped at my face, drew a giant breath and let it out, sagging, hugging myself, rocking a little before I dropped my hands to grab his snout and kissed his nose.
"I don't think we'll have to worry about not having a Gatekeeper after all," I said.
Galleytrot's power held still, ears perked, body quivering.
"As long as the Gate is willing to wait nine months, that is."
He leaped to his feet, did a wild dog dance, front paws clawing the air before he fell at my side again, joy glowing from every inch of him.
"Syd," he said.
I nodded.
And, as the little soul inside me sparked with growing life, my heart began to heal.
***
