Hold Fast - Part Ten
This episode is part of a larger story, Soft Touch. If you haven’t yet, you can go back and read it from the beginning right here.
“Can you believe any of this?” I murmur to Aiden, leaning my cheek against his back.
He’s busy at work in Moondancer’s little kitchen. The passageway is so small that I can only keep my arms around him by standing in the doorway of our cabin. He tries to reach an arm around for me, realizes what an awkward angle he’d have to twist into to do that, and turns to face me instead.
“Noah is right.” He takes my face in his hands and gazes down at me grimly, his blue eyes simmering with rage. “We need to think of a fate worse than death for Bruce and Nigel. They’re having their asses handed to them by the girls, that’s sure gotta hurt for men like them, so that’s a good start. What else?”
“For those two?” I ask angrily. “I think a good hard look inward would meet the description of fate worse than death!”
Aiden’s eyebrows fly up. He lets out a low whistle, pinching my chin with his floured fingers.
“Damn, Keane. Who would have expected you to come up with the most brutal idea? Ghastly, man. No one’s gonna top that.”
I scowl up at him, taking an angry fistful of his henley. “When I think of what those two did!”
Aiden blinks a few times, then twists his mouth to the side, his eyes suddenly full of a warm smile. “Same, but this is making me feel better. So rare to see you actually get pissed off. All part of why it’s so adorable, I think.”
“Come on,” I complain, swatting his muscled chest. “Everyone probably looks adorable when they’re angry to a man built like you! You have no reason to get scared.”
“That is not true.” Aiden shudders, his eyes widening in horror at some distant memory. “My aunt’s face, that time I accidentally crushed a fountain pen full of ink into her rug… Jesus Christ. I thought my life was over.”
“Oh, Aiden, no!” I gasp, shocked and dismayed. “You didn’t! That beautiful Jozan rug, the one in the living room? Poor Aunt Sarah!”
“Poor me, is the point I was trying to make!” Aiden sputters indignantly. “All I did was step on a pen, and I paid dearly for it! Should’ve known you’d be on the side of the rug! You’re an artist, not a warrior.”
I let out a helpless laugh, then groan and drop my forehead against Aiden’s chest. Instinctively snuggling up close to him. The heat of my Heliomancer is so uniquely, richly comforting. Like warm wine, like a fire in a cozy old hearth, like a long, lazy sunbath after the ocean… like pure tranquility.
And I really need to calm down. Or at least stop trembling with overwhelming rage and dismay, which I’ve been doing in random bursts ever since the true scope of what Bruce and Nigel did really sank in.
“Oh, god, poor Faith and Maggie,” I mumble into Aiden’s chest, folding my arms around him. “I’m just so glad… just so glad you’re here, babe.”
“Me?” Aiden draws back, tilting his head to one side in surprise. “Isn’t it Ralph who’s mostly devising the plan?”
“Yeah, but – I don’t think it’s a coincidence that you led us to Robin at exactly the right time to help both Faith and Maggie, my cute dumb Guardian. Ralph wouldn’t have known anything about it without you, and I’m glad that someone’s finally going to put a stop to all this, so – yeah. I’m glad you’re here.”
“Oh.” Aiden’s lips turn up in a sweet smile, even as he shakes his head at me. “I don’t think I can take credit for that, Linden. It’s not something I did. It’s just something that happens to Guardians.”
“I know.” I lean up to kiss his bearded jaw. “But I love the things you are, just like I love the things you do.”
Aiden’s smile grows deeper, brightening his blue eyes up. It’s only there for a second before he throws his head back and lets out an anguished groan.
I gasp as he wrenches me closer, locking me into his arms. He crushes me up against him and brushes fierce, high-speed kisses all over my face. Ticklish laughter starts to escape from me. I can barely breathe with him holding me so tightly, so I start struggling to free myself.
I’m startled all over again when Aiden quickly lets me go, then gives me a rough shove away.
“Go be somewhere else,” he growls, turning back to the kitchen. “I need to calm down if you ever want dinner to be ready.”
I give his back an adoring smile, then turn around to survey my options. Our cabin is right there. I would love to go lay down for even a few minutes. My head feels like it weighs a thousand pounds, heavy with all the information we gained today.
But I’m more concerned with how Robin is handling all this new information. I knock on the door of her cabin instead. She calls softly that it’s open, and I let myself in.
It’s cool and mostly dark in here, only one light by Robin’s bed left on. Rain is splashing against the windows, backlit with silvery moonlight. By comparison the warm light by Robin is a little spot of pure warmth. Its yellow-gold glow falls in a soft circle across her bed, where she’s sitting cross-legged in her pajamas, slowly toweling her long auburn hair.
Looks like rinsing off cleared her head a little, but her eyes are still red-rimmed and exhausted. The tip of her nose is pink, too, like maybe she shed a few tears while we left her alone.
I know she was absolutely crushed that we didn’t track down Faith today, but – the determination is still right there. Her eyes are two fires ignited, despite the dark circles around them and the wet lashes fringing them. In this light, and with those deep flames glowing within them, their usual gentle brown color is more of a dark purple. A very beautiful shade, like the leaves of a copper beech tree. I only wish they didn’t look so sad.
She had been staring out of the window, in the direction of the opposite bank of the inlet. Her gaze flickers to me as I step into her cabin.
“Everything okay?” she asks, her voice raw from all of today’s shouting.
“I actually came to ask you about that.” I come closer to the bed and stop there, turning the heist ring around my finger, my worried eyes searching her face. “How are you taking all this? Doing alright?”
Aiden and I decided to give her only the outlines of what’s really going on with Bruce and Nigel, leaving out the finer details. Robin has already got a lot of other stuff on her mind. But she knows the basics of the situation, and how Faith is involved.
“Oh, yeah, I’m alright,” she answers hoarsely, squeezing her curls in the towel. “Obviously it sucks that we didn’t find her today, but, you know… tomorrow. We’ll find her tomorrow.”
Ah. Okay. That’s not what I was asking about, so… safe to say the information we gave Robin tonight is not what’s on her mind at the moment. I’m not even sure it all sank in.
I suspect that all she cares about right now is getting Faith back safely. Clearly in her book everything else can be worked out later.
She sniffles suddenly and drops her head. I freeze to the spot, then slowly, gingerly sit down across from her.
“I’d say that I’m sorry, and say again that I’m not usually anywhere near this fragile,” she rasps, without looking at me. “But you said Aiden went missing once, so you must know how I… I don’t feel like I have to explain myself to you.”
“Or to anyone,” I answer softly. “I don’t blame you one bit. And if it’s any consolation, you’ve been holding it together remarkably well, given all the – everything. I know it must be a back-breaking effort. You’re a strong one.”
“Maybe it seems like I am.” Robin lets out a tired sigh, gathering up another handful of curls to dry off. “You ever seen a diver with a bad case of the bends? How painful it looks? That’s what I’m like on the inside right now.”
My eyes linger on her face, my heart aching for her.
“No one would expect you to feel any different, Robin. Especially not me. Like you said, I know the approximate feeling.”
Although Aiden wasn’t gone for weeks. God, just the thought makes me shudder inwardly. I don’t even have to envision that to know Robin isn’t exaggerating in the slightest about it feeling as bad as the bends.
Robin takes a deep breath, then slowly goes back to toweling her hair.
“You know,” she murmurs, stopping again, “I’ve had terrifying moments in my career… like, moments when I thought, this is it, I’m gonna be swept overboard, and my body is gonna come to rest on the continental shelf a couple hundred feet down, and no one will ever find me. And… still, I – I’ve never been so… never felt this scared in my life…”
She trails off brokenly. Her gaze is lingering on Faith’s fuzzy pink sweater, which is sitting on top of the bag packed for her by her fiancée.
I tentatively place a consoling hand on Robin’s shoulder. She doesn’t shrug it away, but she doesn’t much seem to notice it either.
“Faith is so lucky,” I tell her, giving her a gentle squeeze before I take my hand back.
Robin finally looks at me, startled out of her daze. “What? Based on everything you just told me about what she’s gotten dragged into, and considering everything that’s happened to her since then-”
“No, I know,” I break in gently. “I just mean because she has you. It’s just, um… so clear to me, how much you love her.”
Robin gazes intently at me, then forces a ragged laugh, turning away again. “Like I said, all you have to do is look at her to love her. I’m the lucky one.”
“Both of you are,” I answer softly, watching her with a half-sad smile. “Don’t argue with me on that. Anyone with somebody willing to go this far and work this hard to rescue them is lucky.”
Robin sets the towel aside and falls flat on her back on the bed, letting out a heavy breath. She looks so deeply, infinitely tired that I’m not sure she knows everything she’s saying out loud to me.
“She woke me up,” she murmurs, very quietly. “Guess you could say I was sleepwalking back then, too, in a way. But not after I met her. That first night she took me back to her place, when I left afterwards… I was so awake. I walked back to Moondancer feeling like I had a thousand pieces of treasure in my arms that nobody knew about but me. All I wanted to do was go back to my boat and… just think about every minute I spent with her. Be alone with all my treasures. Appreciate each one.”
Robin turns her head, fixes me with the full stare of her fiery eyes.
“I had never felt that way before, you know? That sort of happy.” She swallows shakily, her voice dropping to a hoarse, heartbroken whisper. “That’s what scares me more than us not finding her in the forest today, or not finding a campfire or some sign of her. It’s like that kind of happiness wasn’t – wasn’t supposed to be for me. So of course the world took her away from me. And if that’s why, then – I don’t think it will let me have her back.”
I sit back in dismay, staring at Robin with wide eyes.
“If so, then that’s so mean,” she goes on in a very small voice, covering her eyes with her hands, sniffling. “To give me that one little taste, just so I know what I’m missing out on-”
“No,” I interrupt, so forcefully that Robin gives a little jolt and looks at me in bewilderment. “No, no no-”
“Not a chance, Captain,” says a deep, quiet voice from the doorway.
Aiden is standing just inside of it, leaning against the frame, his powerful arms folded over his chest. Robin sits up on her elbows to look at him, blinking in surprise. Neither of us heard him come in.
“The world didn’t take her away from you.” His deep, slow, calm voice rumbles through the cabin and seems to fill it up, firm and inarguable. “Bruce and Nigel did, and they’re not going to get away with it.”
“And don’t think for one minute you’re fated to be miserable!” I insist fiercely. “That’s not true, it’s the complete opposite! Fate wants you to be happy! You and Faith, both!”
Robin stares at me with wide eyes and furrowed eyebrows, then lets out a watery laugh.
“You sound so sure,” she rasps quietly. “How the hell do you know what fate wants?”
“Because he – because, um-” I hastily cut myself off, dropping the hand I was about to gesture at Aiden with. “I just know!”
Robin hears the total confidence in my voice. Her expression softens into something like relief, although at the same time she’s visibly bewildered. About why I’m so certain, or maybe about why she believes what I’m saying. Both, probably.
Whatever it is, she closes her eyes and settles deeper into her bed, temporarily reassured.
“By the way,” I add, remembering all at once, “This whole thing could end up ultimately helping you two out with Faith’s dad. Faith doesn’t know it, but she made a very powerful friend.”
Robin laughs a little, her voice heavy with drowsy love. “Yeah, sounds like her. She’s the sweetest. Friend to everyone she meets. Doesn’t seem to matter that she’s incredibly shy.”
“Is she?” Aiden lifts his eyebrows, skeptical. “Didn’t she go right for your foot with hers under the table? Pretty much the moment you met?”
“Incredibly brave, too,” Robin sighs, a little smile flickering across her face.
Aiden and I look at each other, both of us hearing the infinite tenderness in her voice.
“I feel like I’m admitting a lot of personal things to you guys while I’m too tired to stop myself,” she mumbles drowsily, closing her eyes. “I’d be so fuckin’ embarrassed, if I could get an actual night of sleep.”
“No need to be embarrassed.” Aiden sits down on the end of her bed, gently swats her foot. “We don’t care. But don’t fall asleep just yet. I just finished making dinner, and you should eat. If you don’t want to get out of bed I can bring you something small. You want an oatmeal cookie? I can warm it up for you.”
“Tomorrow,” Robin murmurs, her words melting together into a soft, determined whisper. “Tomorrow something’ll happen. We’ll get a break, or we’ll find her…”
“Sure,” Aiden agrees, “But you need to eat something, Robin – Robin?”
No answer. Our captain is laid out on a pile of her auburn curls, deeply asleep. Her exhaustion must have finally won out. She’s already dreaming, based on the way her lashes twitch and flicker.
I gather up her towel from the bed, then switch off the light as I get up.
“Sleep tight, Captain,” I tell her quietly.
Aiden moves over to make room for me. I sit down with him at the foot of Robin’s bed with a soft exhale. The cabin is all rainy darkness now, but I have enough moonlight to see the expression in his ocean eyes. I nod understandingly, then rest my temple against his. We sit together in silence, letting the wind and rain from outside fill it up. Quietly aching with sympathy for Robin.
“We need to do good tomorrow,” I whisper to Aiden.
“Yes.”
“Is there some kind of magic you can do to help us find her?”
Aiden breathes out an apologetic sigh. “Sorry, Keane, but you know the risks involved with broad-stroke magic. If I reach for my power and say track down Faith for us, then-”
“Then that request could be interpreted a million different ways,” I finish, my shoulders sinking. “Man, this would be easier if she had left a clue for us to find. Maybe she was afraid that Nigel would find it? Yeah, on second thought that wouldn’t have been a good idea.”
“Well, she may not have dropped anything, but the dead illusion did.” Aiden lifts his snapback from his head, lets something come tumbling out of his hair into his lap. “I kept one of these.”
I stare at Aiden in blank disbelief, then quickly smother a sputter of laughter behind my hands. “What – you had that stored under your snapback? All this time?”
“Didn’t want to lose it, dude. I already had the magical necklace and other stuff in my pockets. You know how it is.”
He gives me a playful smile, the one he does that strikes that perfect combination of goofy and sexy. The one that instantly makes my mind short out every time I see it. It’s like it was intentionally designed to be everything that makes me helpless and stupid.
I can practically feel my pupils dilating. I’m only dimly aware of touching my fingers to my flaming cheeks as Aiden goes on talking.
“Thought I should catch and keep one, in case my science boy wanted to experiment.”
I tear my eyes away from his face with great difficulty. “What is it, though?”
“It’s one of those scraps of magic that I kept feeling on the mountain. I couldn’t see it before, just sense it. Seems it’s become visible now.”
“Probably because it’s been sitting in your hair, absorbing some of your power,” I murmur, staring at the scrap of magic with wondering eyes.
It’s the faintest wisp, like a single thread pulled from a tapestry of silvery blue sparkles. Barely there, as delicate as gossamer.
It seems to have developed an immediate fondness for Aiden. It only reluctantly left the safety of his soft chestnut hair, and now it’s coiled itself around his wrist.
“Must be Guardian magic,” I laugh softly. “Given it feels this at home with you.”
“Yeah, or illusion magic, which is a form of it,” Aiden agrees. “Good that it turned visible. Now we have some idea of what’s blowing around on the mountainside. More of these.”
I trail my fingers over the light thread, and discover it has a faint warmth. “How strange… did we have any activity with the necklace while we were on the mountain?”
Aiden pulls it out of his pocket to show me. “Not that I noticed, and I did check a few times.”
I take the necklace from him, experimentally hold it out to the thread of magic, then let out a disappointed little sound when nothing happens. I’m not sure what else to try. My brain is just too exhausted to come up with any ideas.
“Okay, you know what?” I decide, sitting back. “We’ll sort this out tomorrow. It’s been a very long day, and we haven’t even eaten dinner yet.”
“Eat it in bed?” Aiden suggests, around a sleepy yawn.
“Fall asleep on the plates,” I agree firmly, to a huff of warm laughter.
He pauses for a moment, gazing down at the magic scrap, then breathes out another soft, rumbling laugh. “You know what I just realized?”
“What?” I ask fondly, my loving eyes lingering on the fine lines at the corners of his.
“Kaden has no idea what he’s gotten himself into.” Aiden grins broadly at me. “He fell for a Caterina. And she likes him, too.”
I smother another laugh beneath my hands, then groan in dismay. “Oh, no! Poor Kendrick was worried about one dad with a shotgun! Turns out Maggie is way more trouble than just that!”
“Yep,” Aiden says solemnly, with a deep sigh. “Tough to be the oldest brother. I sympathize.”
“Yeah, because I don’t think Kaden will be put off one bit if Maggie really is bloodthirsty,” I answer, trembling with silent laughter. “The word bloodthirsty is probably involved in like half of the music he listens to.”
“Jamie, it’s obvious you’ve never been a teenage boy trying to get with the girl you like. No one would be put off by a little thing like that.”
“A little thing like that,” I repeat, staring at Aiden in wide-eyed amazement.
“You ignore it, and you hope your reward is some over-the-clothes action.”
I let out a burst of startled laughter, then quickly sweep my hands over my mouth, giving Aiden a hard kick to the shin. He lets out a huff of laughter, shrugging his shoulders.
“Just being honest.”
“Oh my god,” I laugh helplessly, rubbing my eyes. “Please stop, Callahan. I’m too tired to laugh.”
Aiden smiles at me with his eyes, taking my hand. “Alright, let’s go eat and sleep. Before anything – anything else…”
He trails off, his eyebrows dropping low, the laughter slipping from his face. I tilt my head to the side questioningly, but he just sits there motionless, like he’s listening to something.
My breath catches as his eyes flare with a soft, sudden rush of glittering light.
“Aiden?” I whisper.
Two eyes full of magic meet mine.
“I sense something,” he whispers back, right as the necklace lights up in my hands.
We both drop our startled eyes to it. The entire thing has gained a shimmering halo of soft, silvery blue. It glows against my fingers, stirs with a rumbling sensation against my fingertips.
Aiden gets to his feet and peers off down the passageway. “Jamie… there’s some kind of magic coming towards us. I feel it.”
I spring to my feet, the rumbling, glowing necklace clasped in my hands, and lean over to peer out into the passageway. There’s nothing there.
But then there’s a whoosh of something invisibly going past us, like a powerful, contained rush of wind.
As if it wants to add its strength to the bigger magic, the little thread of light unwinds itself from Aiden’s wrist and springs up to join the current moving through the room. Showing us where it is, too, and where it’s going.
Presumably with the rest of the invisible magic, the scrap of magic falls lightly onto Robin’s cheek like a raindrop, where it disappears. It’s just gone.
At the same instant, the glowing light goes out from Aiden’s eyes.
“Aiden?” I stammer, trying not to panic, “What just happened?”
He’s already racing around the side of the bed to look at Robin. Before he can get there she makes a soft sound, stirs in the blankets, and sits up.
Aiden and I both stand frozen, watching her uncertainly. Her eyes are closed, her long auburn curls cascading down her shoulders.
“Faith…” she sighs softly, pushing the blankets aside.
She stumbles out of the bed, catches herself against the wall, and – starts sleepwalking. Making for the door.
Aiden and I turn to look at each other in bewildered astonishment, then simultaneously go rushing after Robin. She’s already made it out into the passageway.
“Should we stop her?” I ask frantically, glancing down at the necklace. It’s still glowing, still vibrating and humming in my hands. “Has this happened with the illusion’s necklace every time she sleepwalks?”
“We wouldn’t have noticed, Jamie, it was in my bag when she did it every time before now!” Aiden reaches out to grab Robin’s arm, then hesitates. “Should I stop her? What’s the move here?”
“Last time she nearly walked right off the boat,” I remind him urgently, as Robin starts stumbling up the steps.
“Last time we didn’t realize she was under a spell, either!”
I follow Aiden up the steps, shaking the necklace. “Well, I don’t know what to do! Why is this thing rumbling? Why is a spell trying to make Robin walk into the ocean?”
“It’s not, Jamie, it affected her while she was on land, too!” Aiden worriedly catches Robin’s arm as she steps out onto the deck. “It’s meant to do something else, it has to be!”
I step out onto the deck behind him and instantly start shivering. The wind has the waters of the inlet whipped up, so that the night is full of choppy waves. The water is blanketed in fog, swept in rain, and the air is icy cold.
I switch on the boat lights, then flinch nervously as Robin staggers out of the cockpit. “Aiden! I think we have to wake her up! She really is gonna go right off the side of the boat!”
Aiden hesitates for a split second, then rushes forward.
“I just want to see something!” he shouts back to me.
I watch anxiously as Aiden catches up to Robin, who just made it to the edge of the boat. She’s about to step off of it, so I expect him to catch her around her waist like last time.
Instead he catches her hand, and steps off of the boat with her.
I let out a frightened gasp and rush forward into the rain, but Aiden and Robin simply step together onto the choppy water, as if they’re standing on glass hidden right beneath it.
Aiden has been going for a lot of runs on the river. He’s gotten really good at this. Good enough to confidently walk Robin out with him, even though she’s asleep.
My wide eyes follow Aiden and Robin as they walk together out into the choppy ocean, the fog, the rain and spray. Aiden has gathered some golden light around them so he can see. The two of them make a small, glowing, golden apparition in all this dark chaos.
A wave slaps against Moondancer with a hard thud, showering me with spray. I stagger backwards, holding on tight to the illusion’s necklace. The last thing we can afford to do is lose it.
Gasping, I toss my hair out of my face and swipe my sleeve over my eyes. When I open them again Aiden is there, climbing back on board, holding a sleeping Robin in his arms.
“She was leading me straight across the inlet!” he shouts over the roaring wind. “Back to where we were this afternoon! That’s where she’s trying to go!”
I stare at him in astonishment, then rush to help him get Robin back down below decks, out of the wind and rain. She’s struggling faintly in his arms, too asleep to do much, but clearly still trying to walk.
Aiden sets her down on her bed, then gives her a hard shake. “Captain. Hey.”
He swipes his hand in front of her face, as if brushing away any remaining magic. Robin’s head tilts back, then jerks upright. Her eyes flutter open, her chest rising and falling fast with her panting breaths.
The illusion’s necklace goes still, silent, and dark in my hands.
“What… what happened…?” Robin dazedly looks up at us, her exhausted eyes only halfway open. “Was I sleepwalking again?”
“You – yeah,” I stammer weakly. “But it’s over now.”
“Oh,” Robin murmurs. “Alright.”
Simply too tired to do anything else, she crawls the rest of the way into bed and instantly passes out again.
Aiden and I stare at her for a silent moment. As one, we look down at the necklace, then up at each other.
“Okay,” Aiden says. “So, what the fuck was that?”
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