The Secrets of Roan Island

30. Noah

30

Noah

I t’s well into the afternoon by the time my brothers bring food down to the library. I worry for Ruby, spending such long hours pouring over books, not eating enough. I know she’s not sleeping well either. I can hear her tossing and turning while I try to sleep outside her door. Last night, I heard her softly mumble my name and I almost went to her, but I held myself in check. She made it clear when I begged three nights ago that she isn’t able to forgive me, that she doesn’t even know how.

I could barely focus on my work after that. Tears threatened my eyes for the first time since Zarah was taken. It was all I could do to hold myself together. I’m still trying to hold myself together. To keep my distance like she wants.

“Father is expecting you for dinner tonight,” Shemaiah says as he sets down an overloaded basket of food. “No excuses this time.”

Ruby digs through the basket, pulling out bread, cheese, wine, a dish of pasta that smells amazing. I’m hungrier than I realized. But when she shifts a little closer to me, I know the thing I really want is something I’ll never have again.

“We won’t be there to run interference for you, brother, so you’d be wise to leave your little lady and make an appearance.” Jafeth slaps my back.

“Where will you be?”

“The colony,” Shemaiah says. I study his face, but he gives nothing away.

“We’re meeting with Gray,” Jafeth says, looking smug, “to find volunteers for Solstice tomorrow.”

“Why did father agree to that?” He’s always so careful about us not going into Essik too often, especially not together. He doesn’t want us drawing attention to ourselves, or slipping up and feeding inconspicuously. Jafeth’s had a problem with that in the past.

“We have the good professor to thank for that.” The smile Jafeth gives Ruby is a little too friendly, and I step between them before I can stop myself.

“Father wants us to find her,” Shemaiah says.

Ruby stops unpacking the food. I’m so in tune with her I can hear the uptick in her heartbeat, feel the way her body stills even without looking at her.

For a breath I worry that my brothers will turn her over to our father, just like he asked. My claws extend, fangs drop, ready to defend her at all costs.

Jafeth laughs. “Don’t worry. We won’t give you away. She’s helping us, remember. We want to end this as much as you do.”

“Good,” Ruby says. “Because if you tell Hammish I’m down here, I’ll gut the lot of you.” We all know, and can tell from Ruby’s smile, it’s an empty threat. A teasing attempt to lighten the mood.

“I do like when she’s vicious,” Jafeth fake whispers in my ear, loud enough for Ruby to hear.

“You would.” Ruby laughs. “Now sit down and eat before I eat it all. I’m starving.”

“We can’t stay,” Shemaiah says. “The boat will leave soon.”

My gaze swings to Ruby, worry spiking through my hearts. This is an opportunity for her to leave and she knows it. She offers me a soft smile before directing her attention to my brothers. “Keep your fangs in and don’t you dare bring anyone back here who doesn’t know exactly what they’re risking.”

I love the way she’s started bossing them around. She fits oddly well within our little clan. An adhesive we’ve been missing without Zarah around. Zarah would love Ruby. I can just picture them together. The image makes my hearts squeeze tight.

Once my brothers have said their goodbyes, I fall into a chair and drop my head back, staring up at the gilded ceiling.

“Have you been sleeping?” Ruby asks.

“Trying to.” I lift my head and see her pulling a chunk of crusty bread from the loaf. She sets it on a plate along with chunks of the hard cheese in the basket and slides it towards me.

The small gesture stirs something in me, a tiny flicker of hope.

“Have you found anything new?” I incline my head toward the books stacked at the other end of the table, then take hold of the glass carafe and pour each of us a cup of red wine.

It makes me think of blood.

Ruby’s blood.

My mouth salivates.

My fangs press the inside of my bottom lip.

Ruby refuses the glass I offer, and it feels like a refusal of more than just the wine. But her eyes linger on mine, and I don’t miss when her gaze drops to my mouth.

“More of the same,” she says, returning her attention to the food. “Your great-great-grandmother was fond of detailing the mundane things she did day to day.”

“Yes. I recall that from my journey through her accounts.” I smile fondly. Her journals were boring in places, but there was something soothing about the normality of her life. She wasn’t plagued by the struggles and guilt that eats at me every day. It was refreshing to read about her daily affairs. It gave me hope that we Mavarri could be something different than my father.

Ruby smiles back at me, momentarily lowering her guard. Which makes me miss the camaraderie we had before I ruined it all.

I clear my throat. “In your opinion, Why would she detail such things?”

Ruby’s eyes remain on her food as she plucks at her food. Round lips wrap a piece of bread, and it makes me remember the way she looked with my cock in her mouth. What I would give to return to that moment.

She watches me watch her.

The tension in the room builds, then suddenly splinters when her gaze darts back to her plate. “It isn’t uncommon. Most primary sources articulate the day-to-day monotony of life. Those things that seemed important and noteworthy. I’ve found that the treasure for a researcher is rarely in the actual words, but in what we can read between the words, between the lines.”

“That sounds very different from what I’m looking for.”

“Which is what?”

“Evidence. What I can see under the microscope that tells me definitively that there’s a chance.”

She hums an understanding sound as she reaches for her wine. I’m not sure she even remembers that she refused it before.

“And what are you looking for?” I ask.

“The woman behind the words.”

There’s a softness in her voice that makes me want to wrap her in my arms. My frustration that I can’t leads me to speak more harshly than I should. “Explain.” I immediately regret my tone when her eyes meet mine. “Please.”

“Well…” She stops, then reaches for a journal and the translation glasses. After clearing a place closer to me, she slides the goggles onto her face and flips gingerly through the delicate pages. “Like here.” She lays the book out, marks the page with her finger, and offers me the goggles. As she does, her arm brushes mine. Her breath catches. She scoots her chair back.

“I don’t need them,” I say, quieter than a moment ago.

“Right.” She clears her throat. “Here she talks about your great-great-grandfather’s shoes.”

I watch her point at the passage, but I’m more interested in her finger, her hand, her soft skin as it disappears beneath the sleeve of her burgundy dress, the buttons all the way to her elbow creating puffs of fabric around her arms.

“She goes into great detail about the leather,” Ruby finishes, her voice dropping in a way that hits my gut and travels lower.

I tilt my head and lean in, catching her scent that haunts my restless sleep, a combination of warm earth and blossoming flowers.

“See what I mean?” she asks.

I try to see what she finds so interesting in the passage and can’t. “She just goes on and on about the leather, how she works it, and what she wants to do to it.”

“Right. To make it special.” Ruby shifts in her seat, slightly closer.

“She doesn’t say that.”

“No. She says, ‘Seamus loves the scroll work of my design on his vest. I will do the same for his new belt’ , which suggests it. This woman cared about the man she was working the leather for. She was willing to put in extra effort.”

“She could have just as easily feared him.” I know how fear will make a person strive for perfection, approval.

“Perhaps.” Ruby closes the book and moves away. “But if I hated the man I was making such an effort to dress, I certainly wouldn’t have cared about carving or stitching a design he loved to make it special.”

“You think she loved him?”

For some reason, my heart suspends in my chest as I wait for her reply. Such an innocuous and fair question, only coupled with her sharp intake of breath, the color that climbs her cheeks, it does something to my insides that feels simultaneously dangerous and impetuous.

The bell rings, and fear breaks the moment. My brothers are already gone.

“Take it.” I point to her glass on the table. I can convince my father I’m taking my meals down here, but not that I’m drinking from two glasses. I harbor a small hope it’s Mrs. Darning and not Hammish, but even if it is, I can’t be certain she wouldn’t tell him.

Ruby grabs her cup and darts for the room she hates. I don’t follow her this time, because I already hear my father’s booming voice. I snatch up the bottle of rubbing alcohol we keep nearby for this very purpose and depress the dispensing mechanism. The gears click and whir to create the misty aerosol that floods the room, overloading it with a chemical scent. My heart slams against my chest thinking of all the things my father might do if he finds Ruby here.

Fuck. Fuck! I never should have let her stay. I should have forced her to go with my brothers this afternoon. I hear the creak of the door as Ruby shuts herself in. It’s an awful sound, and I hate that she’s in this position, that I’ve put her in this position, but there’s nowhere else that’s safe for her to hide. And I need to keep her safe. I can’t explain how desperately I need to protect her. It’s all consuming.

My father appears in the doorway just as I grab my wine. It’s then that my eyes fall on the sweater draped over the back of Ruby’s chair. It’s the beautiful pale pink of a rose. A rose with thorns that could pierce right through our deception.

I force myself to meet my father’s gaze.

“Well?” he says, raising an eyebrow.

I set the cup on the table.“Well what?”

“Don’t be singular,” he snaps. His hands rest on the back of a chair at the opposite end of the table from me. His nostrils flare, accompanied by a brief look of disgust. “You’ve been sequestered for well over a week. Has your inane experimentation wrought any new conclusions?”

“Unfortunately, no.” I take a bite of bread, feigning indifference to the man who has the means to crush me like ripe fruit, but my hearts are a riot in my body, fear and desperation becoming the driving forces of my own will. It’s a dangerous combination, and I know it won’t help me hide her.

“Good thing a new batch is coming in then, yes?” Hammish’s smile is sordid as he casually flips through the journals.

“At what cost?” I ask. “We know it will only kill them.”

“Because they aren’t strong enough!” Hammish shouts, his hand coming down on the table with a loud bang. The books jump with the force, and thump into new, haphazard piles away from him. “Don’t get soft on me now, boy. This is the only way forward.”

I look up from the books and for the first time in my life, I see my father, truly see him. This is a desperate man.

“It’s not the only way.”

Hammish stands, moving around the table.

Despite my best efforts, my eyes flick to Ruby’s sweater, then back to him as he walks slowly toward me.

“Are there other options?” He stops at the chair with the sweater and places both hands on it.

My mouth dries out. “We can find another way.” I repeat myself with less conviction as my mind struggles to remain connected to our conversation. “I’m going through the journals again for something I might have missed.”

Hammish’s fingers close around the sweater, and he slowly picks it up, bringing it to his nose.

I know he can smell her. I can, even from here. I should have known the alcohol fumes wouldn’t be enough to mask her. “I took it from her room,” I say before he can jump to a conclusion of his own. “Before she left.”

His eyes are blown as his nostrils flare, then his gaze slams into mine. He snarls, showing his fangs. “Where is she?”

“Home, I would guess.” I pretend nonchalance. I need to sell this. “I liked her,” I admit. “She surprised me.” I push away from the table to stand. “I should get back to work. This venom problem isn’t going to solve itself.”

My father’s black eyes move from the lab back to me. He’s grown, his body filling in with Mavarri strength.

In response, my fangs elongate and my muscles fill with the power in my blood. But Ruby was right, I can feel the effects of having gone without sleep and sustenance. Without blood. I won’t be able to fight him and win. Even if he didn’t use his power to control me.

Ruby is locked in the morgue, and she needs me alive to let her out, so I drop my chin to my chest in submission to the monster that is my father. For now. But I know what I need to do. Ruby needs to get off the island. I should never have allowed her to stay.

With my eyes on the floor, I say, “Truly, father, she’s gone. I’m just as disappointed as you.”

He snarls a laugh. “She won’t be for long. I’ll find her. And then, I’ll bite her.” He uses his patriarchal power to lock my muscles in place as he closes the distance between us. “She’ll either die, or be your new matriarch.” His voice is low and threatening. “Don’t think for a moment that there are any other options.”

The need to rip off his head is unparalleled, but I can’t move. All I can do is grit my teeth and dig my claws into my palm deep enough that blood drips down onto the plush rug.

“You have no power here, Noah.” He pats my chest as if we’re simply casual friends joking around. Then suddenly his hand is around my throat. “Try anything, and you know who will suffer for it.”

We stare at each other. A clash of wills, desire, and blood.

I will kill him. He may have discovered every other attempt I’ve made, but this time, I’ll succeed. For Ruby.

His hand drops, and he stalks from the room, still holding Ruby’s pink sweater in his treacherous grasp.