Past Be Damned

  And my guards were back.

  Tears flooded my eyes. Part of me wanted to hug and hold them. But the other part, it imagined far worse things to do. Injuries to inflict. Damage to pay back in kind for them leaving me to suffer alone.

  How dare they not come from me?

  When Anne’s guards thought she was dead, they still searched. Daniella’s believed she’d perished, yet they never stopped searching.

  Had my men simply not loved me enough? Was I somehow less deserving than my friends? Daniella always said that we had to go through the dark to reach the light. It was part of our journey to true Sisterhood. I’d lived in the dark… and now the dark lived in me.

  They’d abandoned me to my fate and returned when it was easy.

  I didn’t have to justify, even to myself, why I was angry.

  They didn’t love me enough. I’d have never given up on them. I’d held onto them—believing they would have wanted me to survive. Even as the loss had swamped me, I’d pressed on with life. I’d stood my ground until the emptiness threatened more harm than good.

  I silently cried myself to sleep. At least I now understood why I’d had such strange nightmares for the last year—they’d not been dreams, they’d been memories. With that horrendous thought, I slipped into oblivion.

  In my dreams, I stood in a circle. My guards surrounded me, but they couldn’t move. They were frozen, like wax versions of themselves. Above me, white spirits, the ones Anne thought resembled birds but I only saw as alterations of humans, danced through the air peering down at us.

  Mistakes can be corrected.

  The voice of one of them flew to me. Perhaps they were right. But whose mistakes and how could they be fixed? Mine? I’d do what I could to make things better if I wronged anyone.

  The battle awaits you, Sister Teagan.

  “Battle always awaits me.” I called upward to them. “It is my lot in life. I fight. I battle. I go home alone. Or I get locked up, chained, destroyed.”

  Not alone. Never that.

  They could have fooled me. In the distance, a woman howled in pain. I stopped talking and listened. When I would have walked forward to her, I was blocked, fire surrounding me.

  I woke up in sweat, the sun coming in through the window. My body ached. Maybe two demons was still a big deal.

  3

  I stared at myself in the mirror. My bath had been cold, but that happened about fifty percent of the time. I was used to it. For the last year, I’d been wearing my blond hair up in a bun. It had been easier, and I’d had no interest in paying attention to it at all. During my time in the mines, it had been a ratty mess, and I’d been too terrified all the time to consider my appearance. In the Sisterhood, they’d shaved our hair. That had been, in retrospect, simple.

  But now? I wished to figure myself out in the way that I saw Daniella and Anne had. They knew themselves. I’d start with the outside and work inward. My hair was long, blond, and I’d run a comb through it so that it was drying neatly. My room wasn’t warm, but I’d been colder—frozen, for years, when I was stuck at the mines but not down in them myself.

  I could add more wood to the fireplace except I didn’t intend to spend my day inside. Better to bank it, and add a warmer outer layer to my clothing.

  Using scissors, I cut some bangs. The look wasn’t perfect. I’d have to get better doing this to myself, but the style definitely framed my oval face a little better. With no other thoughts about what to do with myself, I made two braids that fell past my breasts.

  My cheeks held color, thanks to the time I’d spent outside lately. I didn’t have a lot of clothes. I couldn’t pretend to be the head housekeeper any longer. Every single person in the manor had played pretend with me. Not one slip, and all so I could erase the person I’d become. Now, once more into the breach, I would hold the darkness at bay. It clawed at me, and my soul flickered. If I became the threat, if the wicked promise of who I was becoming came true—I’d deal with me then.

  I chose a sleeveless white shirt and a long gray skirt. Anne’s guys had procured me some things to wear when I’d first gotten here. None of them would work particularly well for digging in the garden, but this would have to do. Along with my sensible black boots, I was set for my day.

  I was thirty-one years old and so lost I might as well have been the twelve-year-old girl Sister Katrina had whipped for sneaking out the back of the nursery rooms to see the moon when it was full. I knew even less of what to expect from my life now than I did then.

  I was going to do what I’d done every day for the last year until I could come up with a new plan. And... since my backbone returned, I planned on figuring out who those cloistered Sisters were and why they were staying behind closed doors.

  I’d never been good at being left out of secrets.

  Abruptly, I stopped. All five of my guards were sitting on the floor of my hallway. They were dressed exactly the way they all had been the day before. They’d spent the night sitting there.

  My temper coiled like a snake about to snap, and I stayed it. We were going to have to speak if for no other reason than to convince them to go back to wherever they’d been and leave me alone.

  “This is a bit much.” I crossed my arms, forcing myself to meet the gaze of each and every one of them. “Did you spend the night?”

  “None of us wanted to leave.” Eric got off the floor. “You changed your hair.”

  I touched one of my braids. “Ah, yes.”

  They all rose, and there they were again, taking up all the air around me. “I need coffee, and then we can talk. You should all eat something. Come down, I’ll cook.”

  Thaddeus made eye contact with Brody, and they both nodded. Yet it was Aidan who spoke. “Okay. Sounds good. You didn’t used to like coffee.”

  “I’ve come to appreciate anything that is warm and gives me a jolt to wake up.” This was the strangest conversation. Then again, anything we talked about was going to seem odd. They weren’t supposed to be here.

  I made both my coffee and their eggs on the stove. Cooking was something I could do without much thought. I needed time to my head, which was why I ended up sipping my coffee so y it was cold by the time I got to the bottom. I tried not to wince. There was nothing I disliked more than lukewarm coffee. I set it down. I could hear Anne’s guards coming down the hall. We were going to lose privacy soon.

  I motioned with my head toward the door, and to my relief, they followed me outside. The sky was a dark purple. From the way the clouds moved, the rain was coming back. Again.

  I might not get much gardening time today. I stopped in my tracks. The hedges were all back where they belonged and braced upright with wooden planks so they wouldn’t collapse under their own weight as easily.

  “Did I do it right?” Thaddeus pointed at the hedges. “I followed your directions.”

  I nodded. “Thank you. Just out of curiosity, how did you know where they all went?”

  He ran a hand through his hair. “Well, most of them had fallen over near where they went. The two that were really askew, I used my best guess. You seemed to have a pattern. I followed it.”

  “Thank you for doing that.”

  He smiled. “It was my pleasure. A small thing.”

  I rounded on him. “What happened to your eye? Why the patch?”

  Thaddeus’ face went blank, he’d always been good at hiding his emotions. When the whole craziness of all of them falling in love with me had happened—or not really happened as the case might have been—he’d been the last confess his feelings. Neither talking about nor experiencing strong emotions was natural to Thaddeus. Still, if he seemed surprised I hit him with that question right off the bat, he didn’t let on.

  He took his patch off, showing me the scar underneath. It looked like someone had stitched his eye socket closed. I lifted my hand like I was going to touch it, and then pulled it back to my side. We weren’t on touching terms anymore. I didn’t want anyone, ever, touching me again.
That meant I’d be keeping my hands to myself.

  “I was stabbed. Not sure exactly why I’m still here. I wouldn’t be if Eric hadn’t pulled the blade out and saved my ass. A doctor stitched up the wound.”

  My heart tugged at me. He’d been hurt, deeply so. And once I had loved him so completely that the thought of his hurt, of any of their pain, had driven me to make a desperate decision. “I’m sorry for your pain. When did it happen?” The words came out mechanical, the emptiness in me feasting on the worry and hurt the tale of his injury generated.

  “About a year ago.” He put the patch back on. “During a raid on one of the Sisterhood’s main holdings.”

  Now, that got my attention. “Raid? Holdings?”

  He shook his head. “Later. We need to talk about what happened.”

  I rubbed my eyes. “Fine. We’ll talk. I’ll let you know what happened and what I think, and then you can leave. All of you.”

  Aidan rocked forward on his feet. “I’m not being sent away, Teagan. No matter how much you don’t want me to be here right now.”

  I ignored him. I had something to say, and I’d get through it, despite any proclamations from him or any of these men.

  “We made a terrible mistake going to Katrina. I know that now. I realize I was warned against it.” I nodded toward Brody. “I should have listened.”

  He ran a hand through his hair. “I’m not here to say I told you so. In the end, I agreed, too.”

  “Be that as it may”—I forced myself to stand up straighter—“I made a mistake. Katrina’s guards dragged me out in the middle of the night. I saw them hurt Aidan.”

  He rubbed the top of his head. “I took a good blow. Went down for a second. Obviously, I’m okay. I don’t really remember it. Eric saved my ass.”

  “But I didn’t see them take you,” Eric added. “Or I’d have saved both of you.”

  “The next thing I remember was waking up in the mine, handcuffed and bound.” I rubbed my wrists; I always did whenever this came up in my memories. They were rough. The flesh there was twisted and mutilated. No amount of magic could do anything to fix them. Perhaps that’s why I’d always chosen long sleeves in my non-life. “Where I would stay. For five years.”

  There was so much more to say about that time, so much more to express. Endless frights, non-stop pain. But they didn’t get to hear those stories. Those memories were mine, earned through blood, sweat, and pain. In the past, I would have trusted them. I’d learned better.

  “I didn’t blame you. Not at all.” No, I’d missed them, then chained those memories away. My pain fed the demons. “Daniella came to me in a vision for a while. Eventually, she stopped. She told me that we were all destined for each other, were made for each other.” I cleared my throat. “Eric had already figured that out with those old books. It made sense. She also let me know that I’d agreed to the pain before I was born, in a time where I was a spirit. Or something.”

  Anne could see these things more clearly than me. Pain fed the darkness. Anger fed it. The darkness fed on me. I’d agreed to this? An image of Sister Katrina popped unbidden to my mind. I’d agreed to become her mirror?

  “I had to go to the dark to come out into the light. I believed her. She’d had something terrible happen to her until her men came. Anne, too. So I waited. Eventually, Daniella was blocked from me. I’d have been dead if Anne’s guards hadn’t rescued me so I could save Anne. I couldn’t hang on any longer.” The darkness had swelled within me, engorged by what I’d done for Anne.

  Noah opened his mouth, and I held up my hand to silence him. Guards had come for me. Just not mine.

  “Let me finish. I never blamed you. I believed you had to be dead. There was no way the five of you would leave me to that fate. There was no way the same men who held me at night, who made me promises, who I...” No, I couldn’t talk about the things we’d done in the dark, the intimacies we’d shared. They were too painful, too much. The ink swirled, desperate for the denied morsel of my suffering. I took a deep breath. “I couldn’t live with it. I was wrecked with guilt. I’d let you die. Your lives had been taken because of me. Anne takes good care of her men. They have a baby together. Daniella has three children.” I grasped at my chest as if the simple act of doing so could still my heart, make it stop racing. “I wanted to help Anne. The way they saved me? I could take a million demons from her body, and it would never be enough. I thought about dying. Then I thought that the five of you would prefer me to stay, to help where I could.”

  I shook my head. “All of it seems really dumb now. Memories getting erased. You were obviously not dead. Here you are. Alive, and despite that poor eye, Thaddeus, all of you seem pretty well. I made such a terrible mistake. We all did. Just because some Sisters are fated for their guards doesn’t mean we ever were. Katrina has so altered everyone’s destinies Your Sister is probably out there somewhere waiting for you and my guards have long moved on. You should go. Leave. Don’t ever come back.”

  I wouldn’t give them to the emptiness inside of me.

  I refused to treat them as disposable. I wouldn’t be Katrina.

  The wind picked up. My hair blew, some of the strands coming out of the braids, and my gray skirt flared. I smoothed it back down. “If we had been to each other what we should have been, things would have been different.” If I were the Sister I should have been, I would not harbor the void within.

  There, I’d said it. They would go. This could finally all be put to bed. I’d learn to live with the fact that I still loved them so hard I could drown in my feelings if I let myself. I couldn’t breathe for still wanting them. Coupled with the fact that I wanted to beat on them, to rage, and demand answers even though I knew none would satisfy, what I really wanted to do was crawl under my covers and never come out.

  But I wouldn’t do that. This was life. I’d been gifted it by the true Sisterhood to help where I could. Whether or not I had anyone to love while I did it was beside the point. I’d never been promised love. Whatever choices had been made in the great beyond were left to humans to either fulfill or mess up.

  My fate wasn’t happening on the path I’d been born for.

  “Teagan.” It didn’t surprise me it was Noah who spoke. He was the peacemaker. “What you’ve been through, my love, I can’t begin to imagine. I can only beg your forgiveness every day for the rest of my existence. But to suggest that we don’t love you, that it wasn’t real, is to misunderstand the situation.”

  All right. “How would you categorize being abandoned by those who were sworn to protect you and claimed to love you? Or maybe you could sort out how to decide if those who claimed love really just wanted to fuck you so they said all the right things to get between your thighs and didn’t have to share with others outside their group? Did you come back because you assumed I’d be hard up waiting for you?”

  Noah groaned. “You know how you get when you’re mad. Don’t say things you can’t take back.”

  “I’m done.” I moved past him. It was too early in the day for this kind of emotional battering and—

  The bell rang, and I stopped moving. There was a demon somewhere and someone needing help. Well, truthfully there were millions of demons. But this was one we could help with. Anne had to be exhausted. The demon possession wrecked her. She’d not be up for it yet. And I hadn’t seen Daniella. That only left me.

  I closed my eyes for just a second. Taking the demon out of Anne was one thing, but a full on assault was a huge undertaking. I could ask for help from some of both Anne and Daniella’s husbands. But, the truth of the matter was that much as I wanted them gone, my five guards had been some of the best ever trained.

  I turned back to them. “Do you want to come with me or are you leaving?”

  Aidan’s mouth twitched into a smile for a second before his face steeled. “Sure. We’ll come, Sister Teagan.”

  The way Aidan answered sent warmth up my back, like I’d just stepped into a warm shower. What had I done, and
could I undo it somehow? What had asking them to help me meant to them that I didn’t understand? Nothing had changed for me. We were done. After we battled, they would leave.

  End of story.

  The guys changed into their uniforms and grabbed their weapons. I really didn’t need to alter anything. I wasn’t putting on my old Sister uniform. I’d be damned before I put on another hood.

  I shook my head at the memory.

  Anne’s guards stopped at the gate. It was Bryant who spoke first. “Do you all need anything? The messenger says it’s about an hour ride east of here. A big demon. That’s all they’ll say. People are dropping like flies. The town is called Clark.”

  Thaddeus was already moving when he spoke. “We got this. Thanks for the information.”

  “Welcome,” Bryant finished. “Just listen to the spirits; they’ll guide you. They vanished on us the other night. But then again, the possession did bring you back into the fold, Teagan. So maybe what will be will be.”

  “That’s a strange way to view it, but okay, why not?” I patted him on the arm.

  Thaddeus didn’t move. “Something change in the years with the training? What exactly are the spirits?”

  Bryant’s gaze hardened on Thaddeus. “Are you telling me you don’t see the spirits? Maybe they seem like birds to you?”

  “I...” Thaddeus peered at the others, and they all indicated the negative. “No.”

  Bryant stepped back. “Time to sharpen your listening skills, brothers. One of you should be hearing them. For us, it’s usually Milo. For Daniella, it’s Max. They’re talking. Can’t you see them up there?” He pointed upward.

  Sure enough, the fates danced in the sky. “I can see them, but they don’t like me that much. Left me alone years ago.”

  Milo sighed. “That’s because they weep for you.”

  “I’m not interested in weeping, of any kind.” I walked through the gate. “They can save their tears. My years of crying are done.”