[THIS STORY WILL BE TAKEN DOWN ON SEPTEMBER 30, 2024]
He had hunted me, captured me, and locked me in a tower.
Season 3 'Of Crows and Thorns'
***
While in RISING, Tabitha discovers something peculiar that may assist Nelle in her plan to escape the...
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Across the bed, Graysen shot a dark glare at me.
I wagged my eyebrows in a challenge and returned a cheeky smirk.
Sage, barking and wagging his tail, chased the ball that had rebounded off one of the lacquered pieces of wood that curved over Graysen's bed and bounced lazily toward the large leather armchair.
Graysen kept narrowed eyes on me as he reached for another shirt to fold.
Holding a hand across my mouth, I hid the wide-ass grin. What he didn't realize was I'd marked almost every single shirt he owned with the invisible pen I'd found in his arts and crafts box. At some point, as he had with 'Meet Mr. Limp Dick' he'd discover the other messages I'd scrawled over his clothes.
The brand-new-yet-old bedside tables—because from the look of them, they were antiques from a variety of time periods and cultures—he'd already moved into place beside the birdcage bed of his.
My finger made a dull, flat sound as I absentmindedly tapped it against the glass. I had a myriad of questions. Which one first? Tabitha. "How do you know your mother is still alive? It's been twelve years."
Graysen stopped folding, straightening, but his gaze had gone distant in thought, and something warred on his expression as if he were hesitant at how much he could divulge. He took so long in answering, I wasn't sure if he was going to. Finally, his dark eyes sharpened. "There's a connection between us. We know she's still alive."
I frowned, tilting my head. A connection?
"We can feel that she is still alive," he elaborated.
"How?"
"When she's in pain, we can feel it."
I pushed off the gentle curve of the countertop, taking a couple of steps across the sun-baked tiles. "We? You all feel it?"
"One of us." He dropped his gaze to the shirt in his hands and kneaded it. His forehead creased. "A shadow if you like. A sort of echo. A reverberation." He slowly brought his gaze back to mine, his eyebrows knitting together. "Specifically pain, whenever she feels it... My mother's been hurt badly over the years."
Dipping my head, I lowered my gaze to the glass in my hands, rotating it around as guilt stung the back of my throat.
Gods. Twelve long years, she'd been gone...
And that shadow, the reverberation of her pain, would mean one of the Crowthers, one of the brothers was connected to Tabitha, I was sure of it. Graysen—no. I thought with all that time we'd spent together I'd have known.
"That's how we know she still lives," Graysen said quietly, putting the t-shirt on top of those he'd already folded and picking up a new one from the basket. "Because whoever or whatever has her, has been hurting her."
