She trod more carefully now. The men with the black coldness that reached their eyes; the leonine Isaiah, always too quick to touch and too slow to pull away; even Thomas, though she could not imagine him ever harming her. But his eyes were deep and unfathomable, eyes that one could grow lost in, and he dazzled Nadine with his infrequent smiles. She didn’t know why she cared so much for him, soulless killer from beyond the mountains, dark cropped hair and constellation of moles scattered along his left cheek. But she did.
“Where’s Liam?” Wren asked midway through the day, and something in Nadine sank, effortlessly as the cut of a knife.
“Went off to the spring to get water.” Isaiah yawned.
“I’m going to go with him.”
“Why?” And then a slow recognition, an uneasy silence. Isaiah looked slightly uncomfortable, and at once Nadine thought of the careless affection the two men shared, though not often among others; in the shadows of a box stall in the stable, in the rocky caves of the mountain stone, unraveling one another in the dusky forest. But Nadine’s heart was too full of beauty to admit fear; and she could no more pin down Wren, butterfly-winged, than she could try and steal him away. He belonged to no one. Not even Liam.
Wren departed to find Liam and ten minutes later, Nadine followed. The dappled light fell through the arboreal land and the latticed branches, the nameless wildflowers blooming at her feet. It was lovely, effervescent and fleeting, and Nadine crouched to take an armful of blossoms into her hands. They smelled of fragrant warmth, of an endless, formless summer.
Soon, though, she heard voices cut through the pristine silence. Liam, and Wren—Liam with his low melodic tones and Wren’s shy and clever, a voice like a cat who had learned to speak. Nadine could hear the splash of water, her brother’s laughter like a clarion bell. And then they were both laughing until that laughter went soft, turned into something else: something heated, something at the edge of an ache. She had never before come so close to the sight that she’d fought to avoid; though through the leaves she saw them now, shirts off, jeans unbuttoned, the flatness of their rosebrowned abdomens. And at once it struck her, the things she would have to learn to live without.
There were so many different ways in which to want, and Nadine thought she could count them all. Frozen, she could not move away. Her brother had his palm to Wren’s cheek with a tenderness he had never shown her: sweet, gentle, soft. The skim of his fingertips along the feline cheekbones, one of his hands in Wren’s. The closer they drew the more devastated she became; clutching the wild blooms in her arms as tears rose to her red-rimmed eyes.
She didn’t know which was worse: getting what you want, or not getting it at all.
You should have known. She’d been played a fool. You should have known.
She’d thought that Liam’s feelings did not encompass anything more than Lydia, her blue-black hair and deep navy eyes, the full mouth always bitten to redness. She’d thought the flirtations between her brother and Wren had been innocent, the actions of two young men with little else to entertain them. Of course they were close, because they loved each other, and and love was all either of them needed. A kind hand, a soft word — it was enough. Or so she’d thought.
But now Liam was pressing Wren against the rough bark of an oak tree, hands traveling over the map of the other man’s body: hips, forearms, even a brief pressure to the pulse in his throat.
“Sick of hiding this.” Wren’s voice, muted.
“Sick of you saying we have a choice.”
In a blush of heat, Wren pressed his forehead against Liam’s. For a moment they were both quiet, still — more silent than the forest itself.
“No one gets what they want,” murmuered Liam, eyes closed as he said it. “No one.”
The world was sober and solemn around them, and Nadine’s eyes were fixed on Wren. The curve of his narrow neck and the profusion of his blue-black hair, the delicate wrists. When Liam ran his fingers across the other man’s abdomen, Wren inhaled sharply. And Nadine knew how he felt—because everything he’d done to her was now being done to him.
Liam tilted his face down just slightly, looked at Wren as if he’d never seen anything so beautiful. Nadine’s heart squeezed.
“I think I’ve loved you my entire life,” Liam murmured. And something in Nadine went still.
Turning, she stumbled through the underbrush, dumping the flowers from her arms and tears streaking her cheeks. The late afternoon light was heady and lush through the branches, pure molten sun. She wanted to hide; she wanted to disappear. But back at the camp there was Isaiah, Harris, Rion — no one with whom she could offer her secret, for she could not risk her brother’s shame.