At least his brother hadn’t lost his sense of humor. “But it’s the middle of the winter?”
“Aye. Apparently time isn’t linear. How long has it been?”
“Since you’ve been gone in our world?”
Grey nodded.
“Two weeks.”
“Hmmm. I’ve been here since April.”
“April?” Trying to wrap his brain around this flashed him back to his worst subject in school. Math. Ian had despised it. Ask him to give a presentation? He’d ace the assignment. Bullshit a three-page essay? No problem. But black and white answers? He’d never been a fan.
“So time moves slower in the present?”
Grey just shrugged. “Maybe.”
“Mom? Rhys? Reik? Your wife? Tell me more.” Ian still had a hard time believing their mother was actually alive. That she hadn’t abandoned them.
Pulled out of his reverie, Grey leaned over to pour himself wine too. In agoblet.
“Mom left a couple of months ago to reunite with Rhys, who’s with his wife at—”
“Wait, what?”
Greyson’s cockyI know something you don’tsmile had apparently traveled through time with him.
“I have a lot to tell you. We’ve barely scratched the surface.”
“Apparently.” Ian downed his wine and poured another, taking a moment to look around the room. It was a lot more colorful than he’d expected. He’d pictured medieval castles as being dark and drab, but perhaps that was just because the surviving tapestries and paintings and such were so old and faded. There was more color here than on a Mardi Gras float.
“Long story . . . very long story short . . . our Aunt Grace consorts with the Fae, who gave her that silver cross and the traveling chant. When Mom was told to deliver a message to the now-dead King Alexander—oh yeah, Mom was a lady-in-waiting to the queen—the king started back to Kinghorn to join his new queen, but before he could ever reach her, his horse was purposely spooked. It lost its footing and fell with the king on it, and both horse and rider died. Turns out it was a setup. I’ll spare you the details, but Mom was basically framed for murder. And one of the men tried to kill her too.”
He was going to need more wine.
“Mom’s sister wanted to save her, so she used the chant to send Mom away. She thought it was just going to send Mom back here to Hightower, but she got one of the words wrong—the devil’s in the details—so instead Mom ended up in twentieth-century New Orleans, back when she was only twenty-one. You know the rest.”
Ian’s mind flashed back to his childhood. His mother’s insistence that they learn to ride horseback. Her encouragement of Rhys’s fascination with Gaelic. Grey’s archery. Her strange, almost melancholy, behavior when they’d visited Scotland. Her disappearance.
His stomach turned at the implications.
“Dad.”
His own regret was etched on his brother’s face. He’d tried to tell them the truth. So many times.
“Why did he wait so long? Why didn’t they both tell us before she disappeared?”
Grey took a sip of wine as if he didn’t have a care in the world. Meanwhile, Ian felt panic blast through him. Dad was home, in a New Orleans hospital bed, alone. Jeremy would make sure he was taken care of, but how likely was he to visit?
“And why are you sitting there like a king when Dad is at home dying? Why didn’t you try to come back?”
Anger bubbled just beneath the surface, testing his control.
“There’s a lot I haven’t told you yet, Ian. We’re in the middle of a political shitstorm here.”
“And why should I give two flying fucks about the political climate? What happens, happens. We know that.”
Grey didn’t take offense. That was the problem—he never did. Calm as a cucumber.
