Page 237 of A Sanctuary from Shadow
“Look, look, look, Shorty!” Pete strangled my fingers like he could strong-arm my rejuvenation. “Look at this!”
“Huh?” I wanted to cry but didn’t.
Because then I was watching two little boys—one taller and older than the other—competing in a pissing contest off a bench in a barnyard. Both their dusty breeches lay rumpled around their skinny, stockinged ankles as they giggled together. The older excelled at flooding thistles while the younger missed every single one. Still, the older boy praised the younger, “Well done, Paddy! Mam will be so tickled you’ve killed all the weeds!”
The younger boy beamed up at the older boy’s approval with a bright brown twinkle. The older boy grinned, hiking up his breeches. “Last one home feeds the pigs!” He leapt from the bench and tore off. The little one scrambled down after him, breeches still sagging.
I smiled, breathless with the urge to spit up. “Did you really make little Paddy feed the pigs?”
Pete’s reply was also wispy. Was his forehead sweating? “Oh, I still fed the pigs. Our mam made me.”
Ourmam. So, thiswashis boyhood I was glimpsing. “I like your family,” I murmured, tryinganythingto keep my mind off my gnawing emptiness. “Your mother.”
“Don’t sound so surprised.” If I’d been paying better attention, I would’ve noted his tension. “I seem to recall telling you my mother was a fine woman.”
“You did.”Oh, Goddess, make this stop before I puke on him!“But you rarely talk about her—them. I figured—you didn’t—”
“I had a felicitous childhood, Shorty.” Was his breath short? “I had a felicitouslifebefore this place. Would you like to see it?”
So eager for his history, I failed to question his willingness to open that door to me. I also failed to heed the rising temperature of his skin, the hissing of the conduits. I simply answered, “Yeah,” and Pete flooded me with snippets of how he’d become the man I knew.
He gave me the extended tour of his past, and I learned the minutiae of him, the tiny details, quintessentially Pete. From his favorite toy soldier to the worst horse he’d ever owned, and the quills he’d used in his legal practice that had always splotched his fingers black.
He also gave me an introduction to his extended family. Which was more than abundant and included uncles, aunts, cousins, second cousins, those who were “like family,” and various furry friends. Seriously, the ship the McKennas had crossed the Atlantic on would’ve only had room for the McKennas. And that was just his father’s side. His mother’s side had stayed in Ireland, and they were quite the brood as well. In short, Pete grew up in a wellspring of love. With a wellspring of admirers.
Admirers whose hearts he’d often broken, I discovered. I doubted he’d intended this discovery. In wrestling with whatever was happening in his body, he’d lost control over his memories’ flow.
Pete’s discomfort brought my own corporeal distress to mind. I shook out of his mental slideshow to feel sweat pooling in my every nook and cranny, my blood nearly simmering, drumming in my ears. “I don’t feel so good.”
Pete drew our locked hands, mine smoking, to his chest. His sweat slicked over my knuckles. “Stay with me, Shorty. There’s more to see, ken. Can’t leave you there, thinking me some lothario.”
“You aren’t?”
“Judge me for yourself,” he coaxed me back into his past.
There were lots of girls. Lots of ladies, too. Mostly pretty. Several homely. From the time Pete was 13 years old, he’d enjoyed their company. At least for short bursts. Pete’s rampant mind bored too easily. Maidens of breeding were too damned agreeable, too pleasant and biddable. They were afraid of their own opinions, strong-minded females largely disfavored. Pete, however, sought an intellectual connection with the woman he must spend his life with. He needed someone skilled at repartee, who’d stand up to his wit without flinching. And when he’d pressed any of his options to expose her mind, she’d blushed at such “impropriety.” At least, that’s how Pete’s mother had put it after one Miss Peggy Shippen had complained of his prodding—like he’d asked her to remove her blasted petticoats for him at the spring cotillion.
Once, Pete had thought he’d foundtheone. Lydia Lippincott, a lily among thorns—the cousin of his college mate. On their first meeting, she’d enamored him with a pithy discussion on the colonies’ troubles with King George and parliament. He’d courted her like a right swain after that.
Turned out, however, that her cousin, his friend, had coached her into being what Pete desired. When Lydia experienced a stroke of conscience and confessed her cousin’s plans to lure Pete into marriage—covetous as he was for Pete’s merchant father’s connections—she also confessed that she had no mind for politics, philosophy, or “men’s matters,” and didn’t care to acquire one. She feared a life spent maintaining her cousin’s lies would prove too toilsome, preferring to occupy herself with the running of a household, idle gossip, and being the proper wife and mother she was reared to be. If that was quite all right with Pete. Suffice it to say, his infatuation with Lydia hadn’t survived that confession.
Soon after, Pete had joined the continental army, where his interactions with women had lain solely in the sex-for-money capacity.
Then, there’d been the Shadow Palace.
How fitting that after this blurred era of anguish in Pete’s life, hellfire surged within me. To the point where I choked. On my own goddamn magic. As did everybody else in the stone circle. We were all going to die of smoke inhalation.
“I can’t do this anymore,” I sputtered like a candle. “Please, it has to stop.”
“Not yet, Shorty.” Pete sounded rougher than I did, but he wove his sweltering fingers into my hair and forced my forehead to his. Keeping me with him. “You can do this. I know you can.”
“I can’t breathe,” I sobbed. “I’m melting inside. I’mburning.” My fire had never hurt me before, so why did I now feel every searing lick? “Pete, are your cheeks blistered?”
“Don’t fret about me.” His breath rattled, his hands preventing me from jerking back to look at him. “I’ll be right as rain once you see us through this.”
“But I can’t!” I cried again, my internal blazes intensifying. By my estimation, we weren’t far from tied-to-a-pyre pain. “We’re all going to die! We’re all going—”
“Don’t talk like that.” He shook me. “Don’tthinklike that.”
