Page 44 of Wake the Dream

“It helps me stay awake. I want to enjoy this and fill my belly before heading off to whatever dungeon you plan on throwing me in tonight.”

His stomach chose that moment to voice its urgency, a loud grumble echoing across the room. Damn thing didn’t know how to keep its opinions to itself. “I’ve got the red room of torment set up for you,” he teased. “I’ve been plotting this for weeks. Before I even met you.”

“Sure you have.” Illaria accepted the fork with a smile and dug into the steaming rice. “Talk to me. Unless you’re ashamed. Or don’t want me knowing something. I know I haven’t always been the most forthcoming with you.”

He hesitated to say he expected it from her, her kind being tricksters. “We’ll do it in rounds. I answer a question, then you. That way makes it fair.” Then he stopped to consider. “I guess I wanted to be on the force since I was sixteen.”

“An awfully young age for someone to make a life-altering decision.”

He avoided her gaze. “I was sixteen when my mother died.”

Chapter 11

Illaria

Her stomach twistedin a knot at his words. His mother had died?

Brows drawing together, she swallowed and asked, “What happened?”

She didn’t care if the question was too personal. Kieran was the type of person who would either share or shut down completely. He did nothing halfway, and she knew him well enough to recognize this.

Illaria waited patiently to see which of the two he’d choose.

He stared at his food, pushing rice around with his fork in no distinguishable pattern. “It was a breaking and entering gone wrong. A gunshot wound severed her femoral artery. She bled out on the floor before my father could reach her. Midnight snack. Wrong place at the wrong time.”

Oh, poor boy. Her heart went out to him, bleeding a little on the edges. She knew what it was like to not have a mom in the picture. She’d lost hers at a young age, too.

“And you wanted to catch the guy responsible,” Illaria finished for him.

“Catch him or kill him.” Kieran’s fist clenched, knuckles turning white. “It didn’t seem to matter which came first. It cemented my decision to join the police academy. My father wanted me to go to college first, to see what I loved doing instead of blindly following the path set out for me that night. He was wrong. I belong on the force. I knew too many things to be able to just stand by when there were people who needed my help. Needed what only I could provide.”

Mid-chew, Illaria tore her gaze from her food to focus on Kieran. The room had gone silent around them, the normal paper-thin walls between apartments suddenly turning to stone and sealing them inside together. “What do you mean, you knew too many things? You are going to have to clarify for me. This is the second time you’ve mentioned being able to know things other people don’t.”

“It’s, ah, a gift,” Kieran admitted. “Something my grandmother had and everyone laughed off as impossible. A sort of knowing.” He shrugged. “It probably comes from being Irish. Everyone always says the Irish have the sight. In my case, it happens to be true. Your turn.”

He shut down the topic effectively, unwilling to discuss it further. Fine, Illaria mused. They’d return to it at a later date. She might be Fae but Yelena always said she more resembled a dog on a bone. Stubborn became an understatement.

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