“What’s the matter?” I reach for her elbow, but she pulls back, her gaze still lost in some farawayplace.
“My God, she’s idiotic! What a ridiculous ninny.” She comes to and looks to Marshall. “I must speak with Marlena.” She shakes her head as if this changed her life on a dime. Newsflash: nothing changes the fact she’s been dead for three hundred years andcounting.
Marshall leans in, his affect a mixture of curiosity and annoyance. “I’m afraid that’s not something I canprovide.”
“Oh, yes, it is.” I jump to his side, and his eyes widen withhorror.
“No, Skyla, it’snot.”
“Yes, Marshall, it is.” My voice is clear and cutting. “You see, Ms. Winters owes me some answers, and if she wants to see Marlena, she needs to provide them. Of course, you’ll play the part of lie detector because this happens to be a no bullshit zone.” I glance to Melody when I say that lastpart.
“Look at the time.” She straightens and snatches her purse off the piano. “I must run. It was wonderful per usual, Sector Marshall.” She glances back with her hand to her lips and blows him a kiss. “Untilhextime!”
Marshall chuckles as he leans in. “A little seventeenth-centuryhumor.”
“Yeah? Well, it’s lousy.” I look to Melody as she’s about to hit the exit. “The seventeenth century is dead! Much like youare!”
She flips me the bird as she heads onout.
Marshall shakes his head with a wistful smile as if it were the cutest thing. “She does seem to be picking up on the nuances of this century. Cassandra always was a quickstudy.”
“She was a whore in a whorehouse. What the hell is she doinghere?”
He hems and haws, his mouth opens and closes as he flits his eyes out the window, and something about this little boy in trouble routine is intensely darling on him. Darn Marshall for captivating me with his cutting good looks at everyturn.
The door bursts open, letting in an unreasonable amount of light, and in walk Logan and Gage like gods ushered in by the forces of the universe, their forms outlined in shadows as the sun tries to drink themdown.
“Look whatthiscentury has dragged in”—Marshall says it with all the boredom he can afford—“the Olivers in multiple.” Marshall might not be delighted, but my heart soars at the sight of them. After all these years, those butterflies in my stomach still flutter to life whenever they show up on the scene. I try to usher us to the dining room, but Logan insists we enjoy the sunshine, and we head out back instead. It’s only then I note he’s holding a brown paperbag.
“You come bearing gifts?” My heart plummets because I recognize the white folder peering out. It’s the same one Lexy gives me once she prints out the pictures of the boys. I haven’t seen the ones we took a few weeks back of Angel yet. I’m not sure I’m readyto.
“Maybe.” He glances to the bag with sorrow as we follow Marshall to the corral, allowing the llamas to come over and eavesdrop on ourconversation.
“What’s up?” Gage wraps his arms around me and presses a soft kiss to my lips. “Everything okay?” His head tips to the side, and the color of his eyes reflects the sky, or maybe it’s the other way around. It shouldn’t surprise me at all that the sky would want to steal the color from Gage Oliver’seyes.
“Chloe’s up.” I wrinkle my nose at him. “I wanted to talk to the three of you. I feel like I owe you an apology for not talking about this sooner.” A ripe anguish rushes through me at the thought of not having this conversation months ago. But, in a way, I wasn’t ready. In all honesty, I don’t think I could ever be. “The night of the boys’ christening, after Marshall and I witnessed what we did—I couldn’t breathe.” I meet with my husband’s intense gaze. “My heart was broken, and yet even in that horrific moment, I knew deep down that you were doing what you thought best. But ultimately, what I came to realize was that Demetri’s hold on us was stronger than I could have ever imagined.” I glance to Marshall who was with me that night. “It was good that you took me to see it. In retrospect, it was as beautiful as it was ugly.” I swallow hard. “That night I went to the Transfer. The boys—they afforded me powers that I never dreamed of.” My gaze falls to my hands as if the powers they gifted could be contained simply in my fingers. “I found Chloe in Wesley’s house by the fire, and I made her an offer she couldn’t refuse.” I give Gage a sharp look without meaning to. “If you were siding with our enemy, I would, too. I asked her to follow me. To unite her powers with mine, and that I would gift her whatever her heart desired.” A sad smile curves on my lips, and Gage matches it with hisown.
“She will never have me,Skyla.”
“Chloe knows that.” I shake my head as if refuting theidea.
Logan groans. “No, she doesn’t. There are some concepts Chloe cannot wrap her warped little head around, and that happens to be one ofthem.”
“That might be true, but we’ve outlined the terms of our covenant and handing Gage’s head to her on a silver platter wasn’t one of them.” I spend the next few minutes outlining the terms of the covenant I entered into with Chloe and place them on that proverbial silver platter before handing them to the three men I love with all of myheart.
Logan sighs, and I don’t bother trying to read whether or not he’s disappointed in me. “She gets to live above ground. She’s your number two. She’s forCelestra.”
I nod. “She doesn’t make a move without my approval. She doesn’t harm my family. She leaves my husband the hellalone.”
Marshall tenderly picks up my chin a notch, the look of sorrow upon his own. “And what’s to stopher?”
“I have the power to send her back to hell or wherever I wish—a quite literal hell if I wanted.” The afternoon of the covenant comes back to me. “She did say something…” Something that didn’t even faze me that day in Tenebrous, but now that I rehash the words we shed like water, I can’t help but trip over it. “She threatened me.” My gaze gets lost in the vibrant green lawn that spreads beneath our feet. “In the event I changed my position—she said woe to the hour I turned on her—that she would usher a darkness in my life like never before.” The words stream from me in awhisper.
“Skyla.” Gage pulls me in tight, his face buried in my neck a moment before he pulls back, exposing the crimson tracks in his eyes. “I’m sorry I drove you tothis.”
“Don’t apologize.” My heart grows heavy because I don’t know how to candy-coat the truth. “I plan on keeping all of my enemies, present and those implied in my future, close to thevest.”
Marshall gives a sly smile. “Arrow to the heart, Skyla. There’s no better way to doit.”
