“I killed your brother.”
Kenzie covers her mouth, eyes wide as she pieces that day together, but Luka just stares at me. I can’t tell if he’s angry, dubious, or disgusted until he finally speaks again.
“In self-defense. Right?”
“You knew?”
The vampire shakes his head, shoulders slumping as he looks away. “I didn’t know it wasyou. Levi and I survived a lot together, but as we got older, I heard rumors about some things he started doing. I could never condone the shit he chose to do—made me fucking sick. He was digging his own grave. You were just the one to finally push him into it.”
Well, then. This isn’t how I expected this to go, but I’m not complaining.
I worried Kenzie would be hurt and pissed that I harmed her match’s family, but when I look at her, she nods in melancholic understanding. It’s quiet momentarily until Luka’s attention moves back to my stained shoulder.
He wrinkles his nose. “Your blood smells weird. It’s not exactly human, not monster, not fiend or legacy or…okay, what the fuckisthat scent? It’s way too strong. You should cover that before other vampires catch it.”
I sniff my bloody shoulder curiously, but I don’t smell anything out of place.
Safe to say a heightened sense of smell isn’t a demigoddess thing.
Kenzie reaches out to touch Luka’s jaw, smiling gently. “Could you go check on Vivienne for me? She’s still helping takefood to some of the newest refugees. And remember, we’re not breathing a word about Maven to anyone outside our quintet.”
Luka nods, kisses his keeper’s forehead, and leaves. It’s odd to realize that Kenzie and her quintet don’t have the ability to telepathically communicate, like mine did. I know it isn’t common, and it most often happens with powerful legacies that have been bound for a while, but it still makes my chest ache.
I miss talking to them in my head. If our bond was still intact…
It will be. I’m going to get it back. Whatever it takes.
Kenzie fills up a cup of water in the small kitchen sink, grabs a wrapped package from a tote, and offers both to me.
“That’s a protein bar,” she clarifies when I squint at the packaged food. “No meat in it.”
I thank her, sipping the water and unwrapping the protein bar to take a bite. My fingers and toes slowly warm up as she changes into regular clothes and sets the coat I loaned her on the desk in front of me.
And then the lioness shifter stares at me expectantly.
“This is the part where you tell me what the hell happened, May.”
“I don’t?—”
She holds up a hand. “This has been really, really hard, and not just because of the Upheaval. When you died, I was a fuckingwreck. I spent months mourning you.”
“Thanks, but I don’t?—”
“I know you hate talking about anything more than necessary, but I deserve answers—and you already know I’ll take your secrets to the grave. So, please, please,pleasejusttalk to me. Where did you go? How are you back? What the hell is going on?”
I wait a moment to make sure she’s done this time before trying again. “I don’t remember.”
“Oh. Shit.”
I glance down at the cup in my hands, recalling the liquid gold dripping from my fingertips in my flashback. Something niggles in the back of my mind, like a memory trying to rise from the depths of a tar pit. I know Kenzie is serious about taking my secrets to the grave, so I decide to tell her what little I do know.
“I woke up in Paradise.”
She blinks. “Paradise?”
I nod.
“Like…where the gods are? The plane of existence that mortals can’t see or go to that floats way up in the heavens filled with a bunch of divine beings like angels and nature spirits andgods?ThatParadise?”
