“What did you mean by you’ve been protecting me since you first met me?”
Ethan stilled for half a second, almost as if his breath caught. Then he shrugged. “You were a new girl in a town with one of the most lethal vampires on earth, who also happens to despise witches, with no idea what he was or what you were.”
“How did you know what I was? I had my ring on.”
His gaze locked with mine. “I felt it. When I handed back your books, our fingers brushed, and I …” He paused, contemplating his response. After a long while he said, “I just knew.”
The magic energy BJ explained to me, a vibration I could feel too, different for witches, different again for vampires.
“Karson would have known too, but he didn’t hurt me.”
Shadows darkened his eyes. “There are different ways of hurting people.”
“What do you mean by that?”
He climbed to his feet, his gaze back in the forest. “You’re a smart girl, work it out.”
He meant because Karson wouldn’t show anyone outside the few closest to him how much he cared about me. “He does it to protect me.”
“Protect you or protect his standing?”
His words struck. I sucked in a breath. “You’re right, you are an asshole.”
He looked back, his lips thin. “I am, but I’m the asshole that walks in front of you when you need protecting, behind you when you need backup, and beside you every other time. And I don’t give a shit who doesn’t like it.”
He was a good friend, the kind anyone would be lucky to have. But Ethan wasn’t the king of vampires. He didn’t have Karson’s responsibilities. He had no idea of the pressure Karson was under. Ethan had standing, protection, because of his connection with Karson, but he was free to do whatever he liked. He also didn’t have to deal with Sarah’s vengeance. A vengeance Karson didn’t deserve.
I stared out across the lake, running my fingers over the soft skin of my wrist, and sucked in a raw breath. “Karson needs vampires on his side, his friends on his side, especially right now.”
Ethan sighed and suddenly looked drained. “I agree, which is why we need to find Sarah, because if that grimoire gets out, it will be an all-out war.”
His words sent the cold crawling over my skin. I tucked my knees to my chest, hugging my arms around them.
“Do you think Sarah would hand it over to the witches?”
He shook his head. “I don’t think so. She loves her parents too much. But if she’s hellbent on revenge, I think she will do anything and everything she can to bring Karson down.”
“If you need to go and look for her, Ethan, don’t stay here with me. I’m fine.”
He held out a hand for me to grasp. I took it and he lifted me to my feet. “You are a skilled fighter, one of the best I’ve seen in training, and you are clever, Amy. But even the toughest of warriors shouldn’t go through the darkness alone.”
I’d spent my childhood shifted from home to home. Feeling lonely, lost, getting broken and pulling myself back together again. Alone. Even when I grew up, that way of being, thecoping mechanism I had needed just to survive, stayed with me. When my mother died, I cried in my bedroom alone. When Tom broke me, I fled to Church Heights, one of the remotest places in the country, to heal. Alone. When I remembered parts of my childhood trauma, I’d fled here. To be alone. Always alone.
“I don’t want to drag people into the darkness with me,” I whispered.
He reached out and brushed strands of hair off my face, smiling softly. “I kind of like the darkness.”
I couldn’t look at him, couldn’t let him see me broken. I turned to face the lake, my hand trembling as I wiped at the tear slipping down my cheek.
Ethan’s voice drifted through the quiet. “Darkness is not something to be afraid of. It’s somewhere to shelter, where you get to rest, where you get to see the stars.”
“For me, the darkness holds monsters.” I was embarrassed by the croak in my voice.
He stepped up beside me, his gaze following mine. “Then we teach you how to slay the monsters so you’re no longer afraid of them, and they are afraid of you.”
Chapter 53
Dead Again
