I nearly knocked over the glass. “Jack, tell me! I’ve gone my whole life thinking my mother died five years ago!”
He glanced anxiously around the club as though he feared we were being observed. “Yeah, as far as I know, she did.”
“So why did you say it was more complicated? And what did you mean by saying something about her twin?”
“Look, I don’t know a lot,” he admitted, and he seemed sincere. “This is something you need to talk to Black Ember about. If anyone sent you something that belonged to Alyse, it was him.”
I wanted to grab Jack with my free hand and shake him. How could he taunt me with a mention of my mother but not tell me anything more?
He’s afraid of Black Ember, I realized.Everyone is. They’re terrified to say too much.
I felt a sudden chill despite the warm club. A shark suddenly glided past the aquarium wall behind Jack, silent and deadly. A terrible premonition turned my stomach. All the horror stories I’d heard about Black Ember, that he fed his victims to the sharks during the century he’d been a pirate…and maybestilldid…what if my mom had been one of his victims?
Just as I was feeling light-headed and sick to my stomach, Helena suddenly tilted the candle and poured hot wax into my open palm. I shrieked out loud. Pain radiated through my palm. I tried to pull away on instinct, but she held my wrist firmly.
“Interesting,” she observed, tapping a finger on her bottom lip. “The wax isn’t hardening.”
Jack leaned in, looking blankly at the wax pooled in my palm. “What does that mean?”
Helena’s eyes shifted to mine, and I was dismayed to see that they were filled with pity. “It means she’s in love.”
ChapterThirty-Two
In love.
Could I believe the witch’s words? Her witchcraft had peered into my heart and found the truth there that I hadn’t yet been able to bring myself to admit. My feelings toward Severn had been passionate, yes, but also complicated. He was fae. I was human. He was my boss, and I was the nanny. There were his control issues and so many red flags and obstacles that I had held my feelings deep inside to protect myself from getting hurt. But now that she’d said the words aloud, my heart reverberated with them.
It was true—I felt it in my bones. I loved Severn Wilde with every piece of my heart and soul.
“And him?” Jack asked.
Helena prodded the strangely liquid wax in my palm with her fingernail, swirling it, then examining it between her fingers. “He loves her in return.”
I sucked in a tight breath. I’d never felt so many conflicting emotions. The man I loved was in love with me, which filled me with a wonderful, bubbly kind of joy. And yet there was a much darker side to this revelation—it meant that Black Ember could effectively use me against him.
Jack gave me a pitying glance before standing up as though he knew this news would lead to trouble for me. “I’ll be right back.”
He moved a little way off to find Coral in the crowd, where he told her what I assumed were the results of the fortune-telling test. She nodded and pulled out her phone to dial her boss.
I only half listened, still stunned by the revelations I’d learned in the last thirty minutes. I was still so shaken by Jack’s cryptic words that my mother had had something to do with the Sun Court and might not be dead after all. But there were also more pressing concerns:I love Severn. He loves me back.It filled me with sudden euphoric warmth, the giddiness of first love. Now that it was out in the open, I could marvel at it—that despite the challenges, we’d found real love with each other.
And then I sucked in air, realizing that I’d been a colossal fool to break up with him. Briar had twisted the truth in an effort to push us apart. I should never have listened to her! Iwasn’ta whim to Severn. He hadn’t been sending me to Italy to banish me to oblivion.
He loves me. He only wanted to keep me safe.
Pain stabbed my heart as I remembered his face when I’d said it was over. I’d wounded him so deeply, all over a misunderstanding mixed with my own insecurities and past fears. I’d ruined the best thing I’d ever had.
Maybe Black Ember was right—IwasSevern’s weakness.
Helena whispered a foreign word, and the wax suddenly poured itself back into the candle, where it rehardened. She reached over to pick up her bag.
Quickly, I glanced at Jack to make sure he was still talking to Coral a few feet away. “Hey, Helena,” I whispered urgently, “Do you know a witch here in LA named Zara?”
Her eyes flickered to Jack as well. She gave a slight, stiff nod. By the way her eyes widened, I could tell that she knew we shouldn’t be discussing other witches.
“Could you get her a message?” I whispered. “Tell her what Jack said, that one of Severn’s assistants is a traitor. Zara needs to warn Severn about Briar—”
We were cut off when Jack returned with a troubled look on his face. I glanced at Helena, trying hard to emphasize my message’s importance. She looked away, biting a lip. It had to be risky for her to try to get a message out—surely the fae would be watching her closely, and I could only imagine what the monstrous Black Ember would do if he found out she’d warned Severn.
