Cyrus took a step back and looked away.
He rubbed the pads of his fingers across his bottom lip.
He was at war with himself.
What was he not telling me?
When he faced me again, the look in his eyes aged by ten years. “Adora, forget everything you thought you knew. Your loyalty isn’t the same as it was,” he said. “Once you’re my wife, you’ll see things you wish you didn’t. You’ll know things that will make you want to leave it all behind and end your life. But no matter what,” he said, a grave look in his eyes, “you must never intervene with the hereafter. Ever. Not unless it’s for the safety of you, me, and this town. My loyalty will be to you and Weeping Hollow, first and forever. Your loyalty will be to me and Weeping Hollow, first and forever. The coven will always come second.”
The room was so silent that I was sure my heartbeat was a blowhorn in his ears.
That he could feel the vibrations of my blood tapping in my veins.
That he could taste trepidation in my breath.
This stood against everything we’d been taught.
I raised a brow. “The coven isn’t first?”
“Do you remember when Fallon first arrived? Augustine wouldn’t allow the Heathens within twenty feet of her, and Kane was supposed to bring her in?”
“Yes, I remember. I thought it was her dad’s wishes.”
“Do you know why it was her dad’s wishes?” he asked, and I felt like I knew the answer but the way he was looking at me made me feel like I would be wrong. “The only way to break the Heathen curse was for either a moonchild and Blackwell to die together, or for him to bring her back to life. This answer was twisted over the centuries, false information planted in journals to make one believe only Fallon had to die. And if she died without a child, the Heathens would have been cursed for eternity.
“The fact is Julian had to love her more than the Heathens. He had to care more about her than breaking the curse. The Heathens had to be willing to sacrifice an element. Otherwise, that selfishness would have killed her and made this curse permanent. And I saw it with my own eyes, Adora. I watched Julian shift from saving her to killing her in the hereafter because of outside influences. The Heathen curse was always supposed to break, but in order for that to happen, everything leading up to it had to play out in a sequence of fate’s events. It was my mother’s job to make sure nothing stood in the way of that, and the first step was to have Fallon be close to Sacred Sea.”
“That’s why Fallon was pushed to join.”
“Augustine never knew how to break the curse. If he did, he’d abuse this knowledge.” His smile was incredulous. “Think about it. Fallon is a Morgan, and she has a blood-right to take high priestess from Augustine if she wanted to. Do you honestly think Augustine would give that up for a second by letting her come into the coven?”
“No.”
“No, but it was part of the plan for Fallon to get close to Sacred Sea, and my mother had to make sure it happened.” He looked up to the Portal of the Hereafter, where it had shown the town burning only a minute before. “The same holds true for what’s ahead. Something happened to change the fate of Weeping Hollow, and if we don’t fix it, this will be our future.”
I swallowed. “Cyrus, why are you telling me this, showing me this, and laying this on menow?” My voice shook, all the fear, the pressure, the responsibility. “What if I’m not ready to handle it?”
“I’m showing you this because when I get to the main reason I brought you here, you’ll understand why it’s me andyoustanding here this very moment,” he said, closing the Book of Weeping Hollow and sending it back into its resting place on the shelf at the command of his hand.
“What are you talking about?”
Cyrus stood taller.“Accerso liber Oria,”he chanted, and a book ripped through the air by a ghastly hand.
Cyrus caught the book mid-air and set it on the table between us.
My name was embossed into the leather.
“Adora Oria Sullivan,” he said in one tired breath, dragging his fingers along the spine as he looked down at the book that was screaming my name.
I couldn’t tear my eyes away from it either.
My entire life was printed inside, pressed between swatches of leather.
Then the book opened on its own. Pages flipped rapidly by magic, ruffling my hair and swirling strands into my face. I tried to read eagerly, hungrily. All the answers were laid out before me, and I wanted to devour every word. But the quick flutter of pages didn’t allow me to see a solid sentence.
“It’s no use,” Cyrus said, reading my mind. “It will only tell you what I need you to know.”
The magic reversed, flipping the pages back to the front again, and I felt a cool breeze on my skin. When the book stopped, two pages fell open slowly. A sigh.
