My mind went silent for a brief second, every thought in my head disappearing into the black hole that opened underneath my feet. I stared at him for a long moment, this man I had loved more than myself, and laughed.
The sound was a harsh crack, not a lick of amusement anywhere. That silence roared back like a wildfire and power crackled in my veins. The earth rumbled underneath our feet, and vines slid from the ground, tearing up the sidewalks and road, damaging the very infrastructure under Joy Springs, but I couldn’t care.
I was too angry to care, the realization of what I had done once more, loving a man who loved himself more, sending a tearing pain through my soul.
“Attack me,” Caelan said quietly. “Begin the war between our people. Be the spark that tears everything apart, Evie. I know your blood roars for vengeance. Do it and prove me right.”
The words struck something inside me, some deep, desperate part still looking for a peaceful resolution. Moira’s cool fingers touched my arm. The vines withdrew into the ground.
A familiar shimmer of power from behind told me my parents had arrived.
Cernunnos and Cliona stepped up beside me. With a wave of her hand, the roads and sidewalks repaired themselves. She smiled thinly at Caelan.
“I think you’ve done enough damage,” she said quietly. “No reason for our tainted blood to cause more.” She reached for me. “Come, Evie. Let us leave Caelan to the mess he’s created.”
I let her lead me away, Moira quietly walking by my side. She trembled with fury, her jaw held so tightly I thought her teeth might crack.
My father didn’t leave with us. I glanced back to see him and Caelan speaking, but I was too far away to hear what was being said.
Whatever it was didn’t look friendly.
Mom tugged me once more. “Never look behind you,” she said quietly. “Nothing lives there but pain.”
She had no idea how true her words were.
Chapter
Thirty-One
CAELAN
Simone’s disgust with me shivered in the air around us. Hers was nothing compared to my own.
The barbed words I’d said to Evie had fallen out of my mouth like spilled rubies. I couldn’t control anything other than my movements, but when Rachel touched me, my limbs wanted to obey only her. Something was terribly wrong.
“Are you out of your mind?” Simone hissed, her eyes wide with shock as Evie disappeared around the corner. Rachel was still across the street, idly scrolling on her phone as she waited for Simone to call her back.
But my Omega looked disinclined to do anything other than scratch the other shifter’s eyes right out of her head.
I wanted to scream for help, but it was like my brain and mouth were wholly out of my control. “I said nothing to her but the truth.”
As terrible as this all was, the words I had said and kept saying were nothing I hadn’t thought before in the deepest, darkest times of night, when all those thoughts crept out for examination only to be shut up tight by the time the sun rose. Was this my punishment for even thinking such terrible thoughts?
I loved Evie more than I’d ever loved anyone, but we had major obstacles. And as a Lord of a large territory, I had to think about such things. If my children were to inherit my territories, they had to prove powerful and with Evie’s Chimera blood, having children could be dangerous to both of us and to the world.
I wanted so desperately not to care, to fling my cautions to the wind and accept her with open arms, and I’d done that.
In public, at least.
But something had always held me back.
The awful things I’d said to her, though, would haunt me for the rest of my life. I wanted things to work out between us. I wished I could be the kind of person to walk away from my responsibilities and just take her hand and walk off into the sunset.
Because Evie was that kind of person. She genuinely didn’t care what powers her children may or may not have or about any future complications.
But now, even if I wanted things to work out between us, she’d taken the fae crown. Evie was officially the high ruler of her people, even if Cernunnos hadn’t formally stepped aside yet. At least not completely.
I knew why she’d done so. Lugh was too big of a threat to her and those she loved for her to take on by herself. At least not before she knew and understood her powers.
