Chapter 20
Knowing that no one can see us makes something shift between Silas and me. It’s almost like we truly erased the last fourteen years and are those two stupid kids who would have nightly rendezvous in a tree.
We walk, we talk about nonsensical bullshit. Neither of us tries to talk about this morning, what we’re going to do, or what happened in the time that separated us.
We’re just a man and a woman leisurely enjoying what this fine city has to offer.
“I think the tour guide could sense we were there, but assumed it was a spirit,” I say with a laugh as we leave the cemetery and walk down the stunning streets full of art, architecture, and history.
I only remove the illusion once on our excursion, only so we can eat broiled oysters. The amount Silas eats is honestly astonishing, but as soon as we’re done eating, I illusion us again.
The sun is setting as we sit on a fountain lip, listening to the bustle of this part of town quietly and the water trickles behind us. There’s too much light pollution here, you can’t see the stars like you can back home, but it’s still serene in its own way.
When I look over at Silas, it hits me like a ton of bricks.
He’s not as bad as I thought he was. He’s not so far removed from that sweet boy who would lasso the moon for me. Even if he looks like this big badass Alpha shifter, there’s still a softness there.
He didn’t need to tell me about his mother, or spend the day with me trying to forget my—our—problems. But he did, with no complaints. Well, no real complaints.
“I never meant to leave you,” I tell him, like the honesty is being ripped out of my throat.
“I know,” he whispers, resting his elbows on his knees and glancing back at me.
Still the same brown eyes, even prettier now with their golden glow that I now realize is Thorin.
“Do you ever think about what would have happened if my grand-mère didn’t find me?” I ask, the vulnerability leaking out of me. Maybe it’s because he shared some of himself with me earlier, maybe it’s because we’re pretending and tomorrow everything will go back to normal. But I find myself wanting to be honest with Silas.
“I thought about it for fourteen years,” he says, his gaze not leaving mine.
“What do you think it would have been like?”
His throat bobs. “A lot like today. I think it would feel a lot like today has.”
Witches don’t cry, I already did enough of that today. His honesty won’t make me do it again. But the vulnerability of his answer is hard to swallow.
How can two things be true at once? How can I love my coven so deeply but also crave this alternate reality that Silas is suggesting?
“I think, maybe, we would have been happy.”
“I know we would have,” Silas says, his eyes boring into mine. I can tell he believes it fully with his heart. “I wouldn’t have needed a pack.”
“Witches can’t go nomad.”
“Says who?” he responds.
My brow furrows and I just let the fountain break the silence for a moment before speaking. “I’ve never heard of any. You pull your magic through the strength of a coven. I wouldn’t be me without my coven.”
“Right,” he says.
“You really think you could live without ever having a pack? Especially now that you have one?”
He looks down at the cement before glancing back at me. “Now that I have one, no,” he says truthfully.
It all comes back to that. He has his pack; I have my coven. They hate each other. There is no brokerage for true peace. Silas might be trying, and maybe he has the upper hand right now with buying most of Main Street. Even if we come to an agreement, there’s no world where the Alpha of the Moon Walker Pack and the future High Priestess of the Celestial Coven are anything more than the leaders of their people.
Hell, witches don’t even get married. Most of our fathers are unknown to us, or at the very least, unimportant.
“But… if we had run away at eighteen, I wouldn’t have needed one. I would have had you,” Silas says, and it feels like my heart is shattering into a million pieces of what if’s and childhood dreams.
