Tera gives me a sad smile, her teary eyes roving to Dominic before settling back on me. She heaves a sigh. “I’m glad to see you’ve moved on,” she says. “That you were able to find happiness after such a tragedy.”
Her tone is gentle and sounds so genuine to my ears, but my heart reacts with brambles and thorns, raging at the hidden accusation.
She sniffles, then tugs me into a sudden embrace. “I’m so glad I got to see you again, Inana Westwood,” she says, voice strangled with emotion. Then it dips low, barely above a whisper. “We survivors know the truth.”
I stiffen, and she pulls away, her sorrowful smile in place.
She’s gone before I can stop her, before I can ask what she meant by that last part.
Was she referring to…the truth of the attack? That Dunway was destroyed on purpose?
Or did she mean the truth about me? That I’m at fault?
Was I included when she saidwe?
Or did she mean her and the other survivors…against me?
Anger and shame and confusion war in my mind, my heart. My feet start moving before I know it. I can hardly process Dominic’s words as he asks if I’m all right, can hardly feel his touch when he tries to take my hand. I pull away, unable to bear his concern or focus on anything but the cacophony in my head.
What really happened to Henry?
What did I fucking do?
Do I deserve to be alive when so many died? Even though it’s the Sinless who hold the highest fault?
I find myself back in our suite, not quite remembering how I got there. Dominic is still begging me to talk to him, but I’m not ready.
Not ready.
Not ready.
He relents when the others return, and I curl up on my bed, feigning fatigue. I roll onto my side, tucking my hands beneath my pillow.
My fingertips brush against something. It’s thin, smooth.
I tug it out from beneath my pillow. It’s a piece of parchment marked with a single line of writing, scrawled in black ink.
Turn yourself in. Don’t you owe it to the ones who died?
My pulse quickens as I tuck the note back beneath my pillow before the others can take notice. My mind spins with even more questions. Did Tera leave this? Had she already known I was here? Did she ask a maid to deliver it?
I don’t know the answer, and I sure as hell am not turning myself in.
Yet maybe I do owe it to the ones who died to at least take responsibility for my part in what happened.
Only one thing is certain.
I need to remember the truth.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Dominic
I hate seeing Inana in pain. I hate that I canfeelher blaming herself, all because of what that woman said. Her innocent condolences followed by that sinister fucking whisper. I heard it. My Shades heard it. I don’t know what Tera Holmes was playing at, but if I were a worse kind of man, I’d show up at her door and make her pay for upsetting Inana. Maybe she didn’t mean for it to sound the way it did, but it doesn’t matter. Inana took those words the worst possible way.
I hate that I can’t reach her in this state.
She’s stubborn and prideful, and I know she needs time to grieve. To process. Yet I hate it all the same.
