“Do you wish you hadn’t stopped? Do you wish Hannah had let you drain her?”
I pause. HowdidI want that to end? Surely not with another dead woman, especially with Hannah watching. “No.”
Elizabeth opens her hands. “There you go. Monsters don’t feel grateful when their prey escapes.”
I huff out a humorless laugh.
“You know I’m right,” she says. “You didn’t want to kill Riley, and you didn’t want to kill Charlotte. There are two halves of you, Julia.”
I blink away the burning in my eyes. “Every time I fed from Charlotte, part of me wanted to stop, but…the power was too intoxicating. It was in her final moment, when I killed a woman I cared about, that I realized killing is in my nature. That I have no choice.”
“But tonight you had a choice, and you chose to let Riley live.”
“I stopped out of self-preservation. If I’d killed Riley, Hannah would never…” I wave a hand, unsure how to finish that sentence.
“Never trust you? Never surrender to you?” Elizabeth steps closer, her voice softening. “Or never look at you again the way she does when your back is turned?”
Heat floods my face. “The way she looks at me is just intoxication. Feedings and the binding spell and—”
“Don’t be a fool. You know as well as I do that the binding spell doesn’t create affection, and feedings are no more than physical pleasure. No magic made her throw herself between you and Riley to save you both.”
I scoff. When Hannah broke into the pentagram, she had eyes only for Riley, and I was nothing but the devil who hurt her. “She was saving Riley, not me.”
“She was saving you from becoming the monster you’re so convinced you are.” Elizabeth sweeps her hand, and the fragments around the room begin to drift into a pile like a gust of wind is pushing them together. “That girl sees something in you worth saving, Julia. The question is whether you’ll let her.”
“There is nothing to see. I am what I am.”
“Your nature is not your destiny.”
“Words easily spoken by a green witch. Your magic doesn’t require you to hurt people.” My hands are shaking. I clench my fists, fighting the urge tosink to the floor and close my eyes. “You don’t have to live each day knowing that someone has to suffer for you to survive until the next lunar cycle.”
“No, but I’ve lived long enough to know that what we are and who we choose to be are two different things.”
“And if choosing isn’t enough? If I lose control again?”
“Then at least you’ll have tried to be something more than what you believe yourself to be.”
I stare at my hands, which have taken so many lives. I want to agree with her, but I don’t know if I can. “It doesn’t matter. Hannah will never trust me now. Rebecca made sure of that.”
“Rebecca told her the truth. What Hannah does with it is her choice.”
“Her choice will be to stay as far from me as the binding spell allows.”
Elizabeth sighs, moving toward the door. “Perhaps. Or perhaps she’ll surprise you.”
I shake my head.
“Julia… Hannah has affected you more than anyone has since Charlotte, and you’re determined not to see it. Charlotte loved and trusted you, and—”
“Don’t,” I say, the word barely coming out.
“Do you think she was wrong to love you?”
“Of course I do.”
Elizabeth’s brow furrows. “That’s too bad. Because I think she saw a part of you that even you don’t know exists. And I think Hannah might be willing to see that part of you, too.”
There’s a pause. Somewhere beyond the stone passageway, the grandfather clock ticks on.
