She nodded slowly, eyes glossy. “But he is attached to my magic. He can break the ward with it, so he must have been waiting for me to leave. Or maybe he didn’t even know I was here. I was careful to cover my tracks. All I wanted to do was protect Elowyn from him.”
I tilted my head to the side and watched Farris for a moment. My gaze locked on her, assessing, maybe even dissecting, the woman who seemed to know too much, care too much. My attention made her freeze before she shrank back into herself like she wished she could vanish into the floorboards.
“I want to know why you care about Elowyn when you hardly know her.”
Farris began pacing around like my question was a wound she didn’t want reopened. Her fingers twisted at her sleeves, her steps uneven. But I didn’t look away. I waited.
“She is important to you. You are important to Ezra. Which makes you important to me. Besides, I was told the woman with death and fate clinging to her would be important to me.”
“Important in which way?” I asked.
She swallowed hard, the sound catching like a stone in her throat. She looked around like she was looking for an excuse. But I saw the defeat in her eyes when she couldn’t come up with one.
“You are Ezra’s best friend and Elowyn’s your wife.” I could see she was struggling with something as tears formed in her eyes. “And I’m Ezra’s mate. Elowyn is supposed to be my best friend.”
The air in the cottage shrank, pulled taut like the world itself had forgotten how to breathe. The walls trembled, faintlyshaking from the storm of energy outside, the pulse of Ezra’s power leaking through.
Ezra wasn’t moving. He didn’t even look like he was breathing. His eyes swirled crimson as he stared at Farris. She wasn’t looking at him, as if terrified to see what her confession had turned him into.
My heart broke for my best friend. He thought she didn’t know, he thought all this time he’d been reaching for something just out of his grasp. Farris finally lifted her gaze to me before slowly turning to face him.
His eyes glistened as he watched her.
“How long have you known?” he asked, his voice dangerously quiet.
“Since before you did.” Her admission made him jerk backward as if she’d struck him. “That's why I came to your island. That is why I followed you in Crimson."
Ezra shook his head, disbelief cracking through the fury in his voice.
“And you still left me.” His face tightened. “You knew… that’s why you didn’t take my star when I gave it to you. You were rejecting me.”
“No.” She stepped toward him, shaking her head as tears trembled on her lashes. “I wasn’t rejecting you, but yes, I knew the significance of the star, and I couldn’t accept it at that time.”
“Well now you’ll never fucking get it,” he sneered, the words sharp, breaking. He stepped forward, eyes narrowing on her. “Use your truth magic on me and you’ll feel that I mean that with every fiber of my godsdamn soul.”
Farris hesitated, then shrank back from him. “You’re telling the truth.”
She started crying. All the emotions she’d been holding in erupted at once. Her shoulders shook violently, sobs tearingthrough the air until it felt like even the walls flinched. Ezra just stood there, completely shattered.
“Please, I know how this seems. But you don’t understand!” she yelled.
Gods, the power rolling off her cracked through the air, making the lamps flicker and the floorboards groan. Her grief, or maybe her anger, whatever storm she was conjuring, made me realize how powerful she truly was.
“The gods are not the only ones who have a fucking duty. Some of us don’t get a choice. You think I wanted to leave you? I was told to stay away from you, not to get attached, and I didn’t listen. Because I was selfish. Because I had followed you for weeks before you found me on the island, Ezra. Because I fell in love with you before you ever said a word to me.
“I was told to stay back because it would hurt both of us. Because I had things I had to do and that would mean I had to leave you. So I’m sorry that I couldn’t listen to the warning. But I do not regret it. Even having you for a short time was better than listening to my mother and staying the fuck away from you!”
Her voice cracked into rawness, and she was choking on her sobs by the end. Ezra just stared at her—silent, broken, unreachable.
“I’ve done all of this because I love you,” she whispered. “I couldn’t stay away, and now I understand that I probably should’ve because all I’ve done is hurt you with every decision I have to make.”
Ezra stared at her, and I didn’t recognize him anymore. There was a blankness in his eyes, a hollow disbelief like something inside him had gone dark. She turned away when she realized he wasn’t going to answer, that maybe he couldn’t.
Farris stilled before moving toward the kitchen and picking up a bloodied knife. Fuck, whose blood was that?
“He must have her at the house.” She told me. “But if he does, she didn’t go willingly.”
Gods, that thought pissed me off. Rage burned like acid under my ribs. Without a word, I used my magic to take us to Philip’s home.
