I wipe my hands down my face and sigh. “I’ll be okay. It’s just all been a lot,” I confess. “From the minute I met Lachlan and the others until now, it’s just been one crazy thing after another. I don’t really even get time to process what the fuck just happened before the next thing is breathing down my neck.”
Valen gives me a knowing nod.
“I think that’s all this is,” I tell him, gesturing to myself. “Maybe all the emotion is catching up to me now. Or maybe I’m finally seeing that my future isn’t going to be the Sentinel sunshine and rainbows I secretly hoped it might be. Or maybe it’s all the above, but I’m figuring it out,” I reassure him.
I sag back against the wall of the tub, as if my admission sapped all of my energy.
“Anything the rest of us can do to help?” Valen asks as he sits down on the opposite side of the massive inground bath.
I trace water droplets with my eyes as they move slowly down his cheeks and drip off his chin. Some of them dart sideways, daring to skim his full lips before tumbling from his face and dripping back into the tub of water.
“Do you think a lot about the future?” I ask randomly, and I can tell the question takes him a little off guard.
“Yeah, I guess. I mean, Bastien and I have known we were going to be paladin since we were young. So when I think of the future, I think of that mostly; the next test we have to take or physical training we have to do at the academy. Sometimes I wonder about the assignments we might go on, things like that.”
I nod and contemplate his words.
“But what do you see now?” I ask, fidgeting with the ends of my wet hair.
“Now that we won’t be paladin?” Valen clarifies.
I nod again.
“I’m not sure. Like you said, everything has happened pretty fast with Adriel and now this,” he tells me, gesturing to the castle walls surrounding us. “I know we’ll be together,” he offers, his tone radiating certainty. “I guess that’s all I really need to know right now.”
I give Valen a small smile, but the question ofnow whatseems to burrow deeper into my brain until it feels more demanding.
“What do you think will happen with Silva?” Valen asks me, his gaze equally as contemplative as mine is now.
I offer my patent shrug. “I honestly have no idea. You would know better than I would how the elders deal with shit like that.”
“Yeah, that’s true. I just wish I understood what was happening with him,” Valen admits, and my heart aches for him. “Bas and I thought he had come to terms with what happened to our parents. I mean, Silva is a good guy, but to do the shit he was doing… It’s just hard to reconcile the uncle who raised me with the crazed man who attacked my mate.”
Valen stares at the water, and I hate the haunted ring in his voice.
“Hope is a bitch,” I admit after a couple beats.
Valen looks up at me, confused.
“I’m not saying what Silva did was okay, it fucking wasn’t, and he should face consequences for it. But I don’t think that it automatically tallies Silva in the bad guy column. I think finding me stoked hope in him. Maybe it was hope he didn’t even realize he had, but add a littleVinna existskindling to it, and that flicker could be a bonfire in no time. He got hopeful, and then he got desperate.”
“Yeah, I could see that,” Valen admits on a sad nod.
“Some casters put themselves above the other supes,” I scoff humorlessly, realizing that Sentinels clearly do it too. “It’s easier to hurt others when you think of them aslesser. It’s not like the lamia, shifters and other supes exactly have their own paladin to protect them and call foul when shit goes down. Silva and the others looked at lamia like they were the enemy instead of looking at the enemy and realizing that some of them just so happened to be lamia. Aydin and Evrin will probably have consequences to face too, from the first lamia they tortured for information,” I state.
“Actually, I don’t think they will,” Valen disagrees. “They were ordered to purge those lamia, they just worked them over for information beforehand. That technically doesn’t violate any of the rules. What Silva, Lachlan, and Keegan were doing was unsanctioned, andthatis the big no-no.”
I snort at the logic of it all. From what the guys have said, Silva will probably only get his title stripped, maybe not even that. He’ll probably just get reassigned to a different paladin coven, but with the deaths in his current coven, that was inevitable anyway.
“Do you hate him?” Valen asks me, and I pause not sure how to answer that question.
Do I hate him?
“No,” I answer after a moment. “I don’t hate him, but I don’t respect him or like him all that much.”
I worry that admitting that could create some kind of issue. Silva is the twins’ family, theironlyfamily.
“I don’t expect you to feel the same way about him though,” I quickly explain. “My experience with Silva, Lachlan, and Keegan was obviously very different from your experience with them.”
