My heart does a terrible flip. I think she might actually care about him—about all of them—and not just for my sake.
Carver groans, drawing us to his bedside while Selena starts on Kato’s arm. Jocasta brushes Carver’s dark hair away from his forehead, her tear-streaked face bleak and marked by shock. Lying there, Carver looks like a younger version of Griffin, and parts of me I was only just holding together start falling apart at the seams.
Events overtake me in a rush, and my pulse starts pounding too fast. Sweat prickles different places around my body, and saliva floods my mouth. I swallow, battling queasiness and trying not to picture Griffin in Carver’s place. I see it anyway. I can’t seem to stop.
I reach for Griffin’s hand and squeeze, assuring myself he’s warm and alive. I understand how he feels now, about me and my recklessness. I’ve driven a sword through his heart so many times.
Griffin leans over his brother. “Carver?”
Carver slowly opens his eyes. Gray irises glint in the torchlight, their granite color another visceral reminder of what I could lose.
“No.No!” Carver’s hands ball into fists at his sides. His face crumples, and he lets out a broken sound. “Send me back.”
Griffin shakes his head, frowning. “It’s all right. You’re going to be all right.”
With surprising force, Carver pushes Griffin away. “I saw her.” His voice breaks, and he clears his throat. “Konstantina.”
Griffin pales. Jocasta’s eyes blur with tears again.
“She wouldn’t let me cross the river.” Carver swallows hard, but his voice comes out even rougher. “She still didn’t want—”
He stops talking, fighting something raw and awful inside of him. His eyes close, and tears slip from their edges. “She turned her back.”
I can only guess at what’s happening here, but sorrow climbs from my feet to the top of my head until my hair tingles at the roots, and a chill ripples over me. I can picture the scene all too easily for having been there and seen someone I wanted very badly wave me away from the other side of the Styx.
The pain inside Carver erupts on a heart-wrenching sob. An answering sob rises in my breast, and I fight it with a sharp breath.
Carver. The constant flirt. The easy smile. It’s all a lie, an elaborate act, because he’s been dying inside, and it doesn’t take a genius to see he wishes he’d died on the outside, too.
“You should have let me go!” His barely healed body trembles with furious emotion. Bitter tears slide from his eyes. He’s in pain, inside and out, and my heart hurts just looking at him. I feel so helpless. I want to do something, but I know I can’t. What can anyone do?
“No!” Griffin slams his fist down on the wooden table next to the cot, startling us all. “That’s not what she would have wanted. That’s not what you want, either.”
Carver abruptly stops crying. I think he stops breathing. Then, low and angry, “Don’t tell me what I want. Not when you have everything you’ve ever dreamed of!”
Griffin flinches. I’ve never seen a moment of jealousy between them. Griffin gets possessive and overprotective about me, but this is something entirely different. Jocasta lets out a shocked gasp, turning as white as humanly possible. Flynn doesn’t move, becoming a big, stiff, auburn-haired statue by her side. I’m starting to think emotion terrifies him. I can utterly relate.
“If she pushed you away, it’s because she wants you to live.” Griffin’s voice is even, soothingly level. If I were Carver, I’d want to punch him in the face for trying to calm me down, but all the fight drains from Carver instead, leaving me even more uncomfortable than the tears and anger did.
Carver stares at the ceiling. “Sheismy life.”
“Shewasyour life,” Griffin says. “Not anymore. And not for a long time.”
Carver snorts, turning his head toward his brother. “What would you do if Cat died and I told you that?”
Griffin’s mouth flattens. He looks down.
“That’s what I thought,” Carver says, but there’s not much heat behind his words.
“It’s been four years,” Griffin says quietly, meeting his brother’s eyes again. “Doesn’t the pain lessen with time?”
Carver shrugs, then winces, seeming to regret the movement. “Sometimes. But then…” He swallows, and his throat bobs violently. “I saw her, and I didn’t want to let her go.”
“She letyougo,” Jocasta says fiercely. There’s sympathy in her eyes, but iron in her tone. “She didn’t choose you when she had the chance. She chose someone else. You don’t have to choose her now.Again. Not in this life, or in the next.”
Carver’s mouth twists. It’s not a smile. It’s too sad and bitter by far. He doesn’t respond and stares at the ceiling again.
On their knees on either side of his cot, Griffin and Jocasta hold Carver’s hands. Flynn stands next to Jocasta, a motionless, masculine mountain of silence—and pent-up feelings, if I had to guess.
