Unanswered questions and half-truths. Excuses that brushed me off or distractions that changed the subject. His words flash through my mind, my heart breaking further with each memory.
Please understand that when I say I didn’t have a choice, I mean it.
Watching you go changed me, Bash. It fucking destroyed me, but I did it for you.
Don’t throw me away. I just wanted to protect you.
And the one that grinds the last intact pieces of my heart to dust. The promise he made when we were curled up together in those sheets, as tightly woven as two people could be.
The vow as I slid a ring onto his finger.
You are my forever, Sebastian. The great love of my life. If you ever doubt that, remember us right now in this moment. Remember that I would go to any lengths to protect you, and nothing in this world could ever change that.
I doubted, despite my oath to remember, and that doubt was poison.
I made him less when he had always been more.
He had always been everything.
“Bash.” Xeni twists his head to meet my eyes with a searching plea for forgiveness.
It should be me groveling.
Should be me on my knees.
The lapsed attention costs him, and his grasp on his father slips as Xeni is knocked aside. He stumbles and collapses, palms hitting the ground too hard as he fights to hold himself up. Ragged gasps fill his chest as tremors rack his frame, the exertion too much for his weakened body.
A hand wraps around my neck, so much warmer than it should be given the iciness of its intention. It squeezes until my breath rattles in a desperate struggle for air, fingers firm as steel bars.
Cato rushes closer, but Xeni’s father lifts his free hand in a silent, commanding gesture, and Cato freezes in his tracks.
“How did he hide you from me?” The Architect demands, his face so close our lips nearly touch and his breath hot against my skin.
I fight to recoil, to pull away and run, but my body betrays me and melts into his grip as my muscles go slack under the insidious lure of his power.
“No one knew,” I grit, my lips trembling with the struggle to keep the words inside. “We didn’t tell anyone.”
“How long did this deceit last?”
I fight, biting my lip until it bleeds, but he is unyielding, and I am powerless against the compulsion.
“Three… years.”
Fury contorts his face again as he squeezes harder, and my skin heats as blood pools in my cheeks, trapped by his iron grip. My mouth opens in a silent plea, but no sound emerges.
I can’t gasp for the oxygen my body so desperately craves, and my vision pulses in a field of white static that threatens to swallow me whole.
“Let him go,” Xeni demands in a voice I’ve never heard from him, unnaturally deep and echoing in multitudes that come from every corner. The grip on my throat loosens, and I suck in a gasping breath that burns all the way down.
The Architect whirls to face his son.“Youdareto use my own powers against me?”
The sheer volume makes my head swim, and Cato stumbles to my side to hold me up.
“Pitiful,” The Architect spits as the hand that bound my neck closes around Xeni’s instead. His thumb swipes over Xeni’s cheek in a motion that feels almost affectionate as he leans closer.
“I sensed it when you were born, you know. Thatweakness. Your mother tried to love you, but it was just such a fucking chore, and she grew bored of it soon enough.”
Another swipe of his thumb lingers on the edge of Xeni’s eyepatch before he shoves him away. “What a waste.”
