“I am safe, Arran. Whole. Protected. I should be the least of your worries.”
I said nothing.
She would never be safe enough.Neither would Veyka.
“Is this about your brother?”
That was a door I kept firmly closed, always. Only my mother would have dared to try and wrench it open. “No.”
But my mother was not assuaged. “Have you told Veyka, about what happened?”
“If I did, I don’t remember,” I bit back. The vines were creeping across the floor now, circling around the legs of the chair and the desk. Soon, there would be no stone left uncovered.
My mother huffed a sigh. “You two are quite the pair. When she told me about your injury, about how it was her hand that drove Excalibur into your chest, I told her I forgave her. She refused me. I imagine you would do the same if I told you, for the thousandth time, that I do not blame you for your brother’s death.”
It did not matter what she said, how many thousands of times she said it. Because none of that mattered in face of the truth.
“My beast killed him.”
I had killed many, in those days. I could hardly recall them. They were a blur of pain and blood. The beast would wrest control at the smallest slight. The vines would shoot through windows, shattering ancient stained glass and wrapping around the offender’s throat before I could blink.
None of those faces lived in my memory. Except one.
“Is there a difference between?” my mother asked carefully. So carefully.
That was the true question, the one I had never fully faced. What was the beast, and what was me? Where was the line? For three centuries, I had kept them separate. I had maintained control by forcing the beast into restraints and never fully releasing them. Never.
But when I awoke in Avalon, the line between myself and the wolf was blurred. The mating bond in my chest compelled both male and beast.
If I admitted that they were one and the same—wewere one and the same, then I was responsible for my brother’s death.
Then I was in love with Veyka.
The burning in my chest was an inferno. It filled my head, my eyes, my heart. I was going to burn up, burn out. Right there, in a lonely tower study that I hated.
Until a cool hand touched my cheek.
I closed my eyes, and exhaled the words that burned my throat. “I killed him.” And a second later— “I love her.”
In an instant, the vines withered to nothing. A soft swish, and they fell away from the wall. Nothing but tiny fragments on the stone floor, soon to be lost underfoot.
When I opened my eyes, my mother was smiling up at me. “Of course you do.”
“But that does not solve anything, Mother.” It did not banish the succubus. It did not restore my memories. It did not take back any of the pain.
Her smile just deepened as she dropped her hand, refolding it in front of her. Regal and composed, as always. “Don’t you understand, my son? Every trial, every ordeal, every death—it has all been to bring you here. To bring you to her.”
My head shook of its own accord. “And what if after all of that, we still are not enough?”
Her head snapped up sharply. “Are you saying that Veyka is not enough?”
“Veyka is everything,” my beast growled—I growled—at the mere insinuation.
“Yes, she is,” my mother nodded, turning for the door. “And all she wants is you.”
86
VEYKA
