I tensed, waiting for something. Alarms, maybe, or an attack. For Victor to spring up from behind us and sink his teeth into my throat.
But nothing happened. The city shrank behind us, and ahead of us was just more road, stretching ahead into darkness.
I sucked in a shuddering breath, then another, my vision blurring as the tension finally drained from my limbs. I hadn’trealized how tightly I’d been holding myself together until there was no reason to anymore.
Ember climbed into my lap, kneading my stomach with careful paws and purring loudly. I pressed my face into his fur and laughed, a small, broken sound that turned into a sob.
“You’re out, little witch,” Morgana said. “Power ends at the thresholds. Once you cross one, even the gods have to let you go.”
The road carried us forward, and I cried again.
* * *
Morgana didn’t speak for a few hours, until finally the sun rose and the rest of Lundaria began to wake.
“You’re a werewolf now, and your name is Briar Lykoudis. I’m taking you to your ‘sister’s’ place,” she finally said. “Her name is Selene. She’ll give you free room and board, plus a job at her bar. You can stay as long as you need to.”
Since I’d worked in catering before, tending bar didn’t sound too difficult.
“Are we going to Fenmoor?” I asked. I’d been a few times as a kid, but I couldn’t lie and say the destination didn’t make me nervous. As amazing as Accalia was, her cousin, Kain, had been a monster. They also had the best noses out of all the Magiks, so they’d realize I wasn’t one of them pretty quickly, even with charms and spells.
“Nope,” she replied. “Neutral lands. Little backwater location. But she’s had a lot of little sisters and brothers over the years. The patrons know the drill, and they’ll look out for you.”
I breathed a little easier. Okay, neutral lands. Even though I really just wanted to go home, I knew Cindralis was out of the question because that would be the first place Victor would look, even without the question of jurisdiction.
“And no one will be able to track me there?”
Vesper cawed softly, rubbing his beak along the side of Morgana’s head. She reached up to give him a few little scratches.
“There are no absolutes, but it’s safe. And if it ever becomes not safe, I have contingency plans.”
I spread my fingers through Ember’s fur.
“Do you want to know what happened to me?” I asked, leaning my head against the window to watch the world come to life.
Spring was coming. The trees all showed signs of new leaves beginning to bud, the chartreuse and viridian pearls clinging to bare branches across an awakening landscape.
“You can tell me if you’d like,” Morgana said softly. “For some, talking about it helps. For others, they aren’t ready or just want to forget.”
Forgetting sounded nice, but something compelled me to speak anyway. Maybe I just wanted a witness. Someone who would know everything that had happened in case he found me and I disappeared again. For good, this time.
“Five years,” I said. “Five years ago, he took me.”
Five years locked up as Victor’s mate. Too delicate to breathe fresh air and show my face in public. Too precious to announce to the world as his.
Too dangerous to be known.
* * *
“… and that’s what finally gave me the push to leave.”
Morgana’s eyes were still on the road, her jaw set tight and her knuckles white from where she gripped the steering wheel.
She was quiet for a while, absorbing my story, until she finally spoke. “Hecara curse him. That’s… that’s the most depraved, evil thing—”
“He thinks I’m his mate,” I said, interrupting her, getting angry with myself for feeling the need to defend Victor about this. Every action he’d taken was one he had always been capable of choosing, and yet a part of me still wondered if this messed-up bond he felt had screwed with his head in some way.
“I honestly don’t think he would have locked Liora up.” I touched my chest, feeling her beat from within me, wondering if somehow she’d understood what I’d done. “So there must have always been a little voice in the back of his head telling him something wasn’t right about me, and that was what had driven him to such extreme behavior. The feelings corrupted him, poisoned him. Drove him mad.”
