There it was. Another log to add to the pyre of confusion that was James.
Maybe he did think he was protecting her. Maybe he did love her. Maybe he didn’t. She didn’t know anymore.
She looked down at the note and accepted the truth. It didn’t matter either way. She was a Healer down to the core of her soul. She never left a patient, and she wouldn’t leave James in danger either.
If he’d gone back to Gordon, she would simply have to go and fetch him.
Then, once he was safe—once they wereallsafe—thenshecould say goodbye.
ChapterTwo
London-Belgravia
It was a trap.
Jamesknewit was a trap. But he had to go anyway.
“Your friends revealed themselves in public today,” Gordon had spat in his voicemail. “Do you remember what the punishment for that is?”
And, fuck, James knew exactly what the punishment for that was. He had spent many hours considering it.
His Shadows had been tortured and broken by the venom of the blood Shadows… but at least he still had them. And the possibility of having them torn from his soul—a thought he’d battled over and over again as he’d recovered, constantly wondering if Gordon would wake up one morning and decide to make an example of him—fueled his nightmares.
And now that horror was directed at his friends. At the woman he loved. But there was one major difference; Gordon had given him a way to make that threat go away.
“I’m going to give you one chance to get yourself back here. Alone,” Gordon had continued. “In exchange, I will take your friend Riley off the list of Dru-vid to be Shadow stripped. If you can get here in the next four hours, I’ll take Zach off too. If you do everything I say, I’ll consider removing Kayleigh. The Council has already sent out orders. Every single Guardian in the country is looking for your friends. No one can save them—except you.”
It was a lie, of course. Blackmailers didn’t hand over their leverage once they had what they wanted. But what could James do? He couldn’t leave the people he loved in danger, not when he had a chance to make a difference.
In the end, there was no choice. If there was even a chance he could keep them all safe, he would take it.
James scrubbed a shaky hand down his flushed face, ignoring the way his stomach tipped and gurgled. God, he wished his triad were with him. Kay would have argued they should face Gordon together. Zach would have too. They’d forgiven him. They would want to join him, he knew they would. But he couldn’t bear it if they got hurt because of him. Again.
And the truth was, they couldn’t help with this.
Which was why he hadn’t waited for them to get back. He hadn’t called them. And he hadn’t mentioned Gordon’s message when he wrote to say goodbye. It was better that they didn’t know.
The voicemail that had turned his world back to darkness was locked away on his phone. And his phone was in his drawer where no one could use it to track him. By the time anyone found it there, he would already be long gone. He’d left Wales in secret, hiding his plans once more…. One last omission to keep them all safe.
There was only one possible reason why Gordon would have tried to blackmail him into coming back mere hours after Kay and Zach had stormed off to rescue Emma. His cousin had succeeded. She’d destroyed the blood Shadows that Gordon relied on.
What would Gordon do without his stash of blood Shadows? And how did that translate to him wanting James back? He didn’t need James’s help to hold control over the Council, to maintain the illusion of Oracle, or even to become Archdderwydd. Not that James would have given it now that his mind—or what was left of it—was clear. No. The only thing Gordon could possibly want from him was his blood.
James leaned back in the trendy, metal chair inside the small—but outrageously expensive—café and took another slow sip of coffee. It tasted foul, too sweet, and unpleasantly grainy, but he forced himself to drink it.
He should be terrified. He was going back to the man who had manipulated him until he, too, became a monster. The man who had stepped in and given James a home when he had none, wanted him when no one else did, and then turned out to have been using him all that time. Gordon had set him on the path that cost him everything, and his uncle wouldn’t hesitate to sacrifice him once more to further his own insatiable need for power. He should bemorethan terrified. But somehow, all James felt was cold.
His eyes stung, but no tears of rage, loss, or even fear gathered. He hadn’t cried since his parents left. He didn’t cry when he went to live with Gordon, or in any of the years since then. And he didn’t cry when he was Healed of the blood Shadows. Even as he’d lain alone, drenched in pain, no tears had fallen. Why bother when tears didn’t change anything? He’d screamed, howled, and raged, but his grief—his sorrow—was locked inside him, frozen into a shard of ice lodged in his heart.
Listening to Gordon’s message had spread that frost out of his heart and through his entire body until he was immersed in a frozen, determined calmness. It gave him clarity. He’d listened to Gordon’s demand that he return to the Council in exchange for the safety of Riley and his friends, and he’d known it for what it truly was. An opportunity.
Gordon wanted James’s blood enough to blackmail him into coming back. But that gave James exactly what he wanted. A way to get to Gordon.
He was going to kill the man who threatened Riley. That Gordon had also threatened his triad, the Order, even the innocent people walking down the street, completely unaware that the Dru-vid even existed, just made him that much more determined.
James’s Shadows were twisted and broken. His heart was in tatters. He only had two things left: loyalty to the people he loved, and the cold, hard knowledge that Gordon had to die.
The trick was finding a way to do it. He’d spent the long walk through the Brecon Beacons, and then several hours on buses and trains as he made his way to London, refining a solution.
