“It makes me feel like I don’t even know you,” I whispered, another tear slipping past. “Being excluded, like I’m not even part of this—” My heart squeezed my sentence in half as I gasped through the pain.
Family, I wanted to say. But the word never made it past my lips.
The thought alone had a crack splintering through my soul. Real families trusted each other, shared their truths.
What was arealfamily anyways?
Birth mother—dead. Birth father—probably dead, or crippled, or a psychopath. Foster parent—murdered. Adoptive father—alive but shuts me out.
Why did it always feel like I was trapped outside, my face smudged against the cold glass window, trying to get a peek inside.To be let in.
I turned my back on David, folding in on myself. I didn’t want them to see me cry anymore. I was done with it—the haunted look on his face, the endless excuses of why I was always left in the dark. And above all, it hurt too much to see him hurt.
Wings fluttered behind me. Little soft hands stroked through my hair, down my spine. One of the Cherubs snuck a hand underneath my jacket, a palm rested between my shoulder blades. Soothing vibrations glided over my skin. Every bruise, every ache, ebbed away.
“Enough of this!” Wyatt barked at David, scooping me up in his arms. “Enough, David!”
His footsteps were heavy on the wooden floorboards, muffling as we entered the carpet of the living room. He gently placed me on the plush leather couch.
Firelight flickered on the walls from the fireplace, its heat thawing the frost growing on my heart.
Without a word, Wyatt pulled off my filthy coat. A velvety green blanket was draped around my shoulders.
He planted a soft, lingering kiss on my head, then spun and walked out. I didn’t need to hear his words. His footsteps were telling enough. He was pissed . . . but not at me.
I was left to myself—to my staggered breathing and the echo of tears I was too exhausted to cry.
The blanket tightened around me as I leaned my head back on the couch.
A muffled argument bled through the wall. Voices restrained. But a furious whisper carried.
“Are you purposely trying to lose her? Because that’s exactly what’ll happen if you keep this up! She’s right, you know. She’s not a child anymore, David. It’s time you came to terms with that! I understood sheltering her when she was young, but now—” A long, exhausted sigh. “What if the bestprotection for her,isher? Let her train. Let her learn. Let hergrow.”
I closed my eyes, using the corner of the blanket to wipe my damp face. My temples throbbed like a bad hangover. This one from an overindulgence of high emotions.
Several minutes went by, maybe even longer.
Then slowly, I felt the couch sink next to me. I didn’t bother looking at him. I would rather my eyeballs melt into the back of my skull.
“My father harassed me for decades about stepping into his role as the Lord of Loveland,” David said quietly, voice thick with regret. I stiffened, only willing to hazily listen. “I fought him, tooth and nail. Didn’t want it. Had no desire to rule, no desire to be bound to so many lives—carrying that weight. Living in a cage with a target on my back.” He expelled a breath. “I wanted to be free. Or whatever illusion I thought that looked like.” Pausing, he swallowed. “Then, on the worst day of my life, I lost my greatest friend. Your mother.”
His voice staggered, bracing against the storm of that memory. “When I returned to Loveland, Mount Lovelorn was erupting. Everything destroyed—my castle, my city, my home, mypeople. . . myfather.” He dragged a hand down his face. “Upon his death,” he said glancing over his shoulder, as if spotting his now-disappeared feathery extremity. “I inherited these wings, and with them, a title I never wanted.”
My eyes unwillingly opened, pulled from the agony in his voice. Such profound grief settled on his face, making him look older.
David was shaking, tremors of the past resurfacing.
“But the Lord of what?” he whispered. “Everything was destroyed. The heart of the land’s power—the Candela—snuffed out. Things I cherished most in my life were ripped away in an instant. Along with a piece of my heart.”
“The Collapse of Loveland, they called it.” He shook his head, tone dancing between anger and mockery. “The greatestnaturaldisaster in Ferie history.” Blue eyes glazed over as they shifted, looking distant.
The words sounded rotten on his tongue.
Over the years, David and Wyatt were reluctant to speak too deeply about the fall of Loveland. I knew it pained them to rehash what they’d lost. Their home, their people, their Candela, their past . . . So I never pushed.
Mount Lovelorn had once been the magnificent centerpiece of their land. A towering, ancient mountain that stood long before the first Lovelanders. On that catastrophic day, molten fire surged through the streets of Loveland. It wrecked the Crystal Castle and swallowed the waterfall—the entrance to Cherub City.
Natural philosophers from every corner of the realm looked into the disaster and all came up short with any feasible explanations as to how Mount Lovelorn, an extinct volcano, had gone active.
