I tell my pack how the keeper had kneeled at my mother’s side and she’d suddenly woken up.
My voice chokes again as I recount the way she’d spoken with Emil, the strange way she’d greeted him, and how their conversation was muted for a full minute, at the end of which he had torn out her heart—a heart that had been unique.
I’m aware of the increasing widening of their eyes as I speak, especially when I talk of the way my mother had woken up and her muffled conversation with the keeper.
But I make myself continue because it’s important that they know what happened after the book released me from its grip.
I describe the way Emil had confirmed what the book showed me.
I tell them about the way his power had started breaking when my heart was breaking. And how my father harnessed the light magic keeper’s power.
And then I finish by telling them how I ripped through the book.
But I leave one thing out: the dark impulses that flooded through me when I broke the book, those commands that roared within my mind and only stopped when I tore the book apart.
When I finish, the others are very quiet.
Jonah’s expression is the most far away and I realize that hearing how my mother died must have a more significant impact on him, since he was once her friend.
As for Lucian and the dark elves, they’re all contemplating me solemnly.
Anarchy speaks first with her forehead gently creased. “So… Galeia didn’t appear frightened when she opened her eyes to find the keeper of dark magic looming over her?”
It isn’t what I thought she would ask first, but it’s certainly right up there among the things I don’t understand.
“Well…” My own forehead creases. “No.”
“And she didn’t try to get away from him?”
“No.”
“And you didn’t hear what was said between them for a full minute?”
“I didn’t.” My head hurts and I rub my temples before I acknowledge what Anarchy must be trying to say. “I need to know what I missed.”
“You do.” She nods emphatically. “The book must have hidden that conversation from you for a reason. Most probably because it doesn’t align with what the book wants. In fact…” She glances at Lucian, who gives her a firm nod before she continues. “I would even venture to say thatthatconversation could be more important than anything else the book showed you.”
I draw away a little. “Even my mother’s death?”
She shakes her head rapidly. “No, of course not. Darkness, you know I would never hurt you by minimizing your pain.”
She wouldn’t.
It was Anarchy who first reacted with rage when Lucian had even hinted that the woman who’d raised me might not have been my biological mother.
But now she persists. “The book lies. Itlies, Darkness. But most importantly, so does Emil.”
She searches my eyes, reaching for me again, her lilac hair catching in the firelight. “Darkness, you can’t trust that Emil’s confirmation of events wasn’t a lie, too.”
Fuck… me…
I squeeze my eyes closed and rub my forehead harder, but I don’t shake off the hand she wraps around my forearm.
I need my pack right now.
I need their help.
But it also feels like nobody can really help me because nobody else was there when my mother died.
