“Around Halloween.” She shakes her head. “I don’t know.”
“I keep trying to tell myself that she sort of accidentally fell into her role in all this,” I say, turning it over in my head. “But I don’t think she did. I think it was all planned. Up to and including the fact that she was nowhere to be seen over Halloween. She played us.”
“One of her priests told me as much,” Savi says then. Everything about her is moneyed and smooth, like her short period of dishevelment was a figment of my imagination—but I don’t think it was. “Vinca apparently suspected that we would bind ourselves in exactly that way. She was banking on it. I handed her the ammunition she needed to get us exactly where she wanted us—and she placed Briar here to make sure it happened.”
“And it didn’t work out that well for her, did it,” Winter says. She shrugs. “Fuck Vinca. Fuck Briar, too.”
I don’t consider myself particularly sentimental, but I’m finding it hard to dismiss Briar completely. Likely because I’m the one who killed her in the end, and it doesn’t matter that Vinca would have done it anyway. Taking a life isn’t something a person with a soul should just ... move on from.
I tuck her away inside me and keep it to myself.
“We found this, too,” Winter says, digging something big and gold from her pocket. She flips it through the air in my direction and I catch it.
I know exactly what it is. An old-school biker ring with 1% emblazoned on it, useful in fistfights and to announce a person’s outlaw status to the world. I also know who this one belonged to, and not only because I can scent him on it.
“I guess Briar was Vinca’s faithful minion who showed Connor the truth,” I say, as I suspected in the crater. I toss the ring to Ty.
He scowls at it, then grunts. “That dumb fuck. Wouldn’t be the first man I know to confuse pussy for truth.”
I feel the last remaining puzzle pieces coming together. How many times did Winter and I hypothesize that maybe Briar’s shiftiness was her sneaking away to see some boyfriend? Turns out, she was.
Some religions call this day in January the Epiphany. Maybe for good reason.
Savi does her food thing. The five of us eat. We laugh. The last time we did something like this, after the Halloween battle, it was a far more somber occasion. Winter’s grandmother had died. Everyone was shell-shocked.
This is better. This feels like that new world Ty and I saw before us under the full Wolf Moon.
“I’m going to move in with Ariel for the foreseeable future,” Winter announces when we’re all stuffed and happy. She grins. “We can pretend it’s for my safety. It’s not.”
Across the living room, Ariel allows his lips to form one of his infrequent smiles. “It’s notnotabout your safety.”
Winter’s grin widens, but she continues. “But I can’t stand to think of Gran’s house empty. Or getting rid of it when Augie might want to come back here someday.” She lifts her brows at Savi. “Are you sure you really want to do this?”
“You’re moving in?” I study her. “I’m not sure Jacksonville is aminionsort of place.”
“I don’t think that living in such dramatic isolation is necessarily good for me,” Savi says. She slides a look at me. “And I don’tneedminions, Maddox. They need me. It will be good for them to soldier on alone.”
I don’t really know what to say to that, so I ignore it. “You’re just going to live here? All by yourself?”
“I see it as more of a halfway house,” Savi says.
Winter nods. “That night at the crater, while you were busy getting married, or whatever you call it—”
“I am mated and claimed, actually,” I say. “And a queen, lest you forget. Peasants that you are.”
Savi actually smiles. Winter laughs, then continues. “We were talking about the fact that whatever the ulterior motives were at play here last fall, we all kind of needed a place to get back on our feet. Maybe Briar too, for better or worse. I spent three years of the Reveal doing it all myself, and it sucked. Now I’ve spent the past three months understanding how much bigger the world is than just my own misery. And I have to think there are more magical creatures—”
“Magical women,” Savi interjects. “If we’re being honest.”
“I want this house to be a way station,” Winter says. “My grandmother would have loved it. After she got finished bemoaning the presence of strangers in her house, that is.”
We all smile at that.
“Ultimately, that’s what she did with her life. She tried to help people, whether they wanted her help or not.” Winter looks at our sorceress friend. “Savi can run this place without having to have everything steel plated and locked up tight, with an arsenal strapped to her at all times. Saviisthe arsenal.”
“That you think so is the greatest weapon of all,” Savi says with a smile.
“And if you need another, I’m your wolf,” I say with a grin.
