“Trouble in paradise?” Delani queried under her breath.
Ignoring her, I addressed Sebastian directly. “Maybe if you told mebeforeshit hit the fan, I wouldn’t be so upset. But since you didn’t, I’ll ask again. What about my mother?”
As if it didn’t matter to him at all, and maybe it didn’t—or maybe he felt as though he had nothing left to lose—Sebastian answered simply, “I knew that she was going to die.”
The bowl of fruit fell out of my lap, scattering across the hardwood floor as my mouth went utterly slack and all of my words deserted me.
“I also knew that Jocelyn was going to die,” he added, twisting the edge of the jagged knife he had stabbed into my godsdamn chest.
My eyes dashed between my friends, none of whom looked shocked or even upset for that matter.
“Does this really not bother any of you?” I practically yelled, tossing an opened palm out in Sebastian's direction.
Sawyer answered first while he hunched at the waist and began cleaning up the mess of fruit. “It did when he first told me. But like Pia said, we’re all alive, and that's what matters most. I can forgive all the other shit that happened in between.”
Dumbfoundedwas the only word that came remotely close to describing how I felt.
“He knew that the girl you had feelings for was going to die, and you're just going to disregard that?” I enunciated every single word. “I mean, hell, Sawyer! You didn't talk to us for weeks over that!”
Sawyer’s jaw clenched, as if he and I remembered at the same time what he had confided after Lucan attacked me.
I was going to choose to ignore that—emotions were high that day. That was all.
Sebastian cleared his throat, then licked his forefinger, using it to flip the page of his book. “In my defense—not that it really helps—I didn’t know it would beJocelynwho died. I just knew that it would be one of my friends. Which is why I encouraged Sawyer and Kohen to stay in Caelestis. I also wasn’t positive when exactly your mother would die. But I knew it would be within the year. The journal said before you turned twenty-two, to be exact.”
Pia did not give me a moment to respond before she explained her own reasoning. “He told me about the journal during the battle, and you bet your ass that I was pissed, but now I understand why he didn’t tell us. It’s not like none of this stuff wouldn't have happened if we knew about it. We just would have had more time to dwell on it.”
“Maybe so, but I would have at least known that my mother wasgoing to fucking die,” I growled, then began stumbling through my words. “I—I would have written to her. Or…or visited. I would have stopped it. I?—”
“No, Maeve. You wouldn’t have. Knowing that she was going to die wouldn't have changed King Hawthorne's regulations,” Kohen stated. “If Seb had told you, all it would have done was convinced you to do something reckless, which would have resulted in getting yourself caught and killed.”
“What good would knowing have done for you anyway? You also would have been more focused on trying to stop her inevitable death than you would have been about winning a war,” Sawyer added his two cents.
“A war welost,” I corrected, my words having an intentional bite to them. “If you could even call it a war.”
I jumped to my feet, the sudden ache in my knees reminding me that I wasn’t at full health. “He lied to all of us, for gods know how long, and none of you care?” My voice cracked as the words poured from my throat.
Sebastian’s book slammed shut at last. “I didn't lie.” His boots scuffed the floor as he rose to his own feet and stormed towards me, stopping mere inches from where I stood. His scent lingered in the air as he looked down at me, his dominating presence threatening to decrease my anger with him.
“Okay fine, you just hid the stuff you didn’t want to share, which is—in my book—equally as fucked up as lying,” I sneered in his face. Despite being so pissed, his sharp jawline and perfect dark hair still sent shivers scattering down my spine.
“You wake up alive, and instead of being grateful, you choose to be argumentative and stubborn. That’ssotypical,” he replied with a roll of his cerulean eyes.
I took a step back. “Woah. You have no right to be angry atme. I didn’t do anything!”
“You aren't even giving me a chance to explain,” he countered with a tick of his jaw. “Don’t Iat leastdeserve that? Then, once you have all the information, you can decide if you hate me or not.”
“Maybe you would deserve that if I thought I could even believe anything you had to say. Plus,Ididn’t lie to you for a year! I’ve never lied to you once.”
He scoffed while his eyes met the ceiling. “Oh, you want to go there? Fine. Let’s talk abouthiding thingsthen, shall we?Remember when you failed to tell me how harnessing your magic made you so sick that you couldn't eat? I found that out for myself when you passed out on the mat during training.”
I chewed the flesh of my lower lip. He wasn’t wrong—I did withhold that information from him, but that was different. It was about myself, not him.
“What you did was a whole other level of fucked up! You knew stuff aboutmylife! My family! My power!”
His head tilted to the side, subsequently moving a lock of hair off his creased forehead. “And again, what good would knowing have done for you? All it would have done was added to your worries.”
“For starters, I would have tried to save my mother’s life! And it would have?—”
