Page 177

“Say the words, Vos,” he said quietly. “Whisper them if you have to. But say them out loud.”

“I can’t.”

“You can. You’re here. You came for help, right?”

He fucking waited again. Made me answer. I clenched my teeth and nodded once. Short and sharp. Glaring at him for making me admit it.

But he just nodded in response. “Good,” he said. “The Voski I knew before wouldn’t have done that. So, look. Growth.”

“I don’t give a flying fuck about growth. I don’t need growth. I need… I need something I don’t have.”

Ronen’s brows drew down. “Spit it out, Vos. Gil called me to come because he knew you needed help. You’re safe with me. With your brothers and sisters. We’re all here. For both of you. You don’t have to do this alone—that’s the whole point. One of us is always strong where the other is weak. You don’t have to fix everything alone. You never did!”

I huffed—easy for him to say! But Ronen frowned harder. Then he ran a hand through his hair.

“I should have told you that sooner. I’m sorry,” he said quietly.

I scoffed. “This isn’t about you. I’m not angry at you.”

Ronen took a deep breath and raised his chin. “I should have told you that you didn’t have to have the answers, before. Made it clearer. I thought you knew. But I won’t forget again. Hear me: You don’t have to do this alone, Voski. Ever.”

“I know that! You’re not getting it—”

“Brother, shut the fuck up.”

I was startled. Ronen was rarely sharp with his words. Especially when someone struggled. He smiled to soften the blow. “I’m going to say this again: You don’t have to handle this alone. You never did—but we let you try, and we shouldn’t have. Because you think if you can’t handle it, no one can. And that’s not true.”

“I do not think I’m the only one—”

He clapped a hand to my shoulder and pulled me closer, murmuring in my ear. I stiffened, but he either didn’t notice, or didn’t care. “You’re not alone. Whatever it is, I’m here. I’ll help. What do you need, brother? Let me help you.”

My breath rushed out of me and it felt like my ribs might crack. “There’s not… no one understands. What I put her through… what we had to do—”

“Tell me.”

“I don’t know where to start!”

Ronen stared at me for a moment, then turned for the window, pulling me with him. “Look,” he said firmly, pointing out the window. “Look.”

Outside, it was twilight. But on the lawn, there was movement. A massive shape that flickered and faded in and out of sight, because its scales blended with the greenery behind it.

Ekko. Ronen’s dragon.

A greenscale.

I swallowed.

“Tell me, Voski. If I don’t understand… explain until I do. Ekko’s here. He’ll help. It’s what we do. This kind of hurt… it’s what he was made for.”

I stared at him, my mind whirling with every reason he couldn’t understand, and I couldn’t speak, and it hit me that I’d always thought that, and it had only taken me darker and darker.

If I wanted something to change, I had to change how I thought about it.

“Grace was pregnant. And she’s not anymore, and it’s my fault,” I blurted. I wanted to clap a hand over my mouth the moment his eyes snapped to mine, but now that the words had started, the rest tumbled out of me.

We didn’t even know for sure.

But they wanted it. And when we wouldn’t give it up, my own mother killed our baby. On purpose. And it’s my fault. Because I let them take her, and I made my mother believe that the child was her heir—