Chapter Forty-Six
I stood frozen in the middle of his office, my gaze locked on the shelves that towered before us.
“Greyson,” said Cameron, trying to shake me out of my stupor—away from this fear that I had not protected Willa enough, not conveyed the danger of being anywhere near Jewel Hadley.
Or even Pendulum.
Searching Cameron’s face, I could see he felt the weight of guilt, too.
“We thought we were doing the right thing by changing Pendulum,” I said. “All the while we were in too deep.”
“We could never have guessed what was behind the veil.”
“Jewel.”
It struck me all at once. A realization so sharp it hurt. Her name…Jewel. Meant to represent something precious. Her name was tainted by everything she had done, by everything she intended to do.
“You should have let me finish the job,” I mused darkly, recalling the time when Atticus and Jake had pulled me out of the club—preventing me for ending this.
Lives could have been saved.
The books—so many books—lined the walls, stacked in methodical rows. Each a symbol of something bigger than I’d ever understood. I had torn through them, desperate to find something, ripping them off the shelves the night after I had learned Amelia had betrayed me.
The answers, the truth, any shred of understanding, all lost in those books. I had searched through so many of them like they’d held the key to some locked door in my mind.
Standing in the quiet stillness of this moment, I finally understood what I had been searching for.
The weight of it hit me all at once. All those years of running, of avoiding the things that truly mattered. I had spent so much time tearing apart my world, trying to understand it, trying to fix it, never realizing I had been avoiding one truth. One simple, scathing truth.
The one truth I’d been running from was that I’d never fought for her all those years ago, for Celeste, my mother.
Not the way I should have.
All those wasted chances. Those moments where I had been too scared—the excuse that I was merely a boy—was still unforgivable.
I couldn’t save Mom from my father’s wrath…
But now?
I saw it clearly. The past didn’t matter anymore. Because I couldn’t change it.
This was my second chance to end the suffering of so many.
Make sure Willa was always safe.
Turning to face Cameron with my heart pounding in my chest, I saw he was watching me with quiet understanding.
The man everyone looked up to had shown us how to live. How to always do the right thing.
He had to see it in me now—the fire, the drive, the urgency.
It was no longer about confusion from my dark past.
“Take care of Willa,” I said, my voice low but firm. “Tell her, tell her…” I met Cameron’s gaze. “Tell her I love her.”
“She needs you, Greyson. Don’t do anything that might hurt her more than she can stand.”
Love wasn’t just words.
It was in the quiet spaces between the breaths we took. It was in the way time slowed down when I was close to her, to Willa. It was in the silence, the space between our vows, our unspoken promises.
The ones made with our hearts to prove how much we cared.
“What are you thinking?” asked Cameron.
But I was already heading for the door.