Chapter 34
Chapter
Thirty-Four
MOIRA
Iknew many things about Evie Quinn. I knew she hated cucumbers with the fire of a thousand suns and gagged when someone was cutting one.
I knew she liked nature documentaries, especially the ones narrated by men with European accents.
I knew she loved my cookies, especially my snickerdoodles, but felt bad about asking me to make them for her because she didn’t want to bother me.
I knew she loved the rain and the sound of rushing water and how wet sand felt between her toes. I also knew she felt guilty about hating carnations because she was a creature of the gods and thought that meant she had to love everything that came from the ground.
I knew her fake laugh and her polite laugh, and the one she used when she was humoring someone but planned to verbally eviscerate them later.
I even knew her screams—the high-pitched one when she was frightened, the one that sounded like someone gargling marbles when she was frustrated, and the one she made late at night when a nightmare would drag her from the depths of a restless sleep.
But I had never, in all the years I’d known her, heard a scream like that rip from her throat when Caelan came for Rowan. The sound brought me to my knees, grief spreading like a virus through my veins.
It was the sound of agony, of the earth mourning, of despair and horror, and love shattered far before its time.
I tucked that sound, as painful as it was, into my heart so I would know it if, the gods forbid, she ever made it again.
And as I sat on my knees with my heart shattering, I knew one more thing.
My best friend would not make it in time to save Rowan from the certain death barreling toward him.