Chapter 18 #3
I only blinked, ignoring the comment about my mystery age. How young was too young to understand kids?
Twenty? Twenty-five? …Nineteen?
“It didn’t matter to me. Any child of hers was a child of mine, but the other Key didn’t care. We fought. The other Link was feeding her some bullshit about how I was love bombing her. I only wanted her for a power up. I was using her. She believed him.”
Shit, I needed to ask Mr. Craig what the fuck love bombing meant. I mean Wyatt. Wyatt, Skye’s Link. Wyatt, my…potential Link-mate?
Fuck.
“Why didn’t she trust you?” I asked as my head throbbed.
“Because I’d been gone,” Avery scoffed. “Because I never came back to tell her I’d joined up. There had been no way for me to contact her once I was deployed, and it all happened so fast I never got a chance to tell her.”
That didn’t make any sense. Avery was the strongest Telepath in the world. Why didn’t he reach into her mind?
He smiled sadly, knowing what I was thinking without going into my mind. “She was strong, too. She was pissed, and she locked me out.”
I nodded. Obviously Avery’s Key would’ve been strong.
“So all we had were those three days, and then it was over. She sent me away, and I felt like my heart had been ripped from my body. We had a fight. I shook the Capitol building.”
I jerked around to look at him.
He grinned sheepishly. “The other Key…God, he acted like I was some demon come to kill them all. He didn’t want to believe in my divinity. And that made me make the biggest mistake of my life.”
I waited as Avery breathed heavily. He sat down at the breakfast table we never used, then rested his elbows on his knees.
“I told her to come with me,” he whispered. “I ordered her, I mean.”
My eyes widened. “They fought you?”
Avery scoffed, but his lips twitched toward a grin.
“No. They didn’t have to, because it didn’t work.
She just glared at me like I hadn’t said anything at all.
I tried to order the other Key to do something, but she protected him.
She was a crazy good Telepath, that woman.
” He smiled ruefully. “She was something else, you should’ve seen her. My perfect match in every way.”
I wasn’t so sure that was a good thing, except…she’d essentially rejected him. So maybe she was actually one of the best people ever.
“I didn’t know she’d become pregnant,” he whispered. “She never told me. She was my Key, and she kept a child from me.”
My stomach dropped.
Avery had never come right out and told me Skye was his daughter. I’d only overhead some of the fight in the ballroom at the gala before Skye came barreling out with Aiden.
“Wait,” I said slowly. “That was…that was the Phantom’s mother? That’s how it all went down?”
“Don’t look so shocked, River,” Avery said dryly.
I stifled a laugh. “You can’t blame me. She’s gorgeous, there’s no way she could’ve gotten that from you.”
Almost as soon as the words left my mouth, I knew I’d made a mistake.
A grave mistake.
Avery was on his feet in a flash, and the slap he delivered to my cheek was so hard, it sent my head around. I stumbled, staggering into the cold stainless steel fridge with a gasp.
“Get on your knees,” Avery ordered.
I dropped, my brain still too fuzzy to try and fight him. I blinked at the floor, my vision blurring in and out. That was a hell of a fucking hit.
Avery leaned down so he was close to me, speaking into my ear.
“You told me you barely knew her. Now you tell me she’s gorgeous?”
I groaned as an invisible force pushed down on the back of my neck, trying to force my head to the ground.
“That doesn’t sound like you barely know her. You want to know what I think?”
I didn’t, but of course he was going to tell me.
“I think you do know her. And I think- no, I know you’ve been lying to me. And you know what else? I know what you’re doing.”
“And what am I doing?” I grunted.
“You will not turn Gina against me,” Avery hissed. “Keep trying if you must, but it will not work. It will never work. You want to know why?”
…I didn’t, but of course he was going to tell me.
“You are not stronger than me, River. You are still that weak little boy I ripped away from the islands. I know you remember. You are not smarter than me. I am a God, and you are a false prophet. Your divinity is stolen.”
What?
“And you may have stolen that divinity from me, but I will get it back. And when I do? I might not need you anymore. And no one’s going to take in a lost boy who can’t remember his own last name.”
That…that one hurt.
My chest heaved, my heart cracking.
I hated this.
No, I hated him.
“You will get close to her,” Avery said. I squeezed my eyes shut. I could feel blood begin to drip from my nose, and I finally dropped my forehead to the floor, gritting my teeth in pain. “You will get close to her and then bring her to me.”
I hated him. I hated him so much, I wished he would drop fucking dead.
“Wishing will get you nowhere,” Avery whispered menacingly. “You are only alive because I allow it. It’s long past time I remind you of that.”