Chapter 45
FORTY-FIVE
VIOLET
Iturned, terrified of what I might find. Dimitros must have shielded his sister from seeing their father shoot a man, but now, my daughter’s face was peering over his shoulder and all her attention was on me.
The expression on Aria’s face… her widened eyes… horror…
This wasn’t how she was supposed to find out. Not with this darkness surrounding us. The timing was all wrong. Of all the ways I had imagined it, none of them resembled this scenario.
Her blue eyes met mine, but I couldn’t get a solid read on her.
The irony of it didn’t escape me. I had built my life on understanding people and interpreting their emotions. But now, when it mattered most, I saw nothing but a storm I couldn’t name.
Her hands trembled at her sides.
And in that tiny, fragile movement, terror clawed its way up my throat. Please don’t let me lose her.
I wouldn’t survive it. Not again.
“All this time, I’ve believed a madwoman was my mother. Do you know how scared I was to become her?”
“I… Please, let me explain…” The words came out broken and a sob ripped through me—violent, uncontrollable, like it had been buried inside me for years, waiting to tear free. It hurt. God, it hurt.
My chest locked, my lungs useless as my vision blurred with tears.
“Violet is your mother,” Lykos said, his voice a quiet thread cutting through the chaos. He reached toward our daughter. “She had to protect you from her father, so she—”
“So she left me?” Her voice cracked.
“I didn’t want to,” I breathed.
“But you did.” Aria’s voice was judge and jury, and I couldn’t blame her. Because I did leave her.
Lykos closed the distance with our daughter while I stood, fighting the urge to do the same. Instead, I wrapped my arms around myself protectively.
He cupped her face gently. “Aria, I know you’re angry. I was angry too, but Violet… your mother… She did it to protect you. She let her father think you were dead so you could live.”
“But you could have kept her and me safe,” she protested, and maybe she wasn’t wrong. Maybe I’d made the worst mistake of my life by leaving her.
“Maybe,” he agreed. “I know I would have given it my all. However, there’s no guarantee.
This society that Violet’s father was a member of…
we didn’t even know about them. Even now, knowing that they exist, there isn’t much we can find to take them down.
” He kissed her forehead. “She did what she thought best. Can you see that?”
Aria swallowed, her face pale. She looked like an innocent angel among the blood and death. The wreckage caused by all the adults.
“I’m so sorry.” I couldn’t find any other words.
A woman who talked and offered advice for a living, and I was at a loss for what else to say.
My knees buckled. The world tilted, darkness creeping at the edges, but strong arms caught me before I hit the ground. Lykos rushed over and caught me, keeping the pieces of me together that were threatening to shatter.
“I wanted to keep you,” I choked out, forcing the words past wobbling lips. They felt too small, too weak for something this big, this devastating. “I wanted you so much—”
My hands flew to my mouth, trying to stifle the broken sounds spilling out of me, but it was useless.
“I’m so sorry.”
All the nights came crashing back: every empty hour, the loneliness, my soundless screams every time I felt that relentless pang of grief.
“Why do you keep saying you’re sorry?” Aria demanded.
“Aria, please listen to your mother,” Lykos reasoned. “I was mad too, but now I understand. She sacrificed it all for you.”
Aria’s delicate blonde eyebrows knitted in confusion. “How? By giving me away so I could be the daughter of a woman who tried to kill me?”
“Please believe me, Aria,” I begged. “I had to hide you. I had to. I knew Lykos could keep you safe, somewhere my father would never find you.” My breath hitched violently. “He would have killed you. He threatened to kill any child of mine… for Lily.”
The name broke something open inside of me all over again.
“Aria…” I whispered softly while tears streamed down my face relentlessly. “My baby…”
She flinched.
It was a small motion, but it cut like a knife. But then her face crumpled.
“I… I… I don’t know how to feel,” she whispered. The fact that I was the cause of her devastation made my heart break into a million pieces. “I thought… I thought you didn’t want me.” Her breath hitched. “Did you… Do you love me?”
“With all my heart.”
She hesitated for just one heartbeat, then she ran toward me and fell into my open arms. I pulled her into a fiercely protective hug, holding her close like I could make up for every lost second, every lost year, every lullaby I never got to sing.
“I’ve got you,” I cried, over and over, the words tumbling out like a promise—yet another one I intended to keep. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you, I’ve got you—”
Her arms tightened around me.
“Mom,” she whispered.
It was a simple word, but something inside me—something that had been hollow from that day when I handed her to Lykos—finally filled.
I laughed through my tears, clutching her tighter as if the world might still try to take her from me.
My eyes found Lykos and Dimitros, and I rasped, “I love you all.”
I belonged with them. Now and forever.