Chapter 52
Darkness Holds The Stars
Water lapped soundlessly at the sandy banks. The late afternoon sky reflected off the dark lake like a mirror, the surface painted with streaks of orange and pink and pools of smoky black as twilight drowned day. I sat on the small wooden jetty, my legs dangling over the edge.
Overhead, an eagle split the sky, its wings outstretched and soundless. Ethan lay on his back a few feet away on the grass, his hands tucked behind his head, his eyes closed. Silent but not asleep.
On the quiet shores of the bank, cocooned by nature, it felt like a holiday destination, the distance not vast by measurement, but a long way from the chaos of the world. Making everything seem smaller, easier to deal with. Making it feel like I could breathe.
Ethan’s phone ringing jerked through the quiet. He sat up, pulled his phone out of his leather jacket, and grimaced before he answered, placing it on loudspeaker so I could hear.
“You’re with her.” His deep voice bolted through to my heart. Guilt that I’d left him, when he probably wanted to be here with me.
Ethan sprang to his feet. “I’m assuming you already know I am.”
I held my breath, waiting for him to explode, but he said, “Good, stay with her, keep her safe at all cost, Ethan.”
“I don’t need you to tell me to keep her safe,” Ethan grated. “I’ve been doing it since I met her.”
Clearly, they hadn’t resolved their argument.
“I don’t want to argue with you.” Karson paused. Then his voice quietened. “Just tell her to call me when she wants to come home. Tell her I—”
“Karson,” a voice interrupted. “I need to speak to you.”
“Can it wait?” he snapped. “You can see I’m busy.”
“No, Louis is concerned about the opening tomorrow night. Apparently, a vampire killed a witch and it was unprovoked. He wants to talk to you about security.”
Karson sighed. “I have to go.”
Ethan snorted. “What, no words for her, nothing you want to say to ease the distress of the woman you love?”
“Don’t be an asshole,” Karson grumbled. “It’s beneath you.”
“Pretty sure it’s not, actually.” But he was talking to no one because Karson had hung up. Ethan slipped his phone in his pocket.
My teeth worried my bottom lip. They were fighting over me. I picked at a splinter in the wood. “I don’t like it when you two argue.”
“Don’t worry about it, we always argue.” He sauntered over, springing onto the jetty. “That’s just what happens when there are two assholes in one family.”
I huffed a laugh. “I’d say there are more than two.”
One side of Ethan’s lips curled up as he sat down beside me. “That’s a very solid point.” He took my fingers and pulled them gently from the wood I was still picking at, placing my hand on my lap.
“I think you might be taking the protection thing too far. I’m pretty sure I can handle a splinter.”
“Always a good idea to be careful around vampires,” he said casually, scanning the horizon.
“What did you mean by you’ve been protecting me since you first met me?”
Ethan stilled for half a second, almost as if his breath caught. Then he shrugged. “You were a new girl in a town with one of the most lethal vampires on earth, who also happens to despise witches, with no idea what he was or what you were.”
“How did you know what I was? I had my ring on.”
His gaze locked with mine. “I felt it. When I handed back your books, our fingers brushed, and I …” He paused, contemplating his response. After a long while he said, “I just knew.”
The magic energy BJ explained to me, a vibration I could feel too, different for witches, different again for vampires.
“Karson would have known too, but he didn’t hurt me.”
Shadows darkened his eyes. “There are different ways of hurting people.”
“What do you mean by that?”
He climbed to his feet, his gaze back in the forest. “You’re a smart girl, work it out.”
He meant because Karson wouldn’t show anyone outside the few closest to him how much he cared about me. “He does it to protect me.”
“Protect you or protect his standing?”
His words struck. I sucked in a breath. “You’re right, you are an asshole.”
He looked back, his lips thin. “I am, but I’m the asshole that walks in front of you when you need protecting, behind you when you need backup, and beside you every other time. And I don’t give a shit who doesn’t like it.”
He was a good friend, the kind anyone would be lucky to have.
But Ethan wasn’t the king of vampires. He didn’t have Karson’s responsibilities.
He had no idea of the pressure Karson was under.
Ethan had standing, protection, because of his connection with Karson, but he was free to do whatever he liked.
He also didn’t have to deal with Sarah’s vengeance. A vengeance Karson didn’t deserve.
I stared out across the lake, running my fingers over the soft skin of my wrist, and sucked in a raw breath. “Karson needs vampires on his side, his friends on his side, especially right now.”
Ethan sighed and suddenly looked drained. “I agree, which is why we need to find Sarah, because if that grimoire gets out, it will be an all-out war.”
His words sent the cold crawling over my skin. I tucked my knees to my chest, hugging my arms around them.
“Do you think Sarah would hand it over to the witches?”
He shook his head. “I don’t think so. She loves her parents too much. But if she’s hellbent on revenge, I think she will do anything and everything she can to bring Karson down.”
“If you need to go and look for her, Ethan, don’t stay here with me. I’m fine.”
He held out a hand for me to grasp. I took it and he lifted me to my feet. “You are a skilled fighter, one of the best I’ve seen in training, and you are clever, Amy. But even the toughest of warriors shouldn’t go through the darkness alone.”
I’d spent my childhood shifted from home to home.
Feeling lonely, lost, getting broken and pulling myself back together again.
Alone. Even when I grew up, that way of being, the coping mechanism I had needed just to survive, stayed with me.
When my mother died, I cried in my bedroom alone.
When Tom broke me, I fled to Church Heights, one of the remotest places in the country, to heal.
Alone. When I remembered parts of my childhood trauma, I’d fled here. To be alone. Always alone.
“I don’t want to drag people into the darkness with me,” I whispered.
He reached out and brushed strands of hair off my face, smiling softly. “I kind of like the darkness.”
I couldn’t look at him, couldn’t let him see me broken. I turned to face the lake, my hand trembling as I wiped at the tear slipping down my cheek.
Ethan’s voice drifted through the quiet. “Darkness is not something to be afraid of. It’s somewhere to shelter, where you get to rest, where you get to see the stars.”
“For me, the darkness holds monsters.” I was embarrassed by the croak in my voice.
He stepped up beside me, his gaze following mine. “Then we teach you how to slay the monsters so you’re no longer afraid of them, and they are afraid of you.”