Chapter 19
Lucian hated that he was here. He drove his father’s old truck through the quiet, tree-lined streets, the low groan of the worn suspension a soundtrack to his simmering frustration.
The scent of pine and damp earth did nothing to settle his turbulent emotions; his jackal still thrummed with a restless, volatile energy.
He ran a hand over his jaw, his ear twitching in annoyance.
He probably should apologize to Ellie for leaving her at the fair, but the thought of facing her chirpy, saccharine presence and cloying perfume made his stomach turn.
Next to him, Luke grumbled, a low, guttural sound that rattled in his chest. “I told you I could have handled this one, pup. A broken shelf doesn’t need both of us."
"You need to rest, Pop,” Lucian retorted, keeping his voice level.
Luke snorted, “you worry too much.”
“Someone has to.”
He wasn’t about to let his father’s shaking hands try to handle a drill alone, even if it was just to rehang a shelf. Besides, Luke’s earlier warning—Don’t trust that witch—had settled into his mind like a splinter he couldn't work free.
He glanced out the windshield as the familiar blue cottage came into view.
His stomach tightened for reasons he couldn’t explain.
His jackal shifted restlessly beneath his skin, alert in a way it hadn’t been the last time they’d stopped here.
The moment they stepped out of the truck, the cloying, sweet scent of Ellie’s perfume hit Lucian, an immediate trigger for his jackal’s unease.
Ellie met them at the door, her smile bright and unnerving. She led them straight to the living room, rambling with a frantic, self-pitying energy.
“Oh, I was having the worst day,” she sighed, gesturing dramatically toward the carnage inside.
A large wall shelf sat askew, tilted precariously on the hardwood floor, with a massive stack of books piled around its base.
“First, I lost my job today—can you believe it? And honestly, Enchantresso will probably just fail without me. Goldie can barely run that place on her own.”
Luke immediately busied himself examining the structural damage of the shelf, his jaw set.
Lucian paused; Goldie's face from the night before flashed into his mind. “She fired you?” he whispered.
“It’s just so crazy,” Ellie sighed. “I don’t know what she was thinking.”
Lucian stood near the stack of books, letting Ellie’s words wash over him, tuning out the resentment and false concern in her tone that his jackal now easily detected.
As Ellie rambled on about Goldie’s supposed incompetence, Lucian heard a vibration. Ellie looked down at her phone, her brow furrowing with a flash of irritation before she managed a polite, “Excuse me, one second."
Lucian’s eyes immediately went back to the towering stack of books.
The compulsion to ignore Ellie’s drama and focus on the mundane was overpowering.
He stepped closer, his golden-brown eyes carefully reading the titles on the spines.
Most were typical magical theory or romance books, but one immediately stood out, its title etched in silver script: The Memory Weaver’s Grimoire.
A sickening realization hit him—an icy wave that cut through his anger and suspicion.
He thought of his conversation with Goldie, her plea that the “proof” was fabricated, and his own inability to clearly recall the details of the text messages Ellie had shown him ten years ago.
Why was my memory so foggy? The question, which had haunted him, suddenly had a terrifying answer.
With shaking hands, he reached for the book.
It was heavy, worn, and definitely not the kind of book a casual witch would keep.
He opened it, flipping through the pages until he found marked sections.
Tabs were placed with unnerving precision.
As his eyes scanned the bookmarked spells she had marked, two spells screamed at him: illusion spell and memory spell.
Fabricated. The messages were fabricated.
A lie, spun not by Goldie but by Ellie, was the truth he had based the last ten years of his life upon.
The entire decade of pain, of self-imposed exile, of believing he had been robbed of his free will, was based on an illusion spell that manipulated his memory. There were no text messages.
His thoughts collided on one conclusion, sharp and devastating: Ellie had used her magic to manipulate him.
She had not just lied; she had weaponized her magic to poison his mind and destroy the only actual relationship he had ever had, the one with the person he had known was his fated mate.
As the idea sunk in, he realized, I destroyed everything.
He clutched the book in his hand, the weight of the betrayal making his vision tunnel with cold fury. Without waiting for Ellie to hang up her phone, he left. He spun on his heel and stormed out of the living room, the book feeling like a rock in his hand.
He stalked toward the front door, desperate to escape the suffocating cottage. Then he heard her voice. Ellie was still on the phone, in the kitchen, her voice low, chillingly cold, and devoid of the sweet pretense she used on everyone.
He stopped. The cold, calculating words she said filled his ears.
“I said, ‘You always had it so easy, Goldie.’” The words were a soft, venomous hiss.
A pause stretched. Ellie continued, her voice lowering with bitter resentment, “She had the guy, the aunt who loved her, and what did I have? Nothing. I was a disappointment to my family. They still don’t talk to me.
The other day I pretended my mom texted me to get out of work.
Just to get Goldie off my back. So what if Lucian and I are talking?
It’s none of her business, anyway. They aren’t together anymore.
It’s been ten years for fuck's sake, get over it. "
Lucian, clutching The Memory Weaver’s Grimoire like a weapon, moved, his steps muffled by the rug. He stepped into the doorway, standing just out of sight. Ellie’s back was turned, her voice dripping with venom.
"Do you want to know the truth?” She said into the phone.
“I have hated her for a long time. If I could have stayed gone, I would have, but I lost my job, and here comes good ole Goldie to the rescue to offer me help, pretending she is some martyr.” Ellie laughed, a bright, chilling sound.
“You think I care that she fired me? I don’t. "
Ellie turned just as she finished speaking and saw Lucian standing in the doorway, the book of forbidden spells clutched in his hand. The venom vanished from her expression in an instant.
"Oh, Lucian,” she giggled, her voice melting into a saccharine, seductive purr. “How long have you been there?” Ellie quickly clicked the end call on her phone. “I was just venting to my cousin.”
Lucian didn’t move. He didn’t even breathe. He just stepped forward and threw The Memory Weaver’s Grimoire onto the counter with a heavy thud. “I found your light reading, Ellie,” he said, his voice vibrating with a dangerous, low-frequency growl.
She didn’t flinch. She just looked at the book, then back at him, her expression shifting from false sweetness to something sharp and brittle.
“It’s just a reference book, Lucian. A common spell book that a witch like myself keeps lying around.
You know I like to keep my skills sharp.
If you go through the other books, you’ll find several types of spell books. "
"Common?" Lucian stepped into the kitchen, the space suddenly feeling too small for both of them. He flipped the book open to one of the tabs he’d found—the ones specifically marked for illusion and memory manipulation. “Why are these marked, Ellie? What’s the reason I don’t remember reading the words in those texts? Why is it all just a fog of magic?"
“Memory is tricky after heartbreak, Lucian,” Ellie whispered. “People forget details all the time when emotions get involved.”
The air in the kitchen turned metallic, Lucian’s jackal hackles rising as the depth of the betrayal settled in.
“There were no texts, were there? You manipulated my memory.” His stomach turned violently.
Every memory from that night suddenly felt poisoned—warped around someone else’s magic until he no longer knew what had been real and what had been planted there.
“Of course they were real,” Ellie said, still clinging to the lie.
“Then show them to me,” he growled, just barely above a whisper. “Prove it.”
“Why would I keep that all these years?” She rolled her eyes as she crossed her arms over her chest. “I don’t even have the same phone number or cell.”
“I know there was never any proof,” Lucian snarled. “Coming back here, I kept wondering why my memory of that proof was so foggy, and then it hit me: because there never was proof.”
Ellie glared at Lucian, her facade snapping even if she wasn’t ready to admit it yet. She said, “Give me a minute and I’ll go find you the proof. I am sure I have something here somewhere.”
Ellie lunged for the book, her fingers clawing toward the pages, but Lucian caught her wrist, stopping her mid-air.
"If the evidence were real, Ellie, you wouldn’t need to consult a grimoire to find it,” he snarled.
Ellie looked at him, and he saw an inkling of fear cloud her eyes. He watched her eyes processing and calculating.
"No," she finally admitted, her voice flat and unapologetic. “I created them. I made you see what I needed you to see, so you’d leave her. And you did. You ran exactly like I knew you would."
He listened to the words, twisting his guts as the full range of everything this had created—the anger, the hatred, and the sadness. Rage filled him as he tried to control his temper.
Her jaw tightened, a small muscle jumping in her cheek.
The facade was crumbling, and the woman beneath was cold and calculating.
“You were so easy, Lucian,” she whispered, a small, cruel smile playing at the corners of her mouth.
“A whisper of magic here, a blurred memory there. You wanted to believe she was the villain because it was easier than admitting a shifter could be controlled by something as simple as a well-placed illusion. You looked at her as if she were your entire world. Do you know how satisfying it was watching that look turn into suspicion?”
Lucian felt the bile rise in his throat. “Why?”
“I wanted you for myself,” Ellie said with a bitter laugh.
“I loved you long before Goldie ever moved to town. Back in kindergarten, I used to follow you around the playground like some pathetic little shadow, and you never even noticed I existed.” Her smile twisted.
“Then Goldie showed up, and suddenly she was all you could see.”
Lucian stayed silent as Ellie continued, years of resentment spilling free.
"I became her friend because she mattered to you. I thought eventually you’d notice me too, but instead you spent years looking at her like she hung the damn moon.”
Ellie's jaw tightened. “Do you know what that feels like? Standing beside someone your entire life and realizing you’ll always come second to them?”
“You claim you love me, that you want me—"
"Oh, Lucian, don’t be dense,” she snapped, her eyes flashing with a decade of resentment.
“I didn’t want you. Not really. I wanted her life.
I wanted the shop, the adoration, the aunt who looked at me like I was the sun.
I wanted the world that just... handed itself to her while I was always the disappointment.
You were just the prize she cared about most. Breaking you was the only way to break her life. "
Ellie’s expression shifted, replaced with cold calculation. She smiled. “Well,” she said softly, “it doesn’t really matter.”
Lucian frowned. “What?”
“You won’t remember any of this, anyway.”
Before he could react, she twisted her arm in his grip and grabbed his forearm.
Her nails dug into the skin. She whispered words he couldn’t comprehend.
The room seemed to tilt. A heavy fog pressed against his thoughts.
The edges of his memories were blurred. His mind wanted to sink into the fog. His jackal refused.
“No,” he growled.
His jackal erupted beneath his skin, every instinct screaming that something was wrong.
Ellie continued the incantation. “Just let it go, Lucian. It’ll all be easier this way.”
His vision swam. His fingers brushed the edge of the book.
With a roar, he hurled the grimoire across the room. It slammed into the wall. The spell shattered. The suffocating haze vanished as abruptly as it had come, leaving him gasping.
Lucian staggered back a step as memory after memory crashed into him—Goldie crying beneath the oak tree, begging him to believe her. The way her voice had broken when she swore she’d never enchanted him. The devastation in her eyes every single time he’d rejected her since coming home.
Gods. She had been telling the truth all along.