Chapter Thirty-Seven #2
How can I possibly hold two truths in my heart at once? The horror of what Cash did—and the bitter reality that he’s our only option for stability and keeping Cymrea from annexing us while we fight for magic.
Old Ones, how does Wolf of all people do it each day?
My weapons lie with my filthy, bloodstained clothes in a heap on the floor.
I reach for the sheaths, strapping them on to me and rummaging in the pockets, using the opportunity to wipe a hand across my cheeks.
The vial I slipped into my pocket from the High King’s chambers is still there, the delicate slivers of silverish shards still inside.
I reach across the bed and place the vial at the foot of it, within his reach.
“Cinnabar,” I say softly. “An ore that melts down to mercury, if you know how to handle it. It causes insanity. I only know one person who stocks it, and I think we both know who buys it from her.”
Keeva always said the Lady of Shadows pays triple what any poison is worth. It’s the reason she sells to a woman she hates.
Wolf’s eyes darken with recognition on the silver shards.
“Cash might not have recognized the poison, but he knew it was poison. And he let me kill his father anyway, rather than hope he might recover with an antidote.”
My voice isn’t shaking anymore, but Wolf’s gaze is still pulled tight.
“None of that changes what he did. I won’t ever trust him.
Not with you, Maeve.” Pain flares in his gaze, and he strides across the distance between us.
Both hands find my elbows, pulling me against him, and he seems to rush into his next words without thinking.
“Not after betrayal like that. I thought if anyone would understand, it’d be—”
He takes a sharp breath.
The torment in his eyes vanishes as he snaps them shut, wincing.
My head swims. “You thought it’d be me?”
“Fuck.” Both hands knot behind his head, then rake through his hair. It stands wildly up on end, the dark strands still mussed from what we just did. His eyes search mine, confusion flaring there. “You don’t know. Finn never told you?”
My stomach drops. “Told me what?”
Wolf reaches for me, but this time, I’m the one who pulls away. I step back from him until my spine hits the wall beside the window, streaked with sharp lines of rain.
He keeps pace with me but leaves the final inches empty between us.
His hands twitch, as if he fights the urge to reach for me. He clenches them at his sides instead. “Your father’s the one who betrayed your mother.”
I shake my head, ringing rising in my ears. “He would never. He was devastated, after she…” The words catch in my throat. “My father can’t even look at me, because…”
Horror shifts my world on its axis.
He can’t look at me because I look almost exactly like her.
Everyone always said so.
My knees buckle. I catch myself—or Wolf catches me. I can’t tell, because all I can see is my father’s face every time he’s looked at me since my mother’s execution. The wrenching pain, the twist of grief.
Old Ones—was it the twist of guilt?
“No.” Every instinct in me fights to reject Wolf’s words.
Regret turns Wolf’s eyes dark. “I told you we have friends in the gardai. Right after the uprising, Fang got copies of the arrest warrants for every mage and so-called traitor who was executed. The dates. Who reported each person.” He hesitates, thumb coming up to brush along my jaw as if he thinks it might be the last time. “Remaining family.”
I bring my gaze to his, betrayal already brimming over in my heart.
“Did Finn find you?” My words crack. “Or did you find her?”
Devastation rips across Wolf’s expression.
“I wasn’t in any condition to recruit after the uprising.
The wounds…” He grimaces, and there’s a ripple through him like a sudden flare of pain.
“They didn’t heal quickly.” He grits his teeth past it, grinding out the next words. “But Fang was… relentless.”
Old Ones, the fury in Finn’s eyes that first day she started teaching me to fight, barely a week after our mother’s execution. It was like someone had lit a bonfire inside her, like everything had changed for her.
And if the Whisperers had told her what they thought our father did… I know my sister. She’s always had a wild courage that would be so fucking easy for the Whisperers to twist to their cause. To our mother’s cause.
But why would she let me stay with our father… why would she stay?
I slide out from Wolf’s touch. Every place where the heat of him flared against me feels like scorched earth now as I realize.
The Whisperers targeted Finn. Old Ones, maybe they targeted everyone who was desperate and hurting after the uprising failed.
Talon, searching for their sister.
Wolf, with everything he had just lost, so badly hurt I don’t know how he survived.
A fresh lance of pain lashes through my heart—and I think I understand.
Finn’s been siphoning money from our father’s weapons business for years. She’s been smuggling it to bankers all over the city, hiding it in as many different places as she could.
I know my sister. If she knew what our father did, she wouldn’t have hesitated to hurt him by stealing money from the weapons stall to fund the very cause our mother died for.
All the while, telling me it was for our future.
I had just assumed she meant permits to leave the city.
“Finn was funneling you our father’s money?”
She would see it as justice for our mother. I know she would.
Wolf’s eyes rake me raw, and I hate the way the pain and the longing there still beckon to me, even after everything.
“Yes” is all he says.
My lungs tighten to the point of pain.
I step out of his reach, shaking my head.
“I have to find her.”
The words are all I have left. Panic is already rising in my veins, thundering in my blood until there’s only one instinct left.
Run.
I rip the door of Wolf’s room back. The hall is nothing but shadows and that strange, greenish glow from the flames.
“Maeve!” Wolf calls after me, pain ripping at his voice. “Wait, I’ll—”
A sob tears from my chest. I have to find my sister.
I have to know the truth.
Outside the safe house, rain pours down in ominous sheets.
The lanes surrounding the safe house twist around each other. I turn, searching for some anchor. But I’ve been here only once before, and shock blurs my memories.
I turn onto a wide street, pausing to gasp for breath in a covered alley. A rustle shifts beside me. Footsteps, rushing right up at my back—
But the face emerging from the mist and rainy shadows isn’t Wolf.
The fist colliding with my ribs definitely isn’t, either. Panic, then pain, seize my racing mind. Blinding bursts of it, radiating with each punch, each kick.
I fight, but I’m already down on the ground. Rough hands wrench mine behind my back, shove my face into the cold, soaking cobblestones, and slam my head down.
Darkness explodes behind my skull, and the pain falls away.
Everything does.