Chapter 22 #4
So he left. He passed by Autumn, who followed, and swept through the door. Two flights down, Autumn broke the silence. “Ready for supper?”
David shot her a baffled glance.
She hummed. “Just a suggestion.”
Incredulous laughter loomed in his chest, but he held that back, too. “You have nothing else to say?”
Her shoulder lifted. “It went better than I thought it might.”
David moved toward the balcony rail and gazed down several floors, where people meandered from place to place.
“For how much you wanted to say, how hurt you are, you restrained yourself admirably.”
“I’m not hurt.” The words spilled automatically, without thought or consent.
“You are,” she said, utterly certain, “but it’s no surprise you don’t want anyone to know it. Elenya hasn’t spoken of you often, but her thoughts strayed your way. She has never once doubted that she did the right thing until today. She thought keeping you from this place was best for you.”
“Mother of the year,” David muttered.
She let out her usual buoyant laugh. “Even Sean is on your side about all this. His mom took him away, yes, but she went with him. He thinks Elenya’s a terrible mother for leaving you alone.”
A smirk pulled David’s mouth to one side when he met her golden eyes. “But I wasn’t alone, was I? I was never, ever alone. I was watched. Controlled. Made to be something I wasn’t.”
Autumn’s voice lowered, and she set her warm hand on his arm. “She didn’t know, David.”
His chest tightened, but David breathed deeply against it, forcing it to relax. “It doesn’t matter. Can’t change it now.”
“Maybe—maybe you two will work it out,” she said with a chipper air. “Be a family.”
Unlikely.
He started to move again, but Autumn’s hand stopped him. She checked behind herself, then stepped close enough to whisper, “We need to talk about Anna.”
He blinked.
“I don’t know how no one has figured out her secret, but your mother should be told.”
His stomach whooshed with a sudden bolt of panic. She’d heard their thoughts, hadn’t she? When she’d snuck up on them in the library.
“No,” he said.
“Your bloodline is the only one to have that magic in centuries. Where did she get it?”
“How am I supposed to know?”
“Your mother can help her—”
David wrenched his arm from her grasp. “She doesn’t want anyone to know.”
Autumn’s smile tensed. “This secret is dangerous. We could help her.”
“Until she asks for help, we will do nothing. She is an adult and can make her own choices.”
“But—”
“No, Autumn. No. Do you understand?”
A beat passed before she nodded, and he left her there in the hallway, eager to be alone where he could think without interference.
Later that evening, David sat with a deceptively relaxed air in their smallest sitting room, facing down a silent Sean Archer on the couch opposite while he sipped the minty lemon concoction always fully stocked in the cookery, this time chilled over ice.
The women chatted in the dining area, but neither he nor Sean had spoken a single word in several minutes.
Was it proximity that lessened the intensity of his hatred? Sean’s presence didn’t make him want to destroy things like it used to.
“You meet your mom?” Sean asked after a time.
David said nothing.
A smile lurked in Sean’s obnoxious blue eyes. “You do that thing you do? Find the exact right words to tear her to pieces?”
“I reserve that for people I truly hate.”
The grin broke across Sean’s face. “Training again tomorrow.”
“I’m aware.” Where exactly was he going with this?
“You think they’ll ever let us fight each other?” Sean asked, head cocked, messy black hair falling into his eyes. He had one arm thrown across the back of the sofa and an ankle resting against the opposite knee. He looked exactly like Lhynion.
“Why?” David replied. “Planning to kill me?”
Sean laughed. “You’re the one more likely to commit murder.”
“Am I? Lhynion was a trained warrior, Sean. Did you forget about that?”
The humor in his eyes died. “I’m not Lhynion.”
“And I’m not Galadaine.” David rather felt everyone needed reminding of this fact too frequently. He looked like the man, yes, but the similarities ended there.
Didn’t they?
“And yet there’s a reason that even back home people would speak your name with fear,” Sean said, all blasé like he wasn’t throwing David’s worst memories right in his face.
David kept his fists loose in his lap, though he wanted to clench them. Wanted to scream at the world. He didn’t choose that life. It had been thrust upon him with no escape. He forced his voice into a precise balance of apathetic curiosity. “How much do you even know about what I did back home?”
Sean shrugged, giving away nothing.
He lowered his voice. “I didn’t do it because I wanted to.”
Sean’s brows rose, and he leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “Then why did you?”
That was the question, wasn’t it? The one David had asked himself hundreds of times.
Why?
Why am I doing this?
Why do I hurt people just because he asks me to?
Why?
Blue eyes didn’t waver. The chatter from the other room had ceased. David opened his mouth and said the truest words he could find:
“I don’t know.”