Power. Nightshade said she’d have power. And if he believed that, he’d be hunting Elianne. He’dbe heretonight.Imagine it, Nightshade said, his voice ever-present, undeniable. Severn could see almost nothing else. Had it not been night, had Elianne not been awake, he might have risked Ferals instead. Their howls weren’t as chilling, as terrifying, as sickening, as the vision Nightshade’s words had conjured. He was caught in their grip; he thought they would never leave him.
He needed to believe that he could save them.
Hecould notbelieve it.
“Severn?”
“Sleeping, remember?”
“I can’t sleep.”
He didn’t ask why. He sighed—loudly, obviously—and lifted an arm. Elianne crept across the floor, turned her back toward his chest, caught his arm and wrapped it around her neck and shoulders. “Nightmare?” he asked, throat almost too thick to speak.
She nodded; her chin briefly pressed into the crook of his arm.
He held her. She snored. It had always been like this, even when her mother had been alive. The rhythm of her breathing was like thread; it bound all of the various years and days together into one continuous whole. She felt safe. Shewassafe. She hated to be treated as a child; it was impossible, in moments like this, to think of her in any other way. He had kept her safe.
He would keep her safe. He would always keep her safe. She was the heart of his family, to Severn; she was the heart of his life, the center of it. What he wanted for her was safety and whatever happiness could be scraped from the streets of Nightshade. He did not sleep.
Jade woke, as she often did, from a nightmare. Her eyes were barely open as she made her way to Elianne’s side and inserted herself between Severn and Elianne. She, too, fell asleep. He looked at the two of them. The peace shattered.
He could hear Elianne screaming, see her face twisted not in fury but in terror and pain. And he knew, as the longest night of his life gave way, almost reluctantly, to dawn, why Nightshade had let him go. Had known before he reached home.
Elianne went out to the well. In the day, it was less of a risk, although it was unusual to send her alone. She suspected nothing. She suspected nothing because Severn was home. Severn stayed with the girls.
He told them a story. He sat against the wall, and Steffi leaned into him as he spoke. He did not raise his voice. He fed them and wished he had something that would ease them into sleep, something that—But no. That was for people with money.
He had a dagger. Two. He had nothing else to offer them. He could not shake Nightshade’s words, Nightshade’s command, and in the end, he didn’t try. He believed the fieflord.
Steffi died first, because Steffi was less cautious than Jade; she had been with them for longer. She trusted Severn because Elianne trusted him. But no. She trusted him with her life because, until today, she could. He had not wanted to bring her home—and he wished, in bitter self-loathing, that he had not. Bringing her home led to this death. To this, or the other death that waited in the shadows.
Jade died less easily, but truthfully, not by much. Both girls had known who their killer was. He thought the pain of that worse, in the end, than the deep cuts to their jugulars. He did not cry, did not weep—not then. But after, hands slick with blood that would not stop flowing, he had been sick in the corner of the room; he could not make it out of the apartment in time.
He didn’t know what he looked like when Elianne came home. Didn’t know what his expression was. He saw hers. Everything that Jade and Steffi felt when they died was there—and worse.
Nothing, not even her mother’s death, had hurt her this much. Nothing except Severncould.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Ybelline did not let go of Severn. His arms had long sincestiffened and fallen away; hers gained strength. She did not tell him that it was not his fault. He had killed the children. He accepted the guilt, and she did not attempt to pry it from him. Nor did she tell him that he was wrong: what he had done to Elianne on that day had hurt her more than anything possibly could.
But she understood Lord Nightshade’s fear far better than Severn did or could.
It would have been better,he said, speaking through the chaos of a past that was always with him,if they had died at the hands of the killers.
It wouldn’t have been better for them.
It would have been better for Elianne.
What he did not say surprised Ybelline, because he did not feel it either: it would have been better for Severn.
Would it? In the end, would it? You would almost certainly be dead before that happened. Steffi and Jade would die as well. But not cleanly. Your Elianne would have come face-to-face with helplessness and utter despair—and in that state of mind, the transformation of her marks and her essential purpose would be fully formed.
Ybelline brushed hair from his forehead.In pain, we lash out. In pain, we destroy both ourselves and others. That is the nature of pain. What might she then accomplish with the power she does not understand, when her pain was so deep and so endless?
She won’t come back to me.
I don’t know.