by May Dawson
“Why would you think Tera would help you?”
“I know she doesn’t have her magic,” Moirus says.
I glance at Devlin, but his face is impassive, almost disinterested, as if he knows all this already. Interesting. Terrifying.
“And how do you know that?”
“We both know the answer to that,” Moirus says. “I’m the one who took it from her.”
It’s a credit to Airren’s training that he doesn’t betray the slightest hint of emotion. “And how did you do that?”
“I came through the portal to find her dirtside,” he said. “I used a Taking spell.”
“You don’t seem like you’d be able to do that on your own,” Airren says. “Who helped you?”
Moirus doesn’t even hesitate. “Skel Hadwick.”
Airren jots the name down. He takes his time with the interrogation, and his calm, level tone seems to indicate neither doubt nor belief.
“Why?” Airren asks. “Why the obsession with the girl?”
For the first time, Moirus seems reluctant. “I had a daughter.”
My heart drops in my chest.
“What was her name?”
“Kella Neal,” he says. His voice falters when he says her name. “She was only twelve years old.”
She was the same age I was when my father tried to destroy Avalon to rebuild it the way he thought it should be. Except I survived.
“What happened to Kella?”
“She was caught by Ravengers,” he says. “Her mother and I, we didn’t get along. She hated what I was. I can understand that, I guess. She’d taken my girl away from me. I thought I was going to see her again, to make things right. I was trying to go straight.”
“What’s the name of her mother?”
“Delia Neal. She died years ago, too. Not in the war. Cancer, and the broken heart didn’t help either.” Moirus goes silent, as if he’s gathering his thoughts. Then, just as Airren starts to say something else, Moirus explodes. “I just wanted revenge for my little girl. I couldn’t get to Padrick. But he snuffed my daughter’s light out without a second thought. I just wanted to do the same to his.”
“The funny thing about girls is that they’re actually humans in and of themselves,” Cax mutters. He’s pacing behind our seats, as if it irritates him to watch Moirus spin his story.
Airren nods, almost sympathetically. “But you didn’t kill her.”
Moirus’ voice drops. “No. I had every intention of hurting her. But then she put a knife in my side, and it snapped me out of it. She looked so scared, so pathetic—no matter what she’d just done—and I realized I was no better than Padrick. I ran away from her, from dirtside.”
“How interesting that you had that revelation after she fought back,” Cax mutters.
Rian touches his finger to his lip, shushing Cax.
Devlin watches with one leg crossed at the thigh, his long-fingered, deft hands folded over one knee. His face is impossible to read. Maybe he just doesn’t give a damn about any of this.
And yet he’s here.
“Are you buying this?” Cax demands of me.
“I don’t know,” I say. I can’t process it, not right away. But Moirus’ pain seems real.
“Do you want to see my Kella?” Moirus asks.
“Sure,” Airren says.
“I need the locket I was wearing.” Moirus touches his neck absently, as if he’s genuinely distraught.
Airren gives him a long look. My heart thuds in my chest, sure that this is some part of Moirus’ plan.
“We tested the locket,” Cax assures me. “It’s nothing but what it’s supposed to be.”
Airren gets up and goes to the door, and a few seconds later, a guard passes in a basket. Airren removes something from the basket and lays it on the table between them. It appears to be a pocket watch at first glance.
Moirus murmurs something, and an image of a girl appears on the tabletop. She’s one-fifth the actual size of a girl, but other than that, she looks real as anyone in the room. Her long blond hair is plaited into a crown, while the rest of it hangs down in curls. She had a sweet pixie face.
Another one of my father’s victims.
My legs are wobbly underneath me as I lurch to my feet. Rian reaches out to steady me, and I try to smile back at him.
“I’ve seen enough,” I say.
Rian hesitates. “There’s enough evidence against him to order his execution.”
“I don’t want that,” I say. Cax makes a small noise of protest, and I hold up my hand. “I just want to be safe.”
“I can keep him in prison for the rest of his life,” Rian promises me.
“Then do that,” I say.
I sweep out of the room into the featureless, gray hallway lined with doors. There are two guards standing outside the interrogation room. One of them holds the basket that Airren drew the locket from; in it is Moirus’ wand and an empty glass potion bottle.
Moirus is a twisted, sick man, and what he wanted to do to me was wrong. No matter how ragged and tight my chest is with guilt right now, I know that.
I’m not the one who should feel guilty.
I’m just the one who’s left alive.
And I don’t want any more blood on my family’s hands.
“Tera.” Cax is right beside me as the door to the viewing room slams shut behind me. His green eyes are wide, worried for me.
“Get me out of here,” I say, reaching out for his hand.
His face lights up with relief. He always wants to do something to fix things for me, and too often, that’s an impossible task. Here is something concrete he can do.
In seconds, he opens up a door, and on the other side shimmers strange light. A portal door. I take his hand, without hesitation.
By the time I hear Rian’s voice behind me, we’re already gone.
Chapter 25
When Cax and I step through the portal, cold washes through my blood and then is gone. It feels like stepping through a freezer, just for a second, and then you’re in someplace entirely new, stomach swimming and head dizzy.
Cax catches my elbow to steady me. It’s easier when you travel someplace you know well. He’s brought me somewhere familiar, so he’s steady on his feet, comfortable.
He hasn’t brought me back to the academy. We’re in a big, light-filled room, and through the windows behind him, I can see the glint of sparkling water in the distance, beyond bare trees and a long green lawn.
“Thank you.” I had to get out of there. I’m still freaked out by being so close to Moirus, but I’m far more unsettled by the fact of that child. The numbers are bad enough, all the deaths that my father caused, but every face I know of haunts me.
“Of course.” Cax draws me into his arms. He doesn’t say a word, and I turn my hot face into the comfort of his cotton shirt, the warmth of his body, the scent of him.
Airren would try to persuade me right now to change my mind. Mycroft would order me. But Cax just holds me close as I start to sob.
I don’t want to give up on my magic.
But I don’t want the Donovan family to be responsible for one more death, either. If my father had never torn Avalon apart, there would be no dead little girls, no quests for revenge, no twisted fathers committing murder.
“It’s all right,” Cax murmurs soothing nonsense into my ear. His arms tighten around me as he pulls me with him, and I raise my head to get a blurry look around before he sits with me in the window seat. I burrow my head against his shoulder again.
I don’t know why I’m crying so pathetically, but I’m tired. I want to belong in Avalon, without fighting, without fear.
But tears won’t help, and after a few minutes, I sit up. My head is groggy. He swipes the tears under my eyes away with his thumb. His gaze is serious, but he’s not freaked out by my tears like so many men would be. That’s comforting too.
“No fear of tears?” I ask him, trying to sound teasing, like normal.
; “Have you met my sister?”
I smile through my blurred vision. Cax is so fond of Stelly, who certainly has a habit of crying. As I blink away the last of the tears, I take in the room around us.
“Where are we?” I ask Cax.
“My house,” he says. As I glance around the big, light-filled room, he adds, “More specifically, my bedroom.”
I arch my eyebrows at him purposefully, and he grins in response. “What? I had seconds to get you out of there. This was the first place that came to mind.”
“Color me surprised,” I murmur. Of course Cax would think to take me to his bedroom first of all.
My thoughts are still racing from Moirus. I can trust Rian to keep his word to me—I just trust him, somehow—but I can’t be there anymore. It’s a pleasant distraction to look around Cax’s bedroom. The bed in the corner almost seems like an afterthought; the room is dominated by two easels, a long desk covered in paints and clays, a stack of canvases in the corner. At Corum, he sketches; I didn’t realize he was so serious about his art. The canvases hanging on his walls are really good. There’s a second table in another corner scattered with soldering irons and wires and even a big boxy device that I think might be a 3d printer.
“Cax, if you love art so much, why are you becoming a spy?” I ask, trying to make sense of this side of the man I thought I knew. “You’re so good.”
“Avalon doesn’t need art.” He runs his hand over the top of one of his easels absently, like he’s missed being here. “I’ll always be able to do it as a hobby.”
“Who says Avalon doesn’t need art?” I demand, but I already can imagine two people who would say just that.
In response, Cax pulls a face; I might be able to guess who said that, but he’s still going to protect Airren and Mycroft.
“You really think they’re good?” he asks.
“I mean, I don’t know anything,” I say, which makes him smile. “But they make me feel happy when I look at them.”
“Well, that is high praise.” He rests his hand on my shoulder absently. “That happens to be what I want most out of my life.”
“To make me happy?” I chew my lower lip skeptically as I turn toward him. “That seems like a ridiculous goal for someone who could do anything with his life.”
“Tera,” he says in a low voice. “I love you. What the hell else am I going to do with myself?”
His words make my chest fill with warmth, my head suddenly swimming. I should tell him that I love him too, but the words never come easily for me, even when I mean it.
“You know I’m trouble,” I tell him. “People want to kill me. Someone is always going to want to kill me.”
“Then I want to be here to protect you.” He tucks my hair behind one ear, the gesture fond.
“And I’m always going to be a mess.” I can’t stop babbling now that I’ve started. “Keeping Moirus alive means keeping his spell alive, doesn’t it? Protecting me is a full-time job. That won’t change any time soon.”
“I’m okay with being on duty twenty-four-seven as long as you don’t mind the snoring,” he says. “Anyway, don’t give up hope just yet. Maybe there’s a way to release the spell without killing Moirus.”
Here we are, frankly discussing the possible execution of the man who twisted me forever. “I may never be an emotionally healthy, normal person.”
“I’m sorry, have you met the other people I care about most in the world? Do you think that’s going to stop me?”
He has a point.
“I can’t even say I love you very well,” I say, because that’s the real reason behind all this word salad.
“Then I’ll love you until you’re ready to love me back,” he says. “No expectations, Tera.”
“That’s not what I mean. I already do love you.”
His lips part in a smile. “It seems like you can say it just fine to me.”
I stare back at him. “If you feel like loving me, I guess I won’t try to stop you.”
Even if it sure sounds like I’ve been trying to for the last five minutes.
“Good. But if you really love me, you should let me paint you.”
I think of the oversized nudes of Mycroft that Cax has sketched and painted, and I shake my head, a teasing smile twisting across my lips.
“We should go back soon,” I admit even though I don’t want to.
“We should. When you’re ready.”
The thought that I’ll never have my magic back again—until Moirus Neal dies a natural death—should be devastating. But part of me feels relieved to have an excuse. There’s no risk I’ll ever be like my father.
The truth is, I don’t need my magic if I have my men.
“How fast can you do a sketch?” I ask. I don’t want to go back. I want to see Cax at his best, being Cax.
The way his eyes light up makes me laugh in response. Worth it.
After some discussion, I sit in his window seat, one of his books on my lap and my chin tilted up, like I’m deep in thought, imagining a scene I just read. I’ve found myself in this dreamy state many times when I read, so it’s natural enough.
Cax sketches me quickly, and when he calls me over, it’s fascinating to see myself through his eyes. He’s rendered my body quickly, faintly sketching out the lines of my shoulders and arms, the way my slender hand rests on the book, the shape of the window behind me. But he’s spent most of his attention on my face, my lips parted, my eyes wide. Cax has caught me in a moment of wonder.
But it’s not really about the book. I know what I was thinking when he sketched this out.
It’s a wonder to me to be wanted like this, to be loved.
“What do you think?” he asks. He sounds casual, his hands stuffed into his pockets, but I know it’s a lie.
I throw my arms around his shoulders and kiss him until we’re both laughing.
Chapter 26
The door flies open. Cax immediately pushes me away, behind him, twisting to face the door. His wand is in his hand.
A beautiful woman stands in the doorway, her long blond hair falling in curls around her bare shoulders. She wears a simple black dress that sets off her white skin and red lips. Then the wand she holds in her hand, outstretched toward Cax, takes over my attention.
The two of them stare at each other for a long, tense second before Cax says, “Mom.”
She lowers her wand, hiding it again in the folds of her skirt. “What are you doing here?”
Her tone is cool.
“I had to get away for a few minutes,” he says. “I didn’t mean to come here. It still feels like home.”
There’s an edge in his voice.
“You know you’re always welcome here.” The subtle emphasis isn’t lost on me, as she studiously avoids looking at me.
“Hi.” I move past Cax despite his best efforts to shield me from his mother. I hold my hand out, offering her my brightest smile. “I’m Tera.”
“Tera Donovan. I know.”
“Stelly’s told me so much about you. You’ve built the most fascinating business.” Stelly’s mother made their family rich beyond reason with her businesses, which convert dirtside technology to run on magic. I’d love to hear more about it. Cax gets his talent with engineering and tinkering from her.
Her gaze fixes past me, on Cax. “If you won’t follow the rules of my house, you won’t be welcome here either.”
“I won’t be coming back again,” he promises her, his voice cold. “It was a mistake.”
Welcome here either?
“Cax, what’s going on?” I ask him.
She gives a little disbelieving laugh. “You didn’t even tell her, Cax?”
“Shut up.” His voice is very soft.
“You’d think you’d want recognition,” she says. “You chose her over your family.”
She strides to the doorway, then stops. With her hand on the doorknob, she asks, “Is there trouble where you came from? You can stay here if you need to…”
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“I’ll be fine, Mom.” His tone is barbed. “We’ve both made choices. We’ll both live with them.”
“Fine then.” She jerks the door open raggedly. “Be gone in an hour. If you come home alone, you’re welcome.”
“I won’t.”
“If she’s still here in an hour, I’m calling security.”
The door clicks shut behind her.
There’s tension in Cax’s shoulders and posture. He runs a shaky hand through his hair. I’ve never seen Cax look so undone before.
“What’s going on?” I ask him.
“I shouldn’t have brought you here.” He sits down on the edge of the bed, rubbing his hand over his face like he’s exhausted. “It was on my mind, I guess. My room popped into my head…”
“What did your mother mean about you choosing me?” I ask sharply. Over his family. How?
“She’s being ridiculous. She gave me an ultimatum.” He pulls a face. “To be fair, I do have a bit of a track record of making bad choices, with the whole Raila thing. But this is different. You’re different. She doesn’t see it that way.”
“What’s the ultimatum?” My voice sounds hollow in my ears. What’ve I cost Cax?
He beckons me toward him, raising one finger, and I join him on the bed. My knee brushes his as his mattress dips slightly.
“If I didn’t stop seeing you, she threatened to disown me.”
“When what that?”
His lips purse to one side. “A few weeks ago.”
After the Raila situation. Cax and I haven’t even been together. He would have had an easy out…
“What did you say?”
“I told her I didn’t give a damn about her money if it cost my freedom. If it cost me you.” A self-deprecating smile plays at the edge of his lips. “I can’t say I just don’t give a damn about her money, because truth-be-told, I loved being rich.”
“But Cax…” He couldn’t even know if we were going to be together again. Maybe he had that much faith in the bond between us.
He shrugs one shoulder. “Don’t worry about me, Tera. I can live as an honest man who works for his living. I just won’t be able to afford as much of a wardrobe.”