Castor’s face fell, the anger washing away with my declaration.Good. I hoped that guilt ate at him as it had me.
All I could hear were his words from that night, bringing my greatest shame to light in the worst way possible. The way my demons rejoiced in my culpability as memories of Corvina’s horror-stricken face flashed through my mind. They craved my mortification, drinking it in like the sweetest wine and forcing me to relive it over and over for their own selfish pleasures.
Jasper stepped in before Castor could fire back, placing a hand on my chest. For the first time, he was the voice of reason, not antagonization. “Now’s not the time, brother. For now,” he gestured toward the table, “let’s see what answers Corvina left us.”
Castor and I stared at one another, slowly nodding in agreement to put the conversation to rest for the time being. He stepped toward Calia, but she evaded him, walking toward Elios and taking a seat. “What does it say?” she asked, resting her chin in her hand. Her leg bounced uncontrollably underneath the table while she slid her other hand under her thigh.
Elios raised his brows, flipping between pages. “Some of this does not make sense. Many pages of random scribbling seem to repeat much of the information we already know—the importance of the moon cycle and the requirement of Darrow and D’Arcy blood, for instance—but,” he shook his head, lookingto Calia. “You said she mentioned something about a blessing that night?”
Calia nodded, lifting her head and running her hand along her arm. I tracked the movement, noting how she dug her nails into the fabric of her sweater. “Yeah, she gave us two options. The first to, you know, consume each other’s blood until we were nearly dead…” She blushed, the heat creeping across her cheeks in a bright bloom.
Out of curiosity, I reached out for her mind as I had before. Her defenses were as impenetrable as ever, but as I attempted to focus back on the conversation, I heard a whisper of her thoughts.
“… the way he looks at me … feel of his teeth…”
The connection was weak, but it was there all the same. And while I only caught fragments, I could have wept at the sound of her voice in my mind again.
“The second was strange—more of a ceremony, I guess.” She paused, asking me to take over without voicing her question.
“My mother retrieved a chalice from a vault in my office, saying we could fill it with an offering of our blood. It would then be blessed under the blood moon by a descendant of the sorceress who enacted the curse.” I gestured toward Elios before sliding my hand into my pocket. “I assume she meant you?”
He did not answer my question, focusing on whatever pieces of the puzzle he was fitting together in his mind. “What was to be done with the blood afterward?” he asked, jotting something down.
“I don’t know,” Calia said slowly, sitting up straighter. “Leonora never said. Did she say anything to you?”
I shook my head, furrowing my brows for anything she might have said in passing. After Corvina’s death, I hardly paid attention to Leonora’s antics. Even when Calia and I wed, andmy mother was forcing me to pursue a relationship, I only listened enough to keep her from chastising me.
“Not at all. I assume it would be ingested, likely by the donors,” I mused.
“But why would it need to be blessed?” he mused, whispering to himself hurriedly. He brought the metal barrel of the pen to his mouth and bit down. The sound of his chewing grated my nerves, feeling the strange metallic sound reverberate in my bones.
“Elios?” Calia asked, shifting nervously in her seat.
His body was deathly still, not a twitch to be seen. He said nothing, staring at pages until I wondered if he was still breathing. “She did not know…” he whispered, flipping toward the back where Corvina’s handwriting had grown frenzied.
“What is going on?” I asked, stepping up beside him. When he did not respond, I slammed my hand on the desk. Those around me jumped, staring at me as though I had lost my mind, but I could not stand around any longer with the current adrenaline levels coursing through my veins.
Elios slowly lifted his gaze to mine, and my knees grew weak at the fear staring back at me. “Did Leonora mention the blade before or after she told you of the ceremony?”
“After,” Calia said, furrowing her brows. “Everything happened so fast, but Castor stabbed Renwick and?—”
Elios cursed, letting the pen fall from his fingers. “Her crusade with Calia was never about breaking the curse,” he said slowly. “Because she would not have needed to if she stole the power of a god.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
“Explain,” I ordered, sitting across from him.
Elios pushed the journal toward me. The pages were laden with thick scrawl, barely legible as they neared the end. Whatever she had been trying to convey, she was desperate to write it down.
Corvina’s handwriting had always been concise, the product of being raised in high society and attending the finest schools. Lucius forced both children toward the intense pressure of perfectionism, not accepting anything less than the best in all areas of his life.
I looked at Calia, noting her down-turned lips and how she clenched her fists to stop tearing at her skin. There was no measure of words that I could offer to calm her nerves, and I hated that she sought out pain to stop the overbearing voices in her mind.
Before learning her true heritage, I had thought Lucius’ distaste came from how lively Calia was. She fit no mold, breaking it when she was brought into this world, and never allowed herself to be contained. Perhaps there was a semblanceof truth. If he knew she was not his daughter without a shadow of a doubt, I suspected he would have gotten rid of her quietly.
When I had seen the scars she inflicted on herself, brought about from years of scrutiny and abuse, of the anxiety that accompanied feeling less than and unloved, I had nearly broken.
It had taken everything in me not to drive to Darrow Manor and pull Lucius from bed in the dead of night. I wanted to tie him up, to take a carving knife to his flesh and scar him past the point of recognition. But his blood coating my hands would not be enough, and a quick death would be too easy for the likes of him.
