Magic shattered between her and Reeve, sparking across the snow in a single beam, and echoing across the forest like twoboulders colliding. He heaved a painfully relieved sigh and fell to his knees, shaking, as though he’d just been flogged.
“The Magic holding your tongue is broken,” she remarked, confirming at last, Reeve had known all along what she was.
Reeve pushed up, his hands buried in the snow, and looked at her. He spoke with such urgency that she was certain she missed half of every other word he uttered.
“That horrible day, I showed you that with your Shadow Magic, you could alter memories. I showed you that power, and per your father’s command, you did exactly as he told you. You didn’t hesitate to not only use it on yourself, not just your family, but the entire reality surrounding Antony. Just as he told you to do. Everyone but me. And I kept this burdensome secret because that is the job of a Sentinel.”
Maeve’s knees sank into the snow. The act was silent. Her ears simply rejected the sound. She had been altering reality long before Mal.
“I wanted so badly for it to not be true,” she said in defeat.
Antony pressed closer to her, a low whine building in his throat at her distress. The sound wasn’t comforting. It was merely a reminder of all the things she still hadn’t sorted out in her head: did Antony choose this? Or did she force it upon him like she’d forced reality to alter the last time?
“Shadow,” she repeated. “Shadow Magic runs in my veins.”
A nauseating numbness slipped across her arms, around her stomach, and down her legs, holding her immobile. No thoughts ran through her mind except that one word. Over and over.
Shadow.
She disregarded the discovery that her beloved father had known, kept it from her, and encouraged her to erase the truth from all their minds.
Shadow.
That Reeve had known what she was.
Shadow.
That Antony was alive.
Shadow.
That her mother must have been—
Shadow.
She was. . .of Shadow Magic.
“I am like that horrible creature?” Her question slipped out as it trailed across her mind.
She hadn’t realized Antony retreated and Reeve kneeled before her until his knuckle tucked under her chin, bringing her gaze from the icy snow—
. . . the color of her hair, her skin, her nails, her lips. . .
—and gently pulled her eyes to his own.
Reeve was solemn. Knightly. Sincere. “You are nothing like her.”
Maeve’s jaw tightened as fear rippled through her. “Not yet.”
Reeve pushed her chin up further, a darker, more regal light in his eyes. “Not ever.”
Her mind was on fire, overloaded with information.
She shook her head, desperation in her eyes as she said. “What’s rippling across my mind where you are concerned is. . .” She couldn’t finish the thought. She sucked in sharply. “I don’t understand.” His fingers slid to one cheek, his other hand raised, and he cupped her face gently. She leaned into one of his warm palms. Tears of confusion, denial, anxiety, and devastation poured from the corners of her eyes. “What am I seeing, Reeve?”
And then her vision flooded as Reeve poured his memories into her mind.
Chapter 36
