But this one is so different, driven by the source of madness standing before me.
A bolt of panic strikes my heart. I jolt alive in the chair, my eyes widening.
This can’t be real.
After all this time, why now?
“Welcome back, Caro,” he says, his voice flat and emotionless. “You and I need to have a chat.”
That cold voice is how I know I’m truly gone. Dead. Never to resurface again.
Oh, Sethios. I love you. Please know that I’ll never regret our choice. She lived. I died. I’ll always love you both. For eternity, my darlings… for eternity.
Where are you, angel? Sethios wondered for the thousandth time, his gaze on the stars above. Why won’t you talk to me?
No answer.
He sighed, his hands in the pockets of his jeans, his heart in his throat. A week had passed since Astasiya had freed his mind. Not entirely, but enough for Sethios to think beyond his father’s control.
There were still holes inside his mind.
Pockets of missing memories.
But he remembered his angel, his Caro, his love.
“Fuck,” he muttered, his eyes closing as he pictured her at the bottom of the ocean, dying over and over again. He’d left her in that state for eighteen goddamn years, completely oblivious to her fate. All because his father had wiped her clean from his mind, suffocating him in a world of nonexistence.
Sethios hadn’t known his mate.
They were bonded in a way his mind couldn’t comprehend because of the fog inflicted upon him by his father’s persuasion.
And now, he couldn’t find her. Because she’d given up on him, on the world, on anyone ever rescuing her from the chains binding her beneath the sea.
His knees threatened to give, his chest an empty cavern drowning beneath a wave of anguish. In a way, Osiris’s torment had been a blessing. He’d provided Sethios over a decade of nothingness. No pain. No understanding. No care in the world.
Now it all crashed over him with the heat of a million suns, burning every molecule inside him.
He had to pull it together. Not just for Caro, but for Astasiya.
Ah, his little angel. She’d grown into a woman in the blink of an eye. She was seven yesterday. At least to him.
Sethios blew out a breath and ran a hand over his face, shaking his head. This self-pity bullshit wasn’t going to fix a damn thing. He needed to find Caro. Then he needed to find a way to take his father down. Killing the old man wasn’t an option—Seraphim couldn’t die—but he could immobilize him. Perhaps by pouring a vat of concrete over his head.
Sethios shuddered at the thought of his last “punishment” orchestrated by his asshole of a father. Osiris had forced Sethios to bury himself alive by dousing himself in liquid concrete. It had hurt like a son of a bitch. And yet, oddly, it still didn’t compare to the agony inside him now.
He felt as though his soul was ripped in half. Shredded. Destroyed.
Caro remained unattainable, her last whisper in his mind reminiscent of a dream. Had that been her or his own mind playing tricks on him?
Fuck, the pain she must feel…
He swallowed, his eyes briefly closing once more. He needed to get over this pity party and start the search.
There was just one problem.
He had no idea where to begin
Gabriel had shown him on a map all the places he’d looked so far—of which there were thousands—and none of them revealed even a hint of her location. This planet was mostly composed of water, leaving the possibilities endless. And without her talking to him, he stood little to no chance of discovering her whereabouts.
