33
The right moment to strike
ZARA
The air doesn’t smell of smoke or sulfur, and the bitter smell of magic is replaced with a subtler, nicer scent. Cedarwood mixes with the lingering heat of embers and it’s almost comforting; if I don’t think too hard about the warlock it belongs to. The smell is like home, and the rosemary and copper remind me of everything that used to bring me comfort, and now it’s bringing confusion.
Kade sits across from me, his dark eyes fixed on mine, intense as ever. For once, he stays silent. He’s watching me, waiting for something. Maybe for me to change my mind. Maybe for me to run.
I’m sure I won’t do either.
I lean back against the headboard, drawing my knees to my chest. The ache in my muscles is sharp and fresh, like shards of glass embedded in every movement. Magic ripples through me like a gentle breeze on a summer’s day, quieter butnot gone. It hums beneath my skin, dark and waiting, ready to release toil and trouble.
“You’re staring.” My voice is like gravel in my throat.
Kade’s lips curl into a curve that isn’t quite a smile. “I’m trying to figure out what’s going on in that head of yours.”
“Good luck with that,” I mutter, looking away.
I don’t need him seeing too much right now. Not the doubts. Not the fear. But he doesn’t let it go. He leans forward, resting his forearms on his knees. His gaze is weighted with everything he isn’t saying, and it’s everything I’m trying not to think about.
“Are you having second thoughts, kitten?” he asks.
I flinch as he uses his pet name, more from its softness than anything else. My eyes fix on a crease in the bed linen, and I stare at it as if the world revolves around it. I don’t know what to say or do or think, and all I know is that I’m here with Kade and I don’t think I want to leave. Not now. Not ever.
He sighs.
I sigh back.
“I chose you, Zara,” he says, his tone deceptively light. “You said you chose me, too. I thought we’d moved past this.”
The truth of it settles in my chest like a stone. He’s right. I chose him. I chose the man who destroyed my coven, who burned my life to the ground as casually as someone lighting a candle. Kade killed my sisters and he’d do it again, without remorse or hesitation, and I’ve stayed with him.
We have.
What we haven’t moved past is what happened with my coven. Or what Kade intends to do about the power dynamics between warlocks and witches now that I’m his.
“Why did you do it?”
Kade’s pause says more than his words ever could. “You know why, Zara. The sigil was broken and they were free, and I could not allow it. I made an example of them to keep the other covens in line and they knew what their punishment was before I arrived.”
He’s not trying to spin it into something cleaner or kinder.
Kade just lets the truth hang there, raw and heavy.
“They were going to trade you for their freedom,” he continues, “and it should bring you some comfort in knowing that I killed them before they could hurt you. It was not the reason I acted, and it would be a lie to pretend otherwise.”
His words should feel like a death knell, but instead, they settle into the cracks of my soul, filling the spaces I didn’t know existed. He didn’t save me because he cared. It was a coincidence he saved me, because it served his power and the rigid, brutal rules of his world, and he isn’t lying about it now.
He's honest enough to tell me the truth.
Brave enough too.
And yet, my fingers curl into the blanket, clutching it as though it can ground me against the storm that’s rising inside.
“They were my family.” My words slip out like a confession.
“They stopped being family the moment they turned on you,” Kade counters, his voice steady, unyielding.
