“I have no idea. I’ve never received a vision about them and don’t know if they’re alive or dead. I assume they think I’m dead, but I never saw either of them again. It’s better that way. And my dad lost his mate; I don’t see how he could have survived that.”
There were times she speculated if that was true, but deep down, she was still curious about what happened to them. Every time she saw a Savage, she searched their faces in the hopes of catching a glimpse of her father or brother. It would break her heart to see them like that, and she had no idea what she would do if she did, but she still looked.
It was impossible not to search for them, even though she believed they were both dead.
“Where did you go afterward?” Asher asked.
“I was a child, and I wasn’t very strong after what they did to me, but I could take away the boy’s memory of me finding him in the barn. Too much time had passed since the attack on the village; I couldn’t change those memories for him, but at least he didn’t remember me rising from the dead. He had enough to deal with; he didn’t needthaton top of it.”
“You were a lot kinder to him than he was to you,” Asher said.
He didn’t think the boy deserved it. He should have suffered with the knowledge he’d happily witnessed her being dragged toward her death, only to have her return andnotkill the idiot.
“I hated him, but I refused to be like him,” Brie said. “I couldn’t return his act of cruelty with one. I’m not sure he deserved the small bit of peace I gave him, but he at least got a chance to live a normal life afterward. He later married and had two children before dying in a farming accident. I saw his death approaching, but I didn’t tell him. Maybe, in the end, that makes me as cruel as him.”
“It doesn’t. You didn’t owe him anything, and if you’d tried to warn him, he would have turned against you.”
“Maybe, but I’ll never know, and I don’t want to.”
“What did you do after you left the barn?”
“I took one of their horses and went out to the countryside. I lived in caves, abandoned homes, and traveled the hillsides. I stayed to the edges of towns and only entered them to steal clothes when necessary. I lived off animal blood and was nothing more than a ghost until I reached maturity, became stronger, and emerged into the world again.
“It felt strange to be amongst humans once more and a little terrifying. I was always scared they’d turn on me again, but I never tried to tell anyone else about their impending death if I saw it.
“I’ve never been sure if I was given my gift to help others or not, but it no longer mattered after the events of that day. I wasnevergoing to say anything again. Until the day I warned you about the compound, I’d kept all my visions of death and misery to myself.”
“No one can blame you for that.”
“I blame myself sometimes. Has my cowardice allowed innocent people to die when I could have saved them? Or am I still alive because I didn’t do anything?”
He couldn’t imagine living with the burden and uncertainty of her visions and those questions. It only made him admire her more. Somehow, she’d endured their weight on her shoulders and still worked to save countless lives by hunting down stones that had put her in many treacherous situations.
“I’ll never know the answer to either of those questions, but I’ll live with them hanging over me for the rest of my life,” she said.
“You’re doing the best you can, and you can’t blame yourself for focusing on staying alive after what happened. Besides, you saved Zina and Cabo when you could have left them to die.”
“My visions told me to do that.”
“So probably, if you were meant to save all those people, you would have been shown that too.”
There was a possibility he was right, and she should continue the same path she was already on when it came to her visions and secrets, but she couldn’t do that. Not anymore. Not when she knew it would affect him too.
“Why did you tell me about the compound then?” he asked.
“Because Ihadto. I didn’t know why then, but I couldn’t stop myself. Now, I realize a part of me recognized you as my mate and sought to protect you, even if I couldn’t stay with you in the airport.”
“You could have.”
She gave him a small smile. “No, I couldn’t. I needed you to be safe, but I still had stones to find, and it would have distracted me too much from my mission if I stayed with you. Too many lives are dependent on those stones helping us defeat the demons; I had to leave.”
“True, but I still wish I’d known you for a lot longer than I have.”
“Me too.” She bit her lip as she pondered how to proceed. “There’s something else I have to tell you.”
“What?”
She would prefernotto reveal this, mostly because she didn’t want it to be true. But it was true, it was coming, and he had to know.
