I was about to walk away when she blurted, “Why did you kill them today?”
My expression hardened without meaning to. “It’s the way of the Vargothi,” I answered, not needing her to confirm what she meant. We both knew exactly what she was talking about. “If the Moon Gods don’t bless a bond, the rules are death.”
“Are those the Gods’ rules or Elion’s?”
I didn’t answer, but I didn’t need to. It was written all over my face.
“And you agree with that?” she asked.
“I have a shield over the cabin,” I said, refusing to acknowledge it.
I started walking toward the door.
“Wait,” she blurted, her chair scraping against the wood as she stood. “Where are you going?”
“No one can enter except for me. You’re safe here.” I paused to look at her, my hand gripping the handle. “But for once in your life listen to me and don’t leave the cabin. The shield stops at the door.”
Then I left, not trusting myself to stay with her.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Consequences
MAGNOLIA
Hael didn’t come back to his cabin until the next morning. He froze in the doorway, scanning the room before his eyes landed on me.
“You could have slept on the bed,” he commented, eyeing me on the sofa.
“You could have stayed,” I shot back, then added, “you didn’t need to leave.”
“Yes, I did.”
I tried not to dwell on it because I was glad he left. I couldn’t have planned it better myself. I spent half the night searching the entire place from top to bottom, trying to scour anything I could use against him. The only problem was, I found nothing.
Everything about his place was bare—the absolute epitome of someone who lived alone. Even his cutlery indicated that no one else dined with him. Honestly, I was questioning how he even lived here. It was pristine, I could give him that. Tidy, organized—although I imagined it was easy to be when you owned next to nothing of value and clutter was foreign.
It was disappointing. Not that I didn’t find anything to use against him, but that it didn’t look like a home. I’d always wanted one. I spentmy entire life on the streets before Dahes took me to his castle. I used to fantasize about filling a house with everything imaginable just because I could. I’d have paintings too—even though they’d cost a fortune—but it would have been worth it to fill the walls with color. And I’d have a small fireplace, not that I would need one in Viven—every fantasy I had consisted of me living far away from the Dead Kingdom—and the temperature was short of heavenly here. But fireplaces always felt cozy and warm to me. They were my reminder of everything Moriann wasn’t.
But Hael’s cabin had nothing. No charm. No character. No color. Just variations of browns and gray. The floors and walls were the same wood as the outside. Even the table was wood, just a slightly darker hue.
I couldn’t shake the guilty feeling that crept up inside me for invading his privacy. It always happened. Every time I brought someone back from a hunt, I couldn’t shake off the shame I felt afterward. It only got worse after Dahes told me theirso-called-crimes.I knew most of the people I hunted were innocent.
And Hael—he did absolutely nothing wrong, yet I was trying to exploit him, and I swore he knew it. I left absolutely nothing out of place, but I still felt like it was written all over my face.
I spent half the night rummaging through his place and the other half going over the entirety of our conversation again and again.
“I can’t explain it, but I just feel like I can trust you.”
That’s what Arrik—Hael—had said to me. But I couldn’t be trusted. Everything I was doing was to try to get him hurt. Every conversation, every moment, I was using it to find a weakness so Dahes could make a deal with him, a deal to get him to fight. I knew firsthand that you never walked away from a deal, and Hael had the audacity to say he wassorryto me last night. Sorry because Cash brought me to a brothel.
I didn’t know what to say. I wasn’t sure if anyone had ever said they were sorry to me before. I wracked my brain, going through all the years I’d spent on Moriann’s streets, but no one was ever sorry.Ruthless. Brutal. Callous. Did whatever they needed to in order to survive, yes, but never sorry for it.
And he shouldn’t be. I was the one who needed to be sorry because as much as I didn’t want to do this anymore, I still had to betray him.
For Masin.
Hael hadn’t moved from the doorway, just continued to stare at me which made the guilt so much worse. “Come on,” he said after a moment. “I’ll take you back to Elion’s castle.”
