Her fingers curled lightly around it, wanting to protect it. "Thank you doesn’t seem like enough."
"It is more than enough, Hunter," murmured Auren.
She knew, in her Soul, that this distance would be a short-lived thing. They had to get used to each other; already, she felt herself thawing toward his ethereality.
Rhyden’s rough voice cut through. "Catch."
Something streaked toward her. Rin didn’t have time to linger on Auren’s aching words. Her hands reflexively caught it. Dark rope, knotted into a ball.
"What’s that?" Cyrus tried to peek, but she didn’t let him, covering it with her hands.
Rhyden ran his tongue over the tip of a fang, briefly staring at Cyrus before meeting Rin’s eyes. "A promise."
Rin tried to hold his stare, but the heat in his red eyes left her dizzy. It wasn’t a promise—it was a threat. And she feared the day she grew strong enough for him to take his revenge. She’dknown when she took the Argent and seduced him into drinking her blood, that she’d been playing with fire. Now the flames were catching.
The others were gone,leaving only Rin and Lucien. They’d slipped out without a word, as if the moment had been arranged.
Cyrus had helped her back into bed after a while. Sitting up on the couch had been too much for her.
She was exhausted, but there was one person left who hadn’t given her a gift.
Lucien sat by her side on the bed, one leg stretched out, while the other was on the floor—half in, half out, like he was unsure whether he deserved to be by her side.
"Vesperin, what I have to tell you is the last of my own secrets I ever want to keep from you. I can only hope that after I tell you, you find it in your heart to forgive me. I don’t ask for your understanding—I barely understand myself most days. I only hope you don’t hate me for this."
Rin’s eyes went wide. Slowly, she reached up and removed her hat, feeling her hair stick up on end from the static. She didn’t bother smoothing it down.
"You’re scaring me, Lucien. What else could you be keeping from me?" Rin wanted to know—yet sheneverwanted to know.
"Just let me talk first. Please. This is all I’ll ask of you."
He took a steadying breath, then met her eyes unflinchingly.
"We’re Soulbonds. I’ve known since we were younger." Lucien reached up to touch his glasses, hand falling back to his lap, fingers twisting. Yet his voice was so calm. "Every time I speak to you, it’s knowing I’m lying to you—actively. I’mchoosingto keep something vital from you. You should hate me. I hate myself for it, and yet, every time I go over it in my head,try to figure out another way it all could’ve been different, there’s nothing. I would do it all over again."
Rin could only stare.
She took a deep, sharp breath. It felt like glass cracking in her lungs, slipping down her throat.
She was shattering.
And Rin?—
Cried.
Lucien toldhis V girl everything—down to the day it happened, when she came over one Christmas with fresh-baked cookies.
"I think my hand brushed yours. My thumb, maybe." Lucien flexed his hand, staring at it. "It took everything in me not to fall on the ground, right there on the doorstep. I waited for you to… to look at me like you knew me, but you didn’t. Once the shock wore off, I was almost relieved. I was twenty-three, you were fifteen at the time—far too young for me. I’ve never been confounded before, but that day, I was deeply… confused," he settled on.
"I had just been awarded as one of the youngest doctors in Solar City. That caught Blackfall Industries’ attention, but my attention had already been caught by them. I was trapped between what they wanted me to do and my beginning understanding of what they had done to you. Sabine and Talor," Lucien said their names with viciousness.
"He knew? Kit knew the whole time what you were to me?" Rin sobbed. "And he never said anything?"
"I begged him not to."
Just as Kiton had begged Lucien not to tell Vesperin they were Soulbonds, too. It would only hurt her. They all had roles to play.
Sabine and Talor thought they’d wiped Kiton’s memories. It had to stay that way. But now, it didn’t matter.
