He spit at me through the gap, his warm saliva hitting the corner of my mouth, not far from the very spot he’d once told me was his favorite place to kiss.
The green-eyed, ginger-haired boy I once loved, the boy who’d promised me the stars and taken everything I had to offer in return, rose to his feet.
“Her magic protects you now,” he said, “but that’ll fade. When it does, I’ll find you.” Then, in a rabid voice that would haunt my nightmares for the rest of my life, he peered down one last time and made his final promise. “And when I find you, I will burn you.”
Forty-Eight
Asher
She was only a kid. How the fuck had she survived?
The more Gray told us about her mother’s murder—about the horrors that had brought her to the Bay and into our lives all those years ago—the deeper her words clawed into my chest, igniting a rage that damn near tore me in two.
One side was desperate to hunt down the filthy beasts that had destroyed her life and brutally torment them for eternity.
The other part of me just wanted to wrap her in my arms and erase every bit of that pain she still carried.
Despite all the animosity between us, despite how I’d treated her, despite all the doubts I’d had about her place in Ronan’s life, she’d saved me tonight. And that kiss? Hell, she hadn’t just given me a hit of energy. She’d riled me up, gotten under my fucking skin.
And I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
We were all in the living room now, Gray next to me on the couch, the others leaning against walls or broken furniture. She was exhausted, clearly traumatized by having to live through this nightmare again, but the guys were strung tight as drums, the energy in the room crackling with barely contained fury.
We might not have always agreed on everything, but we were on the same fucking page about this.
The men who’d done this to her would pay.
“I stood in the root cellar,” she continued now, voice shaking like an earthquake but still fierce as fuck, “frozen with fear as Calla's body burned. Her hair singed and disappeared. Her eyes melted. All that was left of the mother I loved was a pile of charred black bones.”
Fucking horrifying. There were no other words for it.
Fiery rage surged through my limbs again, pushing me off the couch and into pacing mode. I was still pretty weak, but that was fading by the second.
No kid—wait, screw that. Noperson—should ever have to go through something like that. Yet Gray had. She’d faced that brutal attack, lost her only family, and fought her way across the country. Fought her way here to Ronan. To all of us.
She might not realize it, but the thing that had always been so apparent to Ronan had just become crystal clear to me, too. Our girl Gray Desario was so much more than a witch.
She was a fucking warrior.
“You survived, Gray.” Emilio crouched down in front of her. “You damn well survived.”
“But I didn’t,” she said. “That wasn’t my doing at all. Calla’s spell was like a bubble around me. I never even smelled the smoke.”
Jesus.
I glanced over at Ronan, but he was leaning against the hearth now, a million miles away, no doubt struggling with his own thoughts on all this. He’d known. All this time, he’d known exactly what had happened to her, exactly how it’d all gone down.
He’d been there.
No wonder he was so damn tormented all the time. So protective of her. Yeah, he loved her. But it was so much more than that.
I got it now. He’d seen her face down death, probably more than once. All these years, he’d wanted to make it okay for her, to stop this from ever happening again, but he couldn’t.
All he could do was be there for her when itdidhappen again. Fight by her side through the battles, help her patch up her wounds, hold her when the tears fell.
And one day, he’d have to let her go. Likely, she’d never forgive him.
Such was the nature of a demon at the crossroads.
