“Answers,” she whispered. Pleaded. “I need answers. I need them like I needed your blood tonight. Like I need fuckingair.”
“You think you want them, sparrow, but the answers—therealanswers—they’re going to cut even deeper than you know.”
“Not as deep as the questions. The what-ifs and whys and what happeneds I could never, ever explain to myself.”
“There are so many, I don’t even know where to start unraveling this story.”
“Pick a thread.Anythread. Just…” She rested her head on my shoulder, her breath warm against my neck as her tears soaked into my shirt. “Saysomething.”
Seconds stretched into minutes that stretched on into a thousand little eternities, time slowing down until it started moving backward. Suddenly I was back in Blackmoon Bay, tracing the outline of her lips, her cheekbones, her eyebrows, memorizing the feel of her with my fingertips as she slept, knowing I would be leaving her that night.
Damn it, Haley.
I placed my hand on her back, stroking softly, a dark acceptance settling deep in my chest. I owed her this. As much of the truth as I could bear to tell.
“The other night, you asked me about Evander?” I whispered, the very name sending a shudder down my spine, a fresh ache blooming in my gut. “That’s where this starts. Where itallstarts.”
She pulled back and met my gaze once more, her brow furrowing. “Evander? The one you used to dream about?”
“He was my brother, Haley. Not in a blood-before-roses way, in a literal way.Quiteliteral—he was my twin. My fucking twin. My best friend. My hero. And the boy whose absence left a hole in my heart so massive, it’s still eating its way through my life.” I swallowed the tightness in my throat and got to my feet, holding out a hand to help her up. “And it’s nowhereneardone with me.”
18
ELIAN
Your brother. Evander is your twin brother?” She shook her head, shock and disbelief still clinging to her eyes, even though I’d answered the same question a dozen times now. “I’d always thought you were an only child.”
She was back in bed now—mine, since she’d left Hudson’s covered in blood—and I sat in the chair next to her, still trying to figure out where to start this story. Trying to find the words to get it all out without completely falling apart.
“I was,” I said. “For a long time, anyway. But before that, I had Evander. We were inseparable. Two peas in a pod, as the saying goes.” I smiled, some of the old memories coming back. “He was older by about ten minutes, and he never let me forget it. That boy took his big brother role very seriously.”
Haley mirrored my smile, a bit of the light returning to her eyes. “Yeah? You let him boss your stubborn ass around?”
“Savemy stubborn ass, more like it. Remember this?” I pushed up my sleeve and leaned across the bed, revealing an old scar on my forearm—one she’d seen hundreds of times before. One she’d kissed and caressed as I’d embraced her in the bed we’d shared in Blackmoon Bay and told her the story of how that scar had come to be.
Part of it, anyway.
“You were bitten by a silver wolf in Autumnshire,” she said softly, tracing her fingers over the craggy crescent-shaped mark. “Brutal.”
“Would’ve been a lot worse if not for Evander.”
“He was with you?”
“He saw me go down, then jumped right into it, taking the brunt of the attack. Fucking wolf was relentless, too—cracked a few of Evander’s ribs, punctured a lung, chewed him up good before my brother finally smashed a rock over his head and killed him.”
“Oh my god, Elian. Is that… is that how he died? From the injuries?”
“No. Came damn close to it that day, though. Our healers got to him quickly—their magick and my mother’s prayers saved him. Well, that and the fact that he was certain if he died, I’d change up the story so that I was the one who killed the wolf, and poor Evander was the one who got eaten.” I laughed. “Crazy fae fuck, that kid. But he survived.”
Haley let out a soft sigh, her eyes dimming. “Then what happened to him, Elian? What happened to your brother?”
I lowered my gaze, grief blurring my vision, as raw and sharp as it ever was. “The forest where the wolf had died—that was our favorite place. He and I spent more time there than we spent in our own house, always off on our make-believe adventures. Even the wolf attack couldn’t scare us off. Soon as Evander was well again, we were right back to our old tricks—digging tunnels, climbing trees, making weapons. All the trouble you’d expect from two eight-year-old boys.
“But one day, during one game or another, he hid from me. Hid so well, for so long, that he…” I shook my head, as if my brain still didn’t want to believe it. “He never came out again. Not even when I gave up the game and begged him to reveal himself. Not even when I offered up all my favorite toys in exchange for him to just stop screwing around. Not even hours later, when I brought my parents back to help me search. All of us—my family, the neighbors, the other kids we knew—we scoured those woods for weeks. Searched under every rock, every leaf. But in the end, he was just… gone.” I leaned back in the chair, gazing up at the black ceiling, a strip of moonlight reflecting off the dark obsidian. “The only evidence we found was the footprints of an adult male fae and… and drag marks. They never caught… never…”
I trailed off, my eyes blurring with tears. I could hear Haley’s heart thundering through her chest, her breathing tight, and I knew if I looked at her I’d find the same tears streaming down her cheeks.
So I didn’t look. Didn’t even move. Just stared at that little patch of moonlight and forced myself to get the rest of the words out.
