“You’ve made a lot of mistakes, Katherine.” Sylvia raised her hand, counting off on her fingers as she listed: “Letting Silas find my caster instead of you. Going to him for help with Byron when I explicitly told you to hold off. Taking matters with Byron into your own hands, creating a massive problem for me at a time when I already have so many others to deal with.”
“And”—Sylvia’s last finger went up—“failing to protect Lily from herself.”
Katherine’s breath hitched.
“You were supposed to take care of her,” Sylvia continued. Nausea curled in Katherine’s stomach. “You of all people should have known the risks she faced.”
“I—”
Sylvia waved off Katherine’s interruption, continuing on. “What’s done is done. Right now, I just need to know you’re focused. I need to know that you’re not going to get distracted. That you’re willing to do whatever you have to do to get out of this hole you dug. Can I count on you to do that?”
Katherine ran her hands through her hair, raking her nails along her scalp, letting the sting ground her. Sylvia had never spoken to her like this before, but Katherine had never fucked up this badly before. She and Sylvia were a team, and Katherine wasn’t supposed to go behind her back. Wasn’t supposed to lie to her.
Sylvia wasn’t supposed to lie to Katherine either. She wasn’t supposed to set fires, try to kill people, skirt the rules this blatantly.
But Katherine could understand why. Silas’ family’s name. His mother’s eyes. Their attitudes, their words, their power, once again taking over Sylvia’s life. Katherine had spent enough time burying the trauma from her own past to understand how one wrong move could give it the power to suck you down again.
Katherine had fucked up beyond measure, and Sylvia was offering her a lifeline that she wasn’t sure she deserved. She had to take it. She had to do whatever she could to find a way to make this right.
She had let herself get thrown off course—by her unwillingness to accept the truth of Lily’s death; by her need for vengeance; by her attraction to Silas. But she didn’t have room for distraction. Silas was a direct threat to her home, to her family.
She needed to fight. For Sylvia. For Aestas.
For herself.
Silas felt like shit.
His jaw pounded from Niles’ punch, his body from climbing down the building, his head from the depression that had set in as soon as he’d walked out Katherine’s door.
His phone had died as soon as he’d called the ride to Katherine’s, and when he’d stopped at CVS for an external charger and plugged it in, he had a litany of texts from his parents demanding he come home immediately, then more telling him to call them immediately, then even more telling him to answer their fucking messages immediately or he was being written out of the will. He’d ignored all of them.
There were no missed calls from Katherine. Not that he expected there to be—she’d made it very clear how she felt about him, and he didn’t begrudge her an ounce of that hate. She had every reason to spit on his purported “struggles.” Every reason to see him as spoiled, rich, naive. Every reason to dismiss him as nothing more than a good time.
She was too good for him.
The fact that he was dawdling here proved that.
He forced one foot in front of the other, propelling himself closer to the scene of his crime.
He didn’t even get to the door before a set of hands grabbed him and pushed his back against the brick wall.
“What did I say?” Niles snarled in his face.
“I wanted to apologize again.”
Niles huffed a laugh as he let go, pushing Silas away with a hard shove. “Gee, thanks. That fixes everything.”
Silas stuffed his hands into his pockets, his fingers attacking each other, picking at the skin around his nails—a bad habit that he’d broken when he was a teenager, after years of his parents snapping at him that it was unprofessional and unseemly. He could picture the look that would cross his mother’s face if she saw the red strip of raw skin Silas was creating on his thumb. But he still couldn’t bring himself to stop.
“I really am sorry. I—”
“I don’t want to hear it,” Niles interrupted. “I don’t care if you regret it. I don’t care if you’re sorry, or if you realized that everything your precious parents told you is absolute bullshit. I am not just a stopalong your rich-boy journey. I am a person, and I have people who rely on me. People who relied on that spellbook. And now they don’t have it anymore, so they’re either going to have to do magic the dangerous way or not at all. And if someone gets hurt… that’s on you.”
Niles’ chest heaved. Silas ripped another bit of skin off his thumb as he searched his brain for something to say, but all he could think of were those same damn two words, the ones that didn’t mean a thing. But he said them again anyway, because he had to: “I’m sorry.”
Niles took a moment. Looked him over. Saw all of the wretchedness inside of him.
“You are,” Niles said, a statement of fact. “But it doesn’t make a difference.”
