That mark and the bond it represents led him here, solidifying the fractured tug we’ve all been feeling over the past few weeks. It may not be what he expected, but it might reassure him about other missteps he thought he’d made.
When he meets my eyes again, his dark brown gaze is stillpensive… but I think there’s something like hope in it too. The sight sends a flutter through my chest.
The hope clouds over with worry as Salvatore’s words must sink in. Byron frowns. “You—you fell in the river? What even happened?”
Salvatore sucks in a breath to speak, but I squeeze his forearm to stop him. Even if my stomach is still churning and my mind feels like it’s been spun around in Charybdis’s whirlpool, I have to take control of the situation.
I never meant to spark my matches in this reality—not ever. I’ve spent the past few weeks doing everything I can to avoid them.
Because I don’t belong to this world. This reality’s version of Elodie is already dead. I’m just a metaphorical butterfly yanked across dimensions, spreading chaos and disrupting lives with every inadvertent flap of my wings.
I set out tonight intending to expose my doppelganger’s murderer and then vanish. To let my matches go forward much more happily than they could ever be with me.
Activating our bond was an act of pure desperation, the only chance I had at saving Salvatore from a worse fate.
So it’s my responsibility to do this right.
Or, as right as possible when the power in me could slaughter all four of these men as easily as breathing.
My original mates never knew that. These ones don’t have to find out either.
In this reality, I have no Uncle Nik to step in and spin the story while I crouch in a traumatized daze. There’s so much I’ve been keeping hidden… and most of it should stay that way for their own sakes. I can’t let this union drag my matches down the way it did in the world I came from.
But I can’t gloss over anything Salvatore saw. I have to give them a coherent enough account that they won’t dig deeper.
First things first. I should explain why I was wandering around in the middle of the night to begin with.
I rake my fingers through my damp hair, pushing the purple-streaked strands back from my face. “I snuck out of my house—it was getting so suffocating with my dad in over-protective mode. I wanted to stretch my legs and have room to breathe. I didn’t think I needed to worry about anything so close to home. But when I was walking through the park upriver… Kenneth Hearst attacked me.”
All three of the men listening with their very different demeanors blink with nearly identical expressions of befuddlement.
“KennethHearst?” Cole bites out, as if there might be some other Kenneth I meant who’d be more inclined to committing murder than the meek, skinny guy we went to school with.
Salvatore can’t keep quiet any longer. “The prick could really fight too, if you can believe it. Swinging his knife around and tossing magical explosives like he thought he was in an action movie.”
Byron’s dark brown eyes shift to the man beside me, narrowing slightly. “What wereyoudoing there?”
Salvatore flexes his broad shoulders. He and Byron are about the same height, but the mafia heir has the advantage of bulk if he wants to intimidate. “Looking out for Elodie. Someone had to after that fucker messed her up in the cafeteria, don’t you think?”
Asher speaks for the first time, his normally warm voice gone taut. “Do you think it was Kenneth who poisoned your food too?”
He’s addressed the question to me, so I jump back in, even if my gaze still ticks away from Asher’s face with a jitter through my nerves.
I look vaguely over his shoulder instead, tamping down on the peal of our bond. “It must have been. He veryobviously wanted me dead. And he seemed pretty upset that I wasn’t already.”
An echo of Kenneth’s frustrated voice rises up in the back of my head.“Why won’t you justdie?”
Wincing inwardly, I focus on Byron and Cole instead. “Salvatore’s right—Kenneth was more prepared for a fight than makes any sense. His knife and the other weapons seemed like something a professional would carry… and I think he had an enchantment on his clothes too, stronger than I’d have thought he could manage. He said…”
That last comment he made haunts me.“She was right about you.”
Who was right? Right how?
And whoever it was, is that who told him to murder me? Who set him up with the means to see that murder through?
Cole folds his arms over his chest. He’s slimmer than both Salvatore and Byron but the tallest of them all and plenty intimidating with his penetrating stare. “He said what?”
I balk instinctively. Do I really want to drag my matches into an even more complicated mystery? If my suspicions are right, then they’ll be in danger just because of their association with me.
