Page 102 of Mage Massacres

“Sloane,” Charlie implored. “We need to help him.”

“He needed to die,” she told her dad, parroting the angel’s confession. “He asked for it. I didn’t want to, but—”

Vaughn closed the distance between them, squatting beside her as her words stuck in her throat.

“We heard him,” the fae assured her, his voice rough as he pulled her hand away. “He’ll be back soon. He needs a minute, just like you do.”

She nodded her head, wide eyes begging for a different outcome. Vaughn scooped her up, striding across the yard with her in his arms.

He whispered his understanding softly in her ear. “Even if you’ve lost trust in them, there are still plenty of people here who will watch over him. They all know.”

Millie opened the door without a word. And as the fae disappeared inside with our mate, his words filtered through my overwhelmed mind.

He knew what it meant to lose trust in your parents. Palmer did too, but Vaughn’s experience was vastly different. While the mage’s father had sold him to pay a debt, the fae’s mother had used him.

She lied, threatened, and tried to have him killed too many times to count. And that was just a few of the things we knew about the fae queen.

I watched Sam and Charlie examine Raguel, my respect for the Second Devil fracturing the longer he went without so much as voicing concern for his only child.

Briggs felt the same, his resentment palpable as he excused himself to the kitchen. Palmer left to help his siblings and Arwen track the fae-mage, commenting about needing an outlet. He’d meant Sloane, not himself, and I was grateful that we all seemed to be on the same page.

York made some unusual chairs that mirrored the hedges around the house. He sat, his elbows on his knees, as he studied the angel. Novak and I followed suit, neither of us willing to leave the scene unattended.

After a few moments, Hyde approached. She tipped her head, smiling sadly as her voice popped into our minds, courtesy of the vampire.

“I’m disappointed in them, not that they’ll care about my feelings.”

I huffed. “Disappointed is an understatement.”

“When did you know?” she questioned curiously.

Novak and York answered at the same time.

“When we found him.”

I rubbed my chin. “While they were fighting, after seeing his memories. Now, the picture from last week makes more sense. That’s why he looked familiar.”

“What are we going to do?” the druid asked, worry flowing through our bonds before he tightened the grip on his emotions.

“Nothing,” Hyde answered. “The Kings have dug a deeper hole than they can climb out of. All we can do is stand witness to her decisions in this matter. What would you do?”

Silence stretched between us as we waited for Raguel to come back to the land of the living. Sam and Charlie sat on the grass on either side of him. Neither said a word, staring at their missing co-mate as their family crumbled around them.

I wondered if Raguel or Amelia could fix the damage they’d done, but the probability didn’t seem very high. Even if they went through the motions of repairing the damage, I couldn’t say with certainty that there was a permanent fix.

Trust was a fickle thing.

Hyde’s question replayed in my mind, an eerie echo that I couldn’t silence.

But there was no right or wrong answer for me.

I’d lost my parents a long time ago. I didn’t get to decide if I could forgive them for lying to me. They’d hid things from me as a child, but I couldn’t say that they would or wouldn’t have told me as an adult.

Now, there was no visiting them, arguing with them, or making amends.

I would always be angry about their murders, but my anger wasn’t directed at them anymore.

They didn’t choose to leave me.