Page 23 of Mage Massacres

He closed his eyes, and I pursed my lips in disappointment.

“If it wasn’t the hellfire, then what killed you?”

He took a deep breath as everyone paused, turning their attention to him. I ignored them all in favor of getting the truth from my mage. He rubbed his hands over his cheeks, grimacing.

“It was the sheer amount of magic that entered my body. I was dead as soon as we spoke the last word of the spell. You wouldn’t have been able to see me fall through the hellfire.”

“So... You knew you were going to die. You didn’t tell me that before we started because you knew I’d try to find another way.”

“There wasn’t another way.” His gray eyes flew open, the storms in his irises raging. His raised voice wasn’t exactly a shout, though it was enough to piss me off.

I huffed out a humorless laugh.

“There is always another way, Palmer. You know things that I don’t, but that also works in reverse—with everyone you meet, not just me. There could have been a better option, an easier option, to handle it. Either way, you chose not to tell me the truth. Lying by omission is still lying.

“I get it, though. I lie too. The difference is that I don’t purposefully lie to you, Palmer. I forget to explain things to you guys in the heat of the moment. Occasionally, I need time to understand how to voice the things I need to tell you. I don’t lie to you so that things go my way.”

“That's not what I did.”

“Then what did you do?”

I waited, giving him a moment to speak before shaking my head at his silence. I was exasperated with him, but too curious for my own good. Closing my eyes so that I didn’t have to see his response, I whispered questions that I wasn’t sure I wanted the answers to.

“How long were you going to let me think that your death was solely my fault? Were you going to tell me today? Later? When it became too heavy of a burden for you to bear on your own? Never? Or were you hoping I'd never find out?”

I smiled sadly. I couldn’t see him, but I could feel his warring emotions, his struggle to voice his intentions.

“Never mind. I don’t want you to answer that. I could read your mind before the bond was sealed between us, Palmer. How long did you really think you could hide it from me?”

I stood from my chair, shrugging as I shook my head. “I don’t guess it matters. The fact that you wanted to hide something so devastating is a show on your character, not mine.”

“Wait,” Novak called before I’d even made it to the other side of the room.

I rolled my lips in, nodding to myself. “All that bullshit about opening up…”

“Troub—”

I held my hand up, stopping him.

“I don’t need a token to tell me that you’ve come dangerously close to breaking your vow to me, Novak. This is the second time you’ve kept something important from me. I understand that you wanted to protect Palmer and give him a chance to tell me himself. I really do get it.

“I’ve gone to great lengths to protect my friends, but I don’t hide secrets when it could result in their death. The first time you kept his secrets, I got it. That was a third party adding a threat to all of us, and you wanted him to fess up.”

I huffed, closing my eyes for a few seconds to hold my emotions at bay.

“This time, though? It’s not as easily overlooked. You stood by, knowing that he didn’t tell me that spell was going to kill him. And then, you let me continue to think that I was the cause.”

A single tear slid down my cheek as I rubbed at the center of my chest.

“You felt my pain, and still... You said nothing. You chose to say nothing. I think that makes the pain worse; to say that you care, only to turn right around and hurt the person you care about. And here I've been, beating myself up for a failure that wasn’t even mine.”

I turned, striding to the front door without another word.

I didn’t need any more people in my life lying to me. I had enough of those to last several lifetimes already; myself included.

“I’ll go talk to her,” Stone muttered.

York’s soft reply followed me out of the kitchen, bouncing around the entryway of my mother’s house. “Nah, mate. You don’t want to do that right now. Give her an hour. I’m telling you, guys, she needs some space.”