Page 41 of Mage Massacres

When she exhaled, it sounded like she was letting go of the weight on her shoulders. “I don’t want to be a good person. Good people always choose the path that saves the innocents, but in turn, they have to be willing to give up what they care about. I can’t do that. I won’t do that. My choices will always be selfish, Novak.

“I’d rather save one person who means something to me than hundreds of people who mean nothing to me. I am not a good person, and I’m okay with that. I’m more than okay with that. I know who I am. I’m confident in my skin. I don’t want to be anyone else.”

“You don’t have to be anyone else. I’ve already told you this, but it’s not resonating with you. You’re both good and bad, but you’re also neither. You’re the middle ground, the neutral chaos. You’re the good in the bad and the bad in the good. Too much of either is a terrible thing, but you balance it out perfectly.

“Take your mates, for example. Sometimes we’re bad people, and yet sometimes we’re good people. How do you tell the difference?”

Her brows furrowed as she thought through my words.

“I don’t think any of you are inherently bad people.”

“You haven’t known us long, Trouble. It’s been… What?”

She rolled her eyes. “A month.”

I raised a brow at her. “All I’m saying is… you have to stop saying you’re a bad person. You’re just a person. A supernatural person, but a person all the same. No one is wholly good or bad.”

Her eyes bounced around my face before she narrowed her gaze. “What are you distracting me from? This isn’t what you came in here to talk about.”

“I’m not distracting you. But I am kind of trying to prove a point. By your judgment, we should all be bad people. Palmer may have fucked up, but he’s a better person than the rest of us. The mage has done some awful shit—some shit he’ll never speak about out loud—but he did it to keep his family safe.

“I’m not petitioning for you to forgive him or anything. But his MO hasn’t changed much in the years that I’ve known him. He does dumb shit with everyone’s safety in mind. Feelings come second. Safety always comes first when he acts. But like you, he doesn’t give a fuck about his own safety.”

She snorted. “I can’t die. I don’t need to worry about my own—”

“There are things that are worse than death, Trouble. I know I don’t need to remind you of that.”

“No, you don’t.” She rubbed her fingers over her jawline. “I get it, but I’d rather hear that from him.”

“I’m sure you will. He needs a minute to swallow his pride. It’s not often that Palmer feels any guilt over his decisions.”

“And you?”

I cupped her cheeks in my hands, making sure she could see the intensity of my confession. “Only with you.”

She leaned her forehead against my chest as she sighed, the war in her mind going silent.

“I love you.”

“I know,” I admitted, hearing it before she said it aloud.

“How do you know?” Trouble challenged, the smile on her face clear in the tone of her voice.

“Because I’ve hurt your feelings at least twice in as many weeks. If you didn’t care about me, then you wouldn’t have been fazed by me not trusting your judgment last week. I told you that I heard you, and I meant it.”

Her head popped up.

“Exactly how much do you hear?”

“Enough…”

“Novak,” she growled. “You never explain how many of my thoughts you hear.”

I smirked at her, evasively replying, “More now than before.”

“So all of it?”

I put my hands back on her cheeks, staring into her prismatic eyes for a moment before I murmured, “Every word, image, memory… Everything that crosses your mind I see or hear. I choose to give you privacy because that’s important to you.