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PROLOGUE
Mindfields
GRIM
Dear Iris
If there’s one thing that I know with absolute certainty, it’s this: love is complicated.
It’s like a jigsaw puzzle with constantly moving pieces.
One day everything slots into place and you can see your future with the person you love ahead of you, and the next a piece goes missing and you’ll never be whole again.
That’s what it felt like the night I put a bullet in your dad.
A piece of me left with him. A bloody, jagged, broken piece.
It hurt.
Actually thinking about that night and the two lonely years that followed still hurts.
It’s time we won’t ever get back.
Living the life I do, that we do, time is precious.
It’s a gift that many take for granted.
Do I regret shooting your dad?
That shouldn’t be a difficult question to answer, but it is.
I regret hurting him. I regret not seeing the bigger picture.
In retrospect, it had to happen, and whilst I now know the real reason Beast killed Carter, at the time I didn’t. I made a judgement call based on the facts I had, and truthfully no matter which way I look at it—and believe me I’ve re-lived that night over and over again—I always end up with the same answer.
I had to shoot him.
He killed Carter Davidson, the Ruler of Tales, and it wouldn’t have mattered to anyone why he did it, just that he did. Beast broke his loyalty, a pledge that means everything in the world we live in. It didn’t matter that he did it for me. It didn’t matter that he did it for love.
It only mattered that he did.
And I also knew that if I didn’t at least punish your dad, banish him for his actions, then I would’ve been seen as weak, and I understood the consequences of that.
So that night your dad bled for me, because of me.
But I bled too. God, how I bled.
Every day, for two long years, I mourned your dad as though he were dead, as though that bullet I fired into him had actually killed him.
Of course, it didn’t.
And that isn’t because I’m a terrible markswoman, it’s because my love for him wouldn’t allow me to end his life.
Fuck, I’m glad of that.
So, so glad.
Because as it turns out, your dad was always the hero of our story.
