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“You didn’t,” I said, sliding my arm around her. The cool air from the air conditioner tickled over my skin, and I suddenly wished we were outside in the warm glow of the sun. “You waited all this time because you weren’t sure, because you wanted to be careful, and it’s because ofthatyou didn’t tell him before you had the chance to find out the truth. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“No one blames you, Rose,” Jin said, looking uncharacteristically solemn. “Maybe I wasn’t taking the situation seriously enough before. I tried to tell you that you could justmakeeverything be okay…”
But it obviously wasn’t. I’d never seen Rose this despondent. She rubbed her eyes, the circles under them dark from lack of sleep last night. But she refused to let me take any of her weight.
“I heard your dad talking to Matt when he was getting in the car,” Gabriel said. “He expected to be gone at least two days. You’ve got time to figure out what you need to do. Whatweneed to do.”
Rose glanced toward him, something hopeful lighting in her face. And Gabriel pulled back—just an inch, but I saw that hope dim in response.
What the hell was wrong with him? Couldn’t he see she needed all of us now? Her whole world was falling apart.
He glanced around at the rest of us instead, like he was our leader all over again. “We have to come up with a plan of action. Quickly.”
No kidding. Thankfully my brother had a way of cutting right through to the facts. “Whatdoesneed to happen?” Kyler asked Rose. “What exactly could stop your dad from going forward with this consort plan? He still doesn’t know thatyouknow about the whole scheme, right?”
Rose drew in a shaky breath and stood a little taller. At her other side, Damon stood straight and fierce, looking ready to charge into battle on her behalf. Normally that sight would have irked me, but after our conversation yesterday, I felt a little more certain that he’d only go charging in where he really should.
He wanted what was best for Rose too, in his own way. Maybe we’d all been a little lost trying to figure out how we fit into her world.
No, really, we still were.
“My dad doesn’t know I’m onto him,” Rose said. “But as long as he still has any control over my life, he’s going to be trying to marry me off. It seemed really important to him. I guess it’s not just about making sure I don’t use my powers in some dangerous way but also… having those powers forhimto use however he wants? He wouldn’t even listen to me when I tried to ask him for a day or two before he went running off to find someone to replace Derek.”
She swiped a stray strand of her black hair back from her face. “If I displaced him, he’d have no authority over the estate at all. It’d all come to me, like it was supposed to when I was twenty-five anyway. As long as I don’t give anyone reason to displaceme. So I guess… I need to expose what he’s done. While he’s gone, I can go looking through his things for proof again. I found that proof with Celestine. He has to have slipped up somewhere.”
“No one can cover their tracks perfectly,” Ky said. “We’ll find it.”
“Then what?” I asked.
“The same thing I was planning to do with Celestine and Derek,” she said. “I’ll present the evidence to the Assembly. They’ll prosecute him—at the very least he should lose any claim on the Hallowell properties in deference to me. The witching women always get priority anyway. And then… I’ll wait out the time. Pretend I’ve decided I don’t care to come into my magic. Dismiss Mrs. Gainsley and her husband from staff, have only unsparked people working at the house. I could even hire you all on, and that’ll give you an excuse to be here. We’ll manage.”
“Is that the best you can hope for?” Gabriel said. “Living your whole life hiding what you are, what you can do?”
Rose shook her head. “I’ll keep investigating the Assembly as well as I can—with you all.” She shot a smile at Ky. “If it’s just a small group within the witching government that’s so against unsparked relations, maybe there’s something I can do to change that. But I don’t know how long it’ll take. Or if it’ll happen at all.”
“I don’t want you to have to live like that,” Ky said. “If I can find anything… I’ll go back to Seattle, and maybe together we could find ways around their security...” He paused. “When I was looking before, I saw a reference to a different sort of consorting. A soul-bound ceremony? It sounded like it’s more serious—if it’s something more we could do to give ourselves over, to give you more power—”
“No,” Rose said, so sharply my brother’s mouth snapped shut. Her jaw tightened. “Hardly anyone does the soul-binding consorting anymore. I doubt they ever did. It does mean sharing more energy, faster, but it’s also unbreakable. Until death. And if one partner dies, the other does too.”
“I’d be willing to take that chance,” Damon said.
“You don’t have to.” Rose glanced around our group. “I have all the magic I could ever want, with all of you.” Her gaze lingered for just a second on Gabriel. When their gazes met, his twitched away. I frowned.
“We’re here for you,” Jin said, echoing Damon’s earlier comment. He stepped forward and wrapped his arms around her in a hug. She hugged him back tightly. As Ky and Damon converged around them, Gabriel drew back a step. I followed him, motioning him toward the far corner.
“What the hell are you doing?” I said under my breath when he turned to face me there. “Can’t you see she’s looking to you for support too? Why are you acting so cagey?” I didn’t for a second believe it was lack of interest.
Gabriel played it casual, shaking his head with a flash of his dark red hair as if in disbelief. “She has my support.”
“Not totally,” I said. “And she can obviously tell.”
“I’m here,” Gabriel said, and smiled. “This is why it’s a good thing she’s had you. I can see the way you’ve been holding everyone together, providing that voice of reason.”
The compliment should have warmed me, but it niggled at me instead. He meant it, I believed that, but he was also trying to deflect me with it.
“She needs all of us,” I said. “She needsyou.”
Something flashed deep in Gabriel’s eyes. “I’m the last thing she needs,” he murmured.
