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“Me.” Bolt took a deep breath before raising his gaze to stare sorrowfully into mine. “I’m the one who betrayed you.”
I stared blankly, trying to make sense of his words. This entire time it had been thespiderwho’d forced my suspension? Bolt measured my reaction, his own incredibly anxious.
“I don’t understand,” I said slowly. “You’rethe one who framed me?” But...how could that be?
“I did more than that,” Bolt said hastily, seeming desperate to get his full confession out as quickly as possible. “I was with Darius the evening he learned you could see dreams. He wanted to keep it a secret, but I snuck away to tell your mother, Blaze, and Trinity.”
My breath hooked, remembering the moment Trinity confronted me about my rare abilities at the dream festival. It had been the first time I’d believed Darius had been the one to spill my secrets.
“I was also there the day you entered that dream on Earth,” Bolt continued as he anxiously wrung his legs together. “As well as on the night all the dreams spilled in Maci’s bedroom. I stole Darius’s notebook of information about you, imitated his magic in order to unlock it, and gave it to the Council, where I told them everything. Don’t you see? I had all the information you believed could only have come from Darius because I was always with him.”
I gaped at him, even as his words washed over me without my fully comprehending them. I expected to feelsomethingat this revelation, but instead I only felt numb. Bolt waited with a tortured look, a silent plea for me not to hate him.
I finally managed to force words past my dry throat. “You were always so nice...I thought you liked me. Why would you do this to me?”
“Idolike you,” he said. “You’re not only my creator’s daughter, but I care deeply for you.”
“I don’t understand,” I stuttered. “If you liked me, then how could you hurt me?”
Bolt’s expression twisted into despair. “I didn’t know it would hurt you—”
My rising temper burst free. “You didn’tknow?” Bolt withered beneath my anger, curling up and burying himself beneath his many legs. “How could you not realize it’d hurt me to be torn from my home, my friends, my very identity? How could you think that losing everything wouldn’t destroy me?”
“I thought it would make you happy,” he whimpered. “I thought you’d be pleased to be a Nightmare like Darius in order to more easily be with him, I thought you wanted to live with your mother, I thought you’d like it here. I thought betraying you was the path to give you what was best for you. That’s what Ebony told me.”
These words pierced the anger I’d been holding over my heart like a shield. I squeezed my eyes shut to try and stave off the pain now searing through me. “You betrayed me under Mother’s orders?”
“Yes.”
I buried my face in my hands as the sharp emotions I didn’t want to feel returned at this revelation. I didn’t know which was worse—that my own Mother either didn’t know or didn’t care about what I truly wanted, or that she was the one who’d betrayed me all along.
“Mother told you to betray me?” I asked again.
Bolt nodded. “Darius had no idea I was the one who...when he found out...” He shuddered. “He’s furious I hurt you so deeply, but his anger is nowhere near what I feel towards myself now that I see the truth: you’re not happy. I’m so sorry, Eden.”
My mind was a hurricane of thoughts and emotions, especially as Bolt’s confession slowly seeped into my heart:Darius hadn’t betrayed me. I silently repeated the words over and over, loving the sound of them. This truth—one my heart had secretly believed for a while now—felt soright.
“Eden?” Bolt’s timid squeak pierced the tense silence. “Now that you know the truth...are you and Darius going to get back together?”
The flight my heart was currently experiencing immediately crashed painfully back to my dark reality. “I can’t get back together with someone I wasn’t with in the first place.”
Bolt frowned. “I don’t understand.Weren’tyou together?”
“No.” The admission burned on my tongue. “Darius already has a Pair.”
Bewilderment furrowed Bolt’s brow. “He only hasyou.”
How could Bolt not know about Shade? But their romantic relationship was not one I was keen on discussing further.
“He doesn’t have me.” Or more accurately, I didn’t havehim. “We’re not together.” How I wished we were. Exhaustion suddenly overcame me, and I wanted nothing more than for this conversation to end. “Thank you for telling me the truth.”
“Do you hate me?” he asked timidly.
I pondered that and realized that no, I didn’t, especially when he was nothing more than a pawn in Mother’s scheme—not unlike myself. I shook my head and left the room, needing to be alone with the unexpected revelations that had both turned my world upside down and left it exactly the same as before.
Bolt’s confession lingered in my thoughts for days. During all my moments of reflection, I realized his confession hadn’t revealed anything that deep down I hadn’t already known. In my heart of hearts, I’d always believed Darius hadn’t betrayed me, but in my pain I’d denied it and pushed him away anyway, losing something precious all due to pride.
I’d give anything to turn back time and make a different choice, but it was too painful to crawl back to him and apologize when we could never go back to the way things had been—we could never be weaving partners after my suspension, he could never fully trust me after I’d stolen from him, and we couldn’t be Pairs considering he was already attached to another, someone who deserved him...unlike me. Darius was no longer a part of my life, and I needed to let him go.
