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“You remember me,” I said. “You looked terrified when you saw me in Abelaum. You looked like you’d seen a ghost.”
“Memories are far more frightening than ghosts.” Her finger traced slowly along the plate beneath her teacup, following the delicate curves of the porcelain. She’d averted her eyes, and was chewing her lower lip.
“Memories,” I repeated bitterly. “Oh yeah, I know all about how frightening they can be. You want to talk about scary memories? We share one: you, me...and your mother. Is she here? Is Heidi Laverne here?” I raised my voice, and it echoed around the eerily quiet greenhouse.
Everly seemed to shrink under my raised voice. “My mother is dead,” she said softly. “Her mistakes…” She paused and cleared her throat. “I can’t apologize for her. An apology probably isn’t even what you want to hear. She regretted everything. She tried to make things right.”
“She tried tomake things right?” I laughed. I needed a weapon. I needed my gun back, my knife, something, anything. But even armed, even if I managed to kill her, there was no way in hell I’d escape her demon. “What haveyoudone to make things right, Everly? You were there too, hiding in the shadows like a fucking coward!”
I lunged toward her, too furious to think straight. But something smooth and cool whipped out and snapped around my wrist, jerking me back. I looked down and found a green vine coiled around my arm.
“What the fuck is this?” I tugged at it, and suddenly my other wrist was caught too. I was yanked back, prevented from getting any closer to her by the shockingly strong vines.
“Please don’t be violent,” she said.
The sickening realization that I was trapped here made my stomach lurch. Trapped, separated from Zane — and although she claimed he was safe and unharmed, I didn’t believe that. Not for a second. He could be injured, he could be…
He could be dead. I swallowed hard, the thought hitting me so brutally that for a moment I couldn’t breathe. Zane could already be dead. She might have taken the only thing I had left, the tiny spark of joy I’d found in this darkness.
His warmth, his protection, his ridiculous sarcastic jokes, his massive fucking ego — if she’d taken that, if she or her demon had harmed him —
I clenched my fists to stop their shaking, forcing myself to keep breathing slowly. I had to keep it together.
But the rage was bubbling up. Not just rage at Heidi, at Everly, at the Hadleighs or at the Libiri. It was rage that I lived with those memories every day. Rage that so many parts of me were irrevocably broken. No matter what I did, I couldn’t escape what had happened. No amount of vengeance would bring my brother back. No amount of blood I spilled could drown out the memories.
“Don’t be violent?Don’t be violent?You listened to me scream for help and did nothing!” I yelled. Everly flinched, and she looked like she was going to be sick. “Was itfunfor you, Everly? Did it make you happy to see some innocent girl suffer for your God? Did you —”
“I don’t serve that God!”
Glass shattered somewhere above, and Everly flinched at the sound. Her breathing had grown rapid and she quickly looked away from me, gripping the edge of the table. It was like she was fighting with herself, struggling to hold something back.
“I spent years with your family, Everly. Victoria was mybest friend,” I spat out the words, sickening as they were. “I trusted your father. I trusted your mother. I trustedyou. You never warned me, you never told me to stay away. You never even tried, and your mother didn’t either. You both are fucking sick. You both deserve to die for what you let them do to me!”
“I can’t make it right,” she said. “I was supposed to be inspired, that’s what they told me. I was supposed to witness something beautiful and be left in awe of God’s power. All I saw was torture. There wasn’t a day I could look at my mother after that and not see it.” Her eyes shone with tears for a moment, only for her to rapidly blink them away. “But she’s dead. And I am not my mother.”
I wanted to break something, hit something. I wanted to scream. It felt mocking, that she had witnessed the worst thing that had ever happened to me but felt like she could remove herself from it, like she could bedistantfrom it. She had the memories too, but she didn’t have to be trapped by them. She didn’t have to see the scars every day.
I curled my lip in disgust. “But you are your father’s daughter.”
“He didn’t raise me like them,” she said. “He raised me, but notlike them.” She stood, and a rumble like thunder moved through the floor. “He was clear, always, that I was not the daughter hewanted; I was only the one heneeded. I wish I could change it. I wish I hadn’t been afraid. I wish I hadn’t spent so many yearsafraid.”
The porcelain cup shattered, splattering tea everywhere. It dripped down the table, pooling on the floor, and Everly sighed heavily. She let go of the table, staring at the shattered glass with bitter resignation.
I’d had no idea what to expect coming here. But this woman in front of me wasn’t the cold-hearted, Evil-God-worshipping witch I’d imagined. She wasn’t even the heartless Hadleigh I’d imagined. She was something else.
A storm. A storm like me. A bomb on the verge of exploding.
“What are you going to do, Everly?” I said softly. “Turn your demon on me? Or kill me yourself?”
“I don’t want you dead, Juniper. I need you alive. I need you to finish what you set out to do.”
I tested the strength of the vines again, but they still didn’t budge. “And what is it you think I set out to do?”
“Kill the Hadleighs. Destroy the Libiri. Make sure they can’t complete another sacrifice.” She stepped closer to me, and goosebumps prickled up my arms. There was something about her, something I only noticed once she was close. The air itself was charged around her, as if electricity was coursing from her. “That’s why you’re still in Abelaum, isn’t it? I can only guess that your brother’s death brought you back...but revenge made you stay. That’s why you’re out here, isn’t it? You came out here to kill me.”
“Well, I sure as hell didn’t come out here for a goddamn tea party,” I said. “Are you trying to bargain with me?”
She shook her head. “I’m trying to make it clear I’m not your enemy.”
