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“You need to stay down here in the city, where you’ll be safe.”
She did a slow blink. “Please tell me you’re joking. As you now know, my death won’t undo the curse—”
“You say that like it therefore wouldn’t matter if you ceased to exist. It would matter to me, Wynter. It would matter a fuck of a lot.”
“I get it. I wouldn’t want you to die either. But ask you to sit this fight out? No, I wouldn’t do that. Don’t ask it of me. I won’t stay home twiddling my fingers while others battle a bunch of assholes that I brought to their town.”
“You realize that every single one of their army will be ordered to take you?Youwill be their focus, Wynter. They’ll kill whoever they need to kill just to get to you. And we both know you’d die before you let them take you. Why risk yourself that way?”
Her brow creased. “Why do you sound offended that I would?”
His lips flattening, he pulled her toward him using his grip on her shoulders, closing the small gap between them. “I want you towantto live, Wynter. I want you to value enough what we have that you’d at least want to live so we can see where this goes.”
“So by being part of the battle,youdon’t value this? Is that what you’re saying?”
He ground his teeth. “No.”
“It’s no different for me, so don’t twist what I’m saying. You’re uber powerful, sure. But you’ll be up against beings that can actually kill you. Your life will be at risk. I don’t hear you offering to stay home.” She perched her hands on her hips. “Why, in your mind, should you get to face them but I don’t? What did they do to you that makes your grudge so much more important than mine?”
He stared at her, touching his incisor with the tip of his tongue. “I will trust you with the answer to that … if you first tell me one thing honestly.”
She folded her arms. “Go on.”
He had a thousand questions he would love to fire at her, but she’d refuse to answer any that she wouldn’t consider worth the trade of truths. In her position, he’d do same. So he settled on asking, “Who is your father?Whatis he?”
She blinked. “I don’t actually know who he is. I never met him, and my mother didn’t say much about him.”
“Why not?”
“She wasnota fan of his. All she ever said was that he was a witch and that I was better off not knowing him. She promised to tell me more when I was ‘old enough to hear it,’ but she didn’t get that chance. I asked my grandmother and other members of the coven about him. Apparently, he was a one-night stand. When she told him she was pregnant, he wanted nothing to do with us. Davina didn’t want to tell me that when I was so young, she worried it would hurt me.”
That didn’t explainanythingfor Cain. He didn’t see how someone who wasn’t a born hybrid could be so different from an average witch.
“Now it’s your turn,” she said. “Yes, I know my response didn’t whatsoever satisfy you, but I did as you asked and answered your question. Now you need to live up to your end of the bargain.”
Heaving a sigh, Cain sank into the armchair and patted his thighs. “Sit.”
She straddled him and rested her hands on his shoulders.
He smoothed one hand up her back. “What do you know about the war that went on between the Ancients and the Aeons?”
She pursed her lips. “Not much. The Aeons were pretty vague about it. They just said a war broke out, your side lost, and they ‘mercifully’ let seven of you leave and make a home elsewhere.”
The word ‘mercifully’ made his creature growl. “They lied. They didn’t allow the survivors to live out of mercy, Wynter. It was supposed to be a punishment. A cruel one at that. We didn’t settle here to make a new home. They put us here. We cannot leave the boundaries. It’s essentially a cage.”
Her jaw went slack. “Wow. I just thought you all preferred to stick to your little corner of the world.”
“We probably would—the Earth as a whole doesn’t hold much interest for us. We may be stuck in Devil’s Cradle, but we have ways of peeking at the outside world and we’re not impressed by what we’ve seen of it. Plus, we’re not roamers, and we prefer to live in groups. But we still don’t wish to be trapped.” He ghosted his fingertips over her nape. “The Aeons believed we’d lose our minds and kill each other. They underestimated us. They’ve continued to do that for a long time.” And more fool them.
“Your only way to get revenge is to make them step on your land … except there was never a reason for them to come here,” she mused.
Cain nodded. “Until now.”
Wynter stared at him, biting her lip. Damn, this explained so much—how easily he’d promised to keep her safe, how unbothered he’d been by the prospect of the Aeons coming for her, how eager he and the other Ancients were for war.
He toyed with her hair. “Four Aeons were responsible for caging us. Only their deaths will open that cage.”
“What four?”
