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“There are limits to one’s abilities. Even mine, Jeni. And when one sees the entire world as a threat, like you have your entire life, you would be willing to take drastic measures, do anything for him. Anything. The question is, Jeni, if you went to such great lengths to get him somewhere safe, do you really want to find him?”
Oh God. I hid him for a reason.
I left the private airport alone on foot. I wasn’t familiar with LA, but I wasn’t impressed. Dirty, congested, angry. As I walked alone in the middle of the night, knowing I wasn’t quite by myself—Ansin was never far away, just like back at home—I had to sort through the pieces and attempt to assemble them on my own.
I’d said it too many times before, like a New Year’s resolution I was destined to break: I needed to stop depending on others. But this time, I had to mean it. This wasn’t a pledge to eat less carbs or read more books. This was my life because Draco was everything to me.
So if there was any truth to what Ansin said, it meant I’d seen something coming. Perhaps a threat against my child. Maybe even against me. And if that were true, I had to stop looking for him. But if it wasn’t, then what?
Okay, stop. Think, Jeni. Filter out the noise. My mind tumbled like clothes in a dryer. This all started the moment King died.
I’d watched Ansin slice King’s throat, and aside from the shock and horror, seeing King dead devastated me on a whole other level. I’d been banking on him being by my side—to help protect me and the baby against the Seers. So when he died, my safety net shattered.
Of course, King ended up coming back. Strange, because I definitely remembered when Ansin ordered the hospital staff to chuck King’s dead body into the incinerator. Nothing could resist Ansin’s voice, so how’d King’s body end up frozen in a morgue?
In any case, that moment in the delivery room had been when Ariadna appeared, full of hate and fury. She’d laid it all out, including the doom ahead.
My point was that those two events had shaken me to the bone and made my world a much darker place. I remembered feeling so afraid of the future that I could barely breathe.
That was why I moved to Ansin’s house in Miami after swearing up and down I wouldn’t step foot inside. It was the safest place for Draco and me.
But what happened after? Who had threatened me? Or what had I seen?
Now that I thought about it, I really wasn’t sure. My memories went from holding Draco at the hospital to being in Miami. I recalled snippets of Dad visiting, of Draco fussing with breastfeeding, of holding him and feeling mesmerized by his tiny pink lips and delicate black lashes. I remembered promising to be there for him no matter what. Always and forever. But where were the other parts of my life? My body shrinking back to almost normal. Shopping for baby clothes or assembling the crib. Visits with the pediatrician.
I stopped walking and covered my mouth. I knew Draco. I knew how to take care of him, the sound of his tiny giggles, and how his blue eyes lit up when I sang to him. I’d been there every day since he was born, but I couldn’t remember him growing. There were giant gaping holes in my memory.
Ansin is right. I did this. I bent over, covering my face. I couldn’t breathe. Why would I do this to myself?
I could only come up with one answer: Because I wanted to.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“I’m going to stop looking for Draco,” I announced to both King and Ansin from the living room of the hotel suite King had procured near the private airport in order to give me a place to gather myself. I had walked back and found them waiting in the airport parking lot, the two screaming at each other. King was blaming Ansin for not decapitating him: “Such sloppy work!” King roared. Ansin was blaming King for not preparing me to fend for myself before the baby came.
After I broke them up, I collapsed with a headache. King suggested we come here. (A) It was close. (B) I apparently owned it.
“Are you certain you want to stop searching for him?” Ansin asked, sitting at the small breakfast table near the door.
“Yes.”
“If you say so.” King stared from the dark gray sofa.
“I do. If I hid Draco, it was for a good reason.” And the fact that I’d found a way to do it—breaking contact with the Seers, destroying King’s arsenal, and literally sucking the life from everything that could help me find Draco—meant I’d gone the extra mile. “Something or someone scared me so badly that I gave up my baby.”
