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Tangled fucking web is right.
“I have to say, in all my years this is one of the most beguiling, mind-boggling scenarios I have ever come across,” Solon says gravely. “I can’t begin to make sense of it.”
And yet somehow it does make sense.
“Is Bellamy still alive?” I ask.
“I’m going to fucking kill him,” Dylan says after he finishes his drink, slamming it so hard on the counter that it nearly shatters.
“We’ve been keeping tabs on him throughout the years,” Solon says, eying Dylan warily. “Lately though, we’ve lost contact. Or rather, we lost our contact. We assume he’s still alive though. The kicker is…” He trails off, a grimace on his face.
“What?” I ask.
“He hasn’t seemed to age,” Solon says. “There’s a whole group of witches that haven’t aged at all. Their aging seems to have stopped twenty years ago.”
“Twenty-one years ago,” Dylan says dully. When he meets my eyes, they’re bloodshot. “They stopped aging when they took my twin.”
Solon nods slowly. “Yeah. That’s what we’ve been afraid of. We think the witches had an interest in you all specifically because you’re the children of Amethyst, who was turned, and never should have been able to reproduce. We think they thought your blood holds special properties. They might be right.”
“But you’re the most valuable,” I say, and point at Lenore. “You were able to turn Solon and my mom without creating monsters. Why not go after you instead?”
“As you can see, we don’t have children,” Solon says. “By choice. But they have come after me. They’ve come after Lenore, and they’ve come after your mother. That’s why everyone is in hiding.”
“Except you’re hiding in plain sight,” I say.
He gives me a wise smile. “That’s the best place to hide. Not only does this house seem to operate as a museum during the day, we have it so that people think we live elsewhere. In fact, we do operate a feeding room here in the city, it’s just no longer in Dark Eyes. It’s in the decoy house. As long as the wards hold here, and they’ve never failed so as long as I’ve been in the house, then we’re protected.”
“They didn’t hold up very well when they took Leif,” Dylan says snidely as Lenore comes over and pours him more vodka.
Solon looks chagrined. “I know. Because I wasn’t there. We believe it was an inside job. Someone that had already been in here before. We assumed it was Ezra at first, but I’m good at sniffing out the truth and he was telling the truth.”
“Now you really look like you could use a drink,” Lenore says. “Bloody Mary?”
I nod. “So, after that we went into hiding?”
“Yes,” says Solon. “But not right away. Things were a mess. We all wanted to get Leif back. We did all we could think of. It wasn’t until she discovered she was pregnant with you that they thought changing their names and hitting the road would be the safest option. They just wanted to protect you.”
“And they did,” Lenore says. I watch as she pours in tomato juice and then a few spoonfuls of dark red liquid. My stomach growls, immediately recognizing the smell and look of blood. She gives me an impish smile. “Told you. A real Bloody Mary. It will perk you right up. When’s the last time you fed?”
I just shake my head. “I don’t know.” I look back at Solon. “My parents said Valtu has the book.”
Solon nods at Lenore. “I think I’m going to need one of those too.”
She passes the drink to me and he continues. “Yes. He has the book. We had hoped he would bring it here to help us with it, use the book to try and track down Bellamy and Leif in some way. But he didn’t. He said he had to hide it to keep it safe. But it didn’t matter anyway, because I don’t think there was anything he could have done to help. Bellamy covered his tracks too well.”
My heartrate has already increased since I said his name and I take in a deep breath to steady myself. “And where is Valtu now? Is he alive? Is he okay?” Solon rubs his lips together as Lenore hands him his drink. “You know that’s why I’m here right?” I add, feeling frantic now. “I need to find him.”
The tension in the room rises as he takes a deliberate sip of his drink, wetting his lips.
“I’m not sure you want to do that,” Solon eventually says. “Maybe he doesn’t want to be found.”
I shake my head, not understanding. “I don’t get. Of course he wants to be found. It’s me. He was my damn husband at one point.”
“Didn’t he kill you?” Dylan points out softly.
I glare at him. “I’m sure he didn’t mean to.”
But even as I say it, I know the truth. He did mean to kill me. He meant to kill Dahlia, the witch who betrayed him, who was sent to slay him. He just didn’t know it wasme.
