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“I see,” Soreth said from behind. “And how many rooms have you entered?”
“Three. This will be our fourth. And let me tell you, it’s no picnic on the other side of these doors.”
Vespyr slammed into the room, and I followed after her, looking over what appeared to be the inside of a cave. Beyond the mouth of the cave was a beach, where the ocean waves crashed on the shore. And standing at the cave’s threshold was a woman with long, brunette hair that I remembered twirling in my fingers as a child.
Tears filled my eyes, my chest burning with the kind of longing I hadn’t felt in years.
The woman turned around, and I instantly recognized her face. The brown eyes and dimples in her cheeks that my father had always found so endearing about her. “It’s you,” she said, smiling, and stretched out her arms.
As I walked toward her, desperate for that embrace, she shuffled past me as if I were invisible, and ran straight to Soreth, wrapping her arms around his neck as she drew him in for a kiss.
What the … fuck?
“I waited so long,” she whispered and kissed him again.
I caught the subtle push of Soreth’s hands, but she failed to release him.
“Mother?” I felt weird getting any closer, so I kept my distance from the two of them, but she didn’t turn around, at all. In fact, she didn’t even acknowledge that I’d called out to her.
“What’s wrong?” She held her palms against Soreth’s face and tilted her head to get his attention. “Why are you ignoring me?”
“What in the mom kink is going on here?” Vespyr whispered beside me, and I elbowed her, not wanting to admit that I was beginning to think there was something to the scenario playing out.
At first, I’d thought it wasmyhell. My nightmare. But given the look of annoyance on Soreth’s face, the way his pale cheeks heated red, it was clear the memory belonged to him.
My mother stepped away from Soreth, turning her back on him, which put her face to face with me, and still, she behaved as if she couldn’t see me standing there. “Look, if this is about Farryn, I told you … I couldn’t bring her this time. I feel like there’s something watching her. Every time I’ve gone into her room, there’s a shadow there. It’s the most unnerving thing.”
I stood frozen in shock, my feet glued to the bed of the cave below me. Shuddering breaths sawed in and out of me, as I absorbed the picture that she was painting inside my head.
A dastardly scene of betrayal.
Soreth glanced to me and back to my mother. “Enough of this. I don’t know you.”
Frowning, my mother spun around, and at that point, I just wanted to know the truth. “Soreth … what are you doing?” Her voice held a pathetic plea that didn’t sound like my mother, at all. “I promise, I’ll give her over to you, but you have to give me time, my love.” She lurched forward toward him, and he took a step back, avoiding her outstretched arms. “Please. If I can sneak her out of the house without her damn father noticing, I will. I will bring her to you, as we discussed.”
My gaze flitted to Soreth and back to my mother, my heart pounding way too fast inside my chest. “What is this? My mother was going to hand me over to you?”
Soreth stepped toward me, and I jumped back away from him. “This isn’t real, Farryn. None of this is real.”
The boy wrapped his arms around me, clutching me tight. When I glanced down at him, he nodded, which I took to mean that it was, in fact, real. “Did you kill her?”
“Do you want the truth, or his lies?” For the first time, my mother looked me dead in the eyes, her expression holding no warmth for me, or recognition. Only a cold and bitter detachment. “He wanted you, but you were protected. Too protected.”
“Did Papa know about this? You and him?”
Her brow flickered, the first sign of any emotion, or remorse. “Of course not. It was not my intent to hurt your father.”
“Only me.”
“Enough!” Hands balled, Soreth stepped toward her, his teeth clenched. “Do not say another word.”
“He told me something was after you. That they wanted to protect you, but I didn’t deliver, as promised. And he got angry. So angry,” she said on a shaky voice, her eyes glistening with tears. “He wanted to keep you for himself.”
“Say another word, and so help me, God, I will strike you down as I did that night!” The moment the words escaped him, he looked away, his body shaking.
My body shook, too, from the rush of anger beating through me. “It was you! The night of the blood moon, Drystan told me that one of the Sentinels had betrayed Jericho. It was you.”
“There was a time when angels didn’t fuck humans, or demons. A time when they were clean. Pure.Meracusz.Jericho doesn’t deserve the power he was given. Half-breeds don’t deserve that kind of power.”
