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Kai was in front of her now, his hands gone from her shoulders, now on her face, his eyes, those dark storm clouds bearing into hers. She noticed the tears that had escaped, now streaming down her cheeks. “Who did this?” Her voice was so broken, so not hers.
Kai’s thumbs stroked her cheeks, whisking the wetness away. “We’ll find out, I promise, and they’ll pay for it.”
Good—but it wasn’t enough.
Her mother. Lukas. Renoir. Callan. Sandrine. Dante. Eli…
Isla turned away from the river and looked up at the bank, finding their family finally united, all drying from being caught in the rain. On one end of the shore stood Ameera, Rhydian, Jonah, and Davina, and on the other, her father, Adrien, and Sebastian—the divide of their lives.
Her stare fixed on her dad, and she hated that it narrowed. Hated that it drifted over his clothes, his hands, searching for blood.
Let it go, General.
Again, Isla was moving, trudging up the mud of the river’s edges, the muscles of her legs bleating in protest, but all thought had eddied away. “Where wereyou?” she snapped at her father.
Malakai jerked back, clearly ambushed by the question, by her demeanor. “What?”
“Where were you?” Isla pressed, her hands balling into fists at her sides. “I haven’t seen you all night.”
Malakai blinked. “Haven’t you been busy?”
“Isla.”
Isla whipped around to her brother, whose brows buckled, assessing her disposition. “He was with us.”
There was enough hesitance and question in his words that she pressured, “All night?”
Sebastian didn’t answer, and that was an answer enough. Even Adrien beside him was stonily silent, his features paling. She knew that look; he wasn’t saying something. All it took was a flaring of nostrils and a squint of her eyes for him to get her question. He shook his head.
Not all night, then.
She needed to hear it from her father’s lips. Malakai’s eyes had drifted behind her to Kai.
“Did you talk to Eli tonight?” Isla asked, regaining his attention.
Malakai’s throat bobbed as he absorbed all the attention on him, the eavesdropping crowd around them. He let out a heavy breath. “Yes, I did.”
That shouldn’t have relieved her, but if he wouldn’t hide that fact, it was a good sign…in her eyes. But it seemed he understood precisely what she was alluding to, and hurt—genuine, deep, gutting hurt—lashed across his face. She placed that final brick on the wall between them. Now, she was just missing the mortar to set it.
To her surprise, her father didn’t ask the classic questions, including, “how could youthink I’d be capable of this.”He only looked back at Kai again. And that panic she’d seen from him in the throne room when she’d been crowned, whatever sense of her being pulled away that had rattled him appeared and then vanished, whetted into a resentment.
Kai seemed to sense it himself, and when she instinctually stepped back, dropping her arm back just to have a hand anywhere on him, he braced his own hand on her shoulder. “I think it would be best if you left tomorrow, Beta.”
Malakai’s nostrils flared. “I agree—Cassius will want to know about this.”
That fucking name.
“By morning,” Isla clipped before she could stop it. Malakai looked down at her, eyes blinking in bewilderment as she prepared that final seal of their relationship.
She could take it back. She could change her mind—apologize. But when she closed her eyes, she saw Eli’s face and everyone else they’d lost in too short a time. She wanted to scream about her mother, that Cassius, his alpha, his best fucking friend, had known that he’d sent her off to hell, but she could only get herself to repeat, “You should be gone by morning.”
Sebastian didn’t seem to know what to do with himself, his stare darting between his sister and his father.
Malakai’s nod was rigid. “If you wish…Your Majesty.”
Two words shouldn’t have wrecked her so thoroughly.
Kai’s hand had dropped to her back, drawing hidden, soothing circles as she trembled, telling her to hold it together just a little longer, and then she could break all she needed to.
