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“No, no.” She shakes her head, and every muscle in my body tenses as she cradles both sides of my face, her hands gentle as she looks me over. I can’t remember herevertouching me like this. “You look better.”
“What the hell is going on? You…you’re the one who planted the idea in Reid’s head to get paired with me.”
“Yes,” she says, impatiently waving her hand, as if the detail is minor. “Now, did you get the book?”
“Oh my God,” I breathe.
It was her.
She went to see Reid in Russia, where he’d been when he was still partnered with Graham.
It’s a topic we’ve never talked much about. Even giving me the smallest details, I could tell how much pain it caused him to recall it.
Graham didn’t just die. Someone made him attack Reid relentlessly, and whether it was self-defense or not, I know that guilt weighs heavily on him.
He didn’t just lose his best friend that night. He also had to shoulder the burden that it was at his hands.
He’d assumed it was a vampire who glamoured Graham.
I stare at my mother, somehow immediately knowing the truth and desperately trying to bury it in the back of my mind.
Because that would mean that Graham died so I could live.
She shakes me. “Did you get the book?”
“Yes, yes, I have it.”
“Good.” Her fingers tighten on my cheeks. “Now I need you to listen to me very closely.”
“No.” I take a step back, forcing her to drop her hands, a fire sparking in my chest. “You have kept me in the dark about everything for the past twenty-two years.Twenty-two years.If you want me to listen to a word you say, then I need the truth, for once, about what thefuckis going on.”
I expect her to bulldoze right over that too, but she looks at me for a moment, really looks at me, then sighs. “Where do you want me to start?”
A hysterical laugh gets caught in my throat because where could I possibly start? She’s been lying to me for my entire life.
“You’re at one of Westcott’s compounds now?”
She nods.
“How? How could you possibly join him after everything he’s done? After he—”
“There’s a lot that you don’t know, Valerie. It was safer for you not to know. And I know what you must think of me. I know because that’s the way it had to be. If there had been any other way, I would have taken it.”
She takes a step closer, and I don’t pull away as she wraps a hand around my wrist. “The spell I did to bring you back took a lot of my magic out of me. Not all, but most. Enough that I knew I would no longer be welcome at the estates, certainly not fit in my partnership anymore. Which would lead to questions aboutwhyit was necessary for me to transfer those powers to you, and that would expose your magic. So I left. As for your father…like it or not, this compound was the one place I knew would be safe. I’ve made a lot of enemies over the years, Valerie, enemies who would love to jump at this opportunity when I don’t have my magic. If I hadn’t come here…well, you and I wouldn’t be having this conversation. And I came here for Calliope.”
“Did you know she was alive?” I demand. “Did you let me and Adrienne think she—”
“No,” she insists, her voice firm, and despite the million reasons I shouldn’t trust a word she says, I believe her.
And despite the way Calla and I left things, I can’t help myself from asking, “Is she okay?”
A softness I’ve rarely seen descends over Mom’s eyes. “Yes. She’s fine. She also told me what happened while you were here.” I brace myself for a lecture, an insult, an admonishment—something. But she smiles. “I can’t tell you how proud of you I am, Valerie.”
“Don’t,” I snap, ripping my arm out of her grasp, refusing to let the hurt little kid version inside of me glow beneath that praise, because I’m pretty sure that’s the first time she’s ever said that to me. “Don’t pretend to care.”
She has the audacity to look hurt. “Valerie.”
“You told me I was dead to you, do you remember that?”
