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“I’m sorry, Alyssa, but I must do this. You’re here to protect Juniper, right? To make up for fucking with her magic and tanking her sex toy business? To take the fall for the crimes you both committed? Well, if I’m not out of here by the time the donut chuggers take me in for questioning, I’m telling them about her involvement in our thefts. I’ll take her down with me.”
Chapter 9
Thepanicsurgingthroughmy blood made my heart palpitate and my breath shallow. Ram was going to land Juniper in prison. He was going to ruin her life.
“If she’s arrested, I’ll make sure everyone knows you talked,” I said to him in a rush. “Nobody in here takes kindly to snitches. You’ll lose all your support.”
“I don’t care. I need to get out of here,” Ram growled. “I can’t live without my magic anymore. I feel empty. Broken. Like my very bones are missing.”
I tightened my grip on his arm. “You were empty and broken before you got here.”
He ignored my insult. “Everything I’ve ever been has been reduced down like burning a sauce until it’s only crust on the bottom of a pot.”
“Everyone here feels like that. So the fuck what?”
He kept talking as though the floodgates inside him had opened. “My magic was all I ever had that was mine. When the human exorcists and cops took me screaming from my mother, when they…” He took a shaky breath. “When they tried to beat the evil from me, when they drove us out of every town we lived in, when I ran away to protect my mother, when I had nothing but my name and the shirt on my back, I still had my magic. It never failed me. Never left me. It was like a security blanket, best friend, and a shield against the world all in one. Even when it was limited by that fucking curse Juniper put on me, it was still there.”
I swallowed a lump in my throat. I knew how he felt all too well. When my family had cast me out, my magic and Juniper were all I had.
Ram stared past me as though I wasn’t even here. “Now, there’s nothing. Like I can no longer walk or hear or see. The one thing that was mine, that was me… is just out of reach, like I’ve been leashed to a post in the sun with a water bottle left just beyond my fingers.” He blinked, coming out of his strange, poetic daze. “You must feel it too.”
I understood his every word, as though he had read it off a stone tablet in my soul. I hated when I couldn’t disagree with him.
“You understand why I have to get out of here,” Ram whispered. “Even if it means betraying you by ratting on Juniper.”
My hands shook. Fuck, fuck, fuck! I had promised myself to never play his games again, but he had me cornered, and I didn’t know what to do. If I didn’t help him, my best friend would be jailed after I had pleaded guilty to save her from legal troubles.
If I helped him, I’d be letting a very dangerous person walk free. “If you escape, you’ll try to kill Juniper. And you’ll target the Eclipses too. You already did once when you sent Azea to burn their homes a couple of years ago. And there will be nothing to stop you from snitching on Juniper or me.” My words came out faster and faster as I realized I had no fucking way to stop him from harming people I care about.
“I didn’t send Azea and the others to burn your town, Alyssa. They did that on their own. As for snitching once free, you have my word—”
“Your word means shit.”
“And yours means less,” Ram snapped. There was his rage bursting out. Finally, something honest from him. “Help me escape. Bring the beaver and anyone else you want. I’ll stay quiet, and you can run back to this cage if you want.”
Like hell I could. He’d go after everyone I cared about once he had his magic back. Fuck, he’d probably attack me right away, and I wasn’t powerful enough to stop him on my own. For all his faults, Ram was one of the most skilled witches of our generation.
“Pathetic bastard. You wanted to take away the world’s magic, and you can’t even stand a few years without your own.”
Ram yanked his arm free of my hold. “I’m not interested in stealing magic anymore—”
“Because it’s not an option.”
The magical relic that stripped people of their magic was destroyed, no thanks to Ram.
“And I have no intentions of finding a new method,” Ram said smoothly, his rage tucked away again. “I don’t wish to control the world. I just want myself back.”
“I don’t believe you,” I said.
His brows turned down at the ends. “You walked away from our old life. So did Juniper. Why can’t I change too?”
I jerked, uncomfortably reminded of when I had said something similar to Juniper. She had thought I would side with Ram and his plans for world domination over her. And it had broken my heart to learn that the one person who had stood by my side thought I was a villain, just like everyone else in the world believed.
We had reconciled since then. But it was just like Ram to guess at my pain and parrot it back to manipulate me.
Jag, who had been watching our exchange, stepped closer. “Is everything okay?” He eyed Ram, then leaned toward me. “Do you need me to kick his ass?”
“I can kick his ass myself,” I said.
