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“She lives here,” Gavin reassured. “No one would bat an eye at seeing her walk down the streets.”
They kept their steps light, but the eerie silence around them raised the hair on her arms. Her heart jolted when something crunched beneath the heel of her boot.
Violet looked down to see a green sliver of painted wood. A piece from what had once been the front door. She lifted her head slowly, her breathing impossibly loud. The porch hid most of the entrance from sight, but even here in the pathway, fragmented parts of it lay dotted about.
Someone was here. Her heart lodged in her throat, and both Gavin and her rushed toward the house, their magic buzzing around them in a thick air shield. They crossed the threshold and burst into the small living room. Her childhood home was a mess of shattered furniture with debris strewn all over the floor.
Gavin’s sword sliding from its sheath broke the dead silence. The back doors swung against the walls, pushed by the wind.
The sea breeze had cooled the place so much that their breaths billowed in clouds before their faces. Violet’s fingers were numb, stiff with the lack of blood as she tightened her fist. She stood frozen in her spot as she remembered her mother and sister. This morning they’d all sat at that table. Now it lay in pieces.
Gavin moved cautiously around the house, his sword drawn. She wasn’t sure how long she stood there, staring at the remnants of what had once been her family’s life, now scattered and broken. Destroyed by the Society of Crows. Blue flames hovered over her skin, feeding on the anger that boiled in her gut.
“Love, no one’s here.” Gavin pushed his hair out of his face. “It hasn’t been gone that long. We can look for them in the streets, ask around. I’m not sure where they would take them.”
Why leave this place empty? Why was the furniture destroyed? Her sister and mother wouldn’t have put up a fight. Not against a member of the Society of Crows.
How many of them had been here?
Violet moved across the kitchen and toward the back doors, taking hold of one of them. She listened out for anything that wasn’t normal. Steps, the creaking of floorboards, the grinding sound of sand that might alert her to someone walking on the beach. But her rapid heartbeats drowned out everything.
The boathouse. She’d almost forgotten about it. A dark building that had always given her the creeps since it smelled like death and critters lived in its the dark corners. Her dad used to keep his large fishing boat there.
“Violet, I didn’t know you’d brought my satchel with you from Scoria. Did you leave it here earlier?”
His satchel? She turned to Gavin, her brows dipping low as she stared at the brown bag he was holding in one hand. She hadn’t seen it since he’d given it to her right before Julius had arrested him.
Her blood ran cold, and she stopped breathing. No, that wasn’t right. She’d last seen it when she’d broken into the governor’s house—right before Julius had captured her in the tunnels.
“It still has most of my things—except for the healing potion.” Gavin met her eyes and paused, reading her face. “You weren’t the one to bring it here.”
It wasn’t a question. She stumbled toward him like a newborn fawn. Gavin met her halfway, his expression shifting from confused to worried.
“Did you use the potion back in Scoria, in his room?”
“No.”
Was Julius Coventry alive? She’d left him in that house to suffer a slow death, like the bastard deserved. He’d been at death’s doorstep. There was no way he could have survived.
“Fuck, Violet. Did you actually kill him?”
“He was dying and unconscious.” Or so she’d thought. “I locked the door so no one would help him.” The words didn’t ease the weight already settling within her. Of her massive mistake. One she’d repeated again.
Whenever she’d replayed that night in Scoria, she’d told herself that she’d wanted to protect Gavin from having to potentially kill Julius after his betrayal. Because he was good, unlike her. But now the truth slammed into her. It had been more than that. She hadn’t trusted that he wouldn’t heal Julius.
She hadn’t wanted Gavin to kill his old commander and regret it, and yet she also hadn’t wanted him to save the monster, either.
Lying to herself in retrospect had been easier. The closer she grew to Gavin, the happier she’d been that he hadn’t been forced to make a choice that would burden him. But it had been her own uncertainties that had made her hide the truth that Julius wasn’t dead in the first place.
She’d relied only on herself, just like she’d done her entire life. And now this massive mistake had come back around to hurt her family.
“He left the bag here to show us he was here,” she said tonelessly.
She expected Gavin to berate her. For lying. For not trusting him.
“We will talk about this later.” Gavin pulled her close, and his warmth seeped through the layers of her coat. “He’s playing with us. He wants you to act irrationally. I know how he works, and he’s overly confident. He would assume we’re easy prey.”
“Right now I feel like it.”
