AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I’ll be all right,” he said with a half-smile. His gaze lingered on my face longer than it really needed to, as if he were making up for the time when he hadn’t been around to look at me. “I’ll just take it slow.”
We all gathered on the front drive as we got out. Lesley was holding her phone. She glanced up at me, her mouth twitching as if she wasn’t sure whether to grin or not. “I just heard from my cousin,” she said. “Enforcers came by my estate and arrested both of my parents.”
My heart leapt. The Justice Division was already acting on the files Kyler had transferred to them.
Had they picked up Dad too? While the medic had been treating Gabriel, I’d told Investigator Ruiz more about how his scheme had intersected with the Cliff and what he’d told me in the cave, but she’d been too occupied handling all the new information about the Frankfords to bring me in for a formal interview yet. Dad’s name was all over their records, though.
“You could go home then,” I said to Lesley. “I mean, after the Assembly has cleared you to leave. I’ll tell them you were just doing what I asked.”
She frowned. “They can’t blame you for what you did. You were trying to protect all of us. I still can’t believe—that’s really what they meant to do with me—” She shivered. “I don’t know. It might be good to stay a little longer, until I know for sure what’s happening with the whole conspiracy. If that’s okay.”
“Of course!” I said quickly. “You can stay as long as you need to. The Spark knows I’ve got plenty of room around this place.”
I’d need to call Imogen when I had the chance. If the enforcers had picked up Lesley’s parents, they’d probably come for Imogen’s aunt and uncle too, but I could at least tell her why properly now.
But first I had problems right here to deal with. Across from me, Damon folded his arms over his chest and glowered at Gabriel. “Looks like I’ve got to be the one to say it. Are we really going to pretend that this guy didn’t run off on us and leave us in the lurch after tearing you down? He changes his mind at the last minute and all is forgiven and forgotten? I don’t think so.”
Gabriel tensed beside me. Naomi took in the group of us and motioned to Lesley and Thalia. “I think we’ll leave you and your consorts to work this out without an audience,” she said.
I grasped Gabriel’s hand again as the other witches headed for the house. “He just suffered a near-fatal wound,” I said. “A wound he got saving mylife.It’d be nice to give him more than five hours in a moving car to recover before we’re interrogating him. And anyway, it’s obvious to me from how things went down by the Cliff that he was always trying to help us.”
“I don’t care what he wastryingto do,” Damon said. “I was here. I saw how he left you. He ripped your heart in half.”
I couldn’t say that assessment was inaccurate. I swallowed hard. “Damon…”
“It’s okay,” Gabriel broke in. “I can talk about it, answer whatever questions any of you have. Explain myself as well as I can. I owe you all that much. Especially you.” He looked at me, his mouth twisting.
“Let’s at least get inside where you can sit down and rest,” I said.
By the time we reached the hall, my guests had already dispersed to their rooms upstairs. My consorts and I ducked into the living room. Gabriel sank into an armchair near the door with an air that suggested he felt he needed to prove he could sit on his own. Damon took a spot beside me on the sofa, braced as if he thought he needed to be on guard for my sake. I nudged him, and he just looped his arm around mine. The twins and Jin settled onto the sofa across from us, their expressions a mix of curiosity and apprehension.
Gabriel bowed his head for a moment. Then he looked up at me. “I was scared for you,” he said, his voice rough. “So fucking scared. I believed you could beat the Frankfords—that’s not it—but I was afraid of how far you’d have to go to do that, how much of your conscience you might end up sacrificing… I tried to talk you down, but it wasn’t as if I had a better strategy to offer you. But I knew I could contribute a hell of a lot more as a sort of double agent.”
“You could have told us that’s what you were planning,” Seth said. “Or at least toldRoseinstead of tearing into her like that.”
Gabriel winced. “I wish I’d seen a better way. But I needed Frankford to believe I’d really defected. If you hadn’t seemed hurt enough, if anyone had given some sign they weren’t as concerned as they should be… He’d have seen through the ploy. I had a hard enough time getting him to use me as it was.”
The memory of that moment when he’d left swam up through my mind with a jab through my gut and a new understanding. “That’s why you stopped the car and provoked the argument outside the gate. We knew he was monitoring what was happening there. You wanted to make sure he saw it.”
“Yeah.” The anguish couldn’t have been plainer on Gabriel’s face. “I’m sorry, Rose. It’s been killing me knowing how much I must have hurt you. If I’d seen some other way to do it… I just hope I’ve saved you from more hurt than I caused. That’s all I could ask for.”
“You really can’t know, can you?” Damon muttered. “And you all accusemeof using stupid tactics.”
“Gabriel did get us intel that we hadn’t managed to get on our own, and not for lack of trying,” Ky pointed out. “It might have taken us weeks and weeks more before we knew how to bring in those Assembly officials.”
“Or maybe we’d have figured it out ourselves in another couple days without the whole heartbreaker routine.”
“We can’t know either way,” I said. “And that’s all in the past now. All we can do is go forward from here.” I let out a ragged breath and met Gabriel’s eyes again. “Don’t you ever go off like that again without telling me what’s going on first. You have no idea… The things you said…”
I was starting to choke up. I blinked hard, struggling for words. Gabriel made a strangled sound and scooted forward on his chair to grasp my knee. “I know. I’m sorry.”
“Sorry,” Damon repeated in a mocking tone.
Gabriel turned to him and then the rest of the guys. “I should apologize to all of you too. We’re all… We’re all family now, right? And I left all of you, in the worst way. I’m sorry for that too. You deserved better from me.”
Even Damon’s anger wavered a little at those words. Jin cleared his throat. “It’s been a long day. I say we all take some down time to process everything, see how we feel after that, and we can always talk more later, as much as we need to.”
Damon looked as though he might argue, but he stopped himself with a grimace. Seth and Ky nodded. Before anyone could get up, I held up my hand.
