Athena matters tous, but to our fathers, she’s nothing but a tool. A means to decide the heir, and I’m pretty sure by now, a means to manipulate me.
There’s no reason for them to care about her, or her mother. And as I ask myself the question,if killing either of them would help them achieve their ends, would my father, Dean's, or Jaxon’s do it?
I know, deep down, what the answer is.
And I’ve never been more angry.
“We can’t let them get away with this,” I say viciously. “What they did to Athena was too far, but we didn’t know then. This? This is too much.”
“We don’t know for sure—”
“You know it’s true.” I look at Dean, feeling myself almost trembling with fury. “Youknow.”
“They’re our fathers—”
“I don’t care!” I snarl, and Jaxon nods, a rare smile spreading across his face at my reaction. “My father fucking beat me until I was scarred for life to make me into the man he wanted me to be. Your father has controlled everything you’ve ever done, down to who you would marry, in order to win this fucking game. And yours?” I look at Jaxon, my chest heaving. “Where does Natalie’s death fit into this little theory of yours? Do you think they would have ever let the two of you leave, the way she wanted?”
I see the sudden horror in Jaxon’s face, and I know then that he hadn’t thought of that, or if he had, he hadn’t really allowed himself to follow the thought to its natural conclusion.
“This has to end,” I say, my voice low and dark. “We’re going to let it lie today, because we need to be there for Athena. But this has gone too far. It’s got to stop.”
“Agreed.” Jaxon says, his own voice hard and brittle. Dean says nothing, just watches me, but I can see something unreadable in his expression.He’ll come around,I think, looking at him. He might just take a little more convincing.
Athena is ours. And no one is ever going to fucking hurt her, or anyone she cares about, ever again.
Not even if it’s our own families.
4
ATHENA
Ibarely make it through the funeral.
The entire thing feels like a nightmare. There’s no casket, only the urn, which makes it feel even more like a nightmare because I can’t see my mother’s face. It doesn’t make sense that I’ll never see it again, and I can’t seem to fathom that she’s in there, just a pile of ashes.
Like my childhood home. Like the life I’d imagined for myself. Like all the times I’d told myself that I could save us both. That what I was doing was to help her, as well as myself.
What am I even doing anymore?
Why am I here? Why should I go back to Blackmoor?
The obvious answer is because the boys will come after me. But I’m not even sure if I care anymore.
The answer that I don’t want to admit is because I want to stay with them. Because I no longer entirely want to leave.
And I need them, if I want to change anything at all in this rotten fucking town.
I couldn’t have told you who was in charge of the service. I just sat next to Mia, with Cayde and Dean and Jaxon on my other side, staring at the urn blankly as the funeral director spoke to an almost empty room. No one came, except for Mrs. Roseworth, and a few of our other neighbors from when we lived in the old house, the one I’d grown up in. It made me even sadder, somehow, that there were so few people here for my mother’s funeral. She’d been so good to everyone, but in the end, almost all of them had forgotten her.
Not even Philip St. Vincent could be bothered to show.Of course,I think bitterly as I stare at the urn.He’s probably part of the reason this happened at all.
It’s ironic that his son is the one on my left side, holding my hand tightly the same way Mia is holding my right. If you’d asked me not that long ago if Cayde St. Vincent would be holding my hand at my mother’s funeral, I would have thought you were high. This is a side to him that I’ve never seen before. A side that I couldn’t have imagined in high school, or even a few months ago, when I woke up in Blackmoor House.
I was told I could keep the urn, but I opted to bury it instead. My mother would have wanted to be buried next to my father, I’m sure. So when the short service is concluded, we all troop out into the rainy dark evening to stand in the wet grass next to the hole in the earth, Mia and Cayde still flanking me as Dean and Jaxon stand behind me, like a small army keeping me on my feet throughout this entire wretched experience.
I don’t feel as if I can breathe again until we walk back into Blackmoor House, and not even really then. Mia hovers in the entryway, as if wondering whether she should stay or not.
“You don’t have to,” I tell her, picking up on how awkward and nervous she feels. I can see her glancing at the guys, trying not to stare, clearly thinking about all the things I’ve told her. If I were less overwhelmed with grief, I’d probably be embarrassed, but I’m too exhausted to feel anything other than the crushing sorrow that makes me feel as if I might be flattened under its weight at any moment.