“You’re one of us,” I reply, meeting his eyes. “We’re brothers now.”
“Thank you,” he says. A genuine thank you, filled with sincerity.
Turning to the others, I lace my fingers together in my lap and tell them, “I’m sorry. What just happened was a lot for all of us. I shouldn’t have—”
“My friend,” Kole’s gruff voice stops me mid-sentence. “You have nothing to apologize for. What we learned has great implications. We’reallfeeling it.”
“My whole life,” Tanner adds, wide eyed. “It’s making me question everything. Everything I know about myself. My affinity. The things I’ve done.” He looks longingly at Nova, as if touching her might be the only thing that could quiet his thoughts. “Was it all preordained? Written in the stars? Are we just copies of people who’ve been here already?”
“I don’t think it works that way,” Kole says. He pinches the top of his nose. “We’re not the same people. The memory of their lives has been carried by our ancestors. Hidden. Buried. Now it’s been awakened, it lives in us.” He flexes his fingers at his sides. “I know it’s hard to understand. I think the only certainty was that we’d find each other again when the time was right.”
“Did your mother tell you that?” Luther asks, a hint of bitterness in his voice.
Kole doesn’t answer the question. Instead, he says, “She has told us all she can. It’s up to us what we do with the information we have.”
As anger returns to bite at the back of my throat, Nova is the one who speaks up. “We should go back to Phoenix Falls,” she says. “Nico said the ritual would take place in two days’ time. We need to get back and figure out how we’re going to stop it.”
“I thought that was why we came here,” Luther says.
“It hasn’t been a waste.” Nova can tell we’re all deflated. “We now know that we’re bound together, and that the way we feel about each other—and the way our ancestors felt—is the route of our power.”
“We already knew that,” Tanner mutters quietly. “The prophecy told us we were fated to you, andallmagick draws its power from emotion.”
Tilting her head, as if she’s surprised Tanner is being as pessimistic as Luther, Nova says, “But we’ve felt it now.” She looks around at each of us in turn. “We’ve felt the pain, the loss, the grief. We saw what they saw… The Original Six. We know they are a part of us. So, maybe that’s what we needed. The key to open the floodgates. Maybe now, when we confront Ragnor, we’ll be able to draw on their past strength and we’ll beat him.”
As Nova’s gloriously naïve words sink in, Kole is the one who stands and offers her his hand. When she’s on her feet, he cups her face in his hands. He doesn’t speak, just stares at her for a moment.
I glance at the others, wondering if they’ve realized that Kole and Nova can talk without words. I knew it when they first returned from the League’s clutches. The way they look at each other sometimes, the way their eyes lock and a million expressions pass over their faces, it’s obvious to anyone who’s ever witnessed a blood bonded couple.
“Is she right?” Sam interrupts their silent moment. He stands too, and draws himself up so he’s a little taller. “Is Nova right? What we saw will set her power free?”
Kole draws in a deep breath. “We need to return to Phoenix Falls,” he says. “We should sleep now. Tomorrow morning, first light, we leave for the train.”
A while later, we are lying curled around the fire, Nova stretched out between Kole and Luther, when Tanner whispers to me in the darkness. “He didn’t answer Sam’s question, did he?”
My jaw tightens. “No,” I reply. “He did not.”
34
NICO
In daylight, The Hollow is less terrifying. Eve’s altar looks like a plaything. A collection of childish objects that couldn’t possibly do any harm. But, of course, that’s the opposite of what they are.
For days now, she’s barely left the lawn of the mansion. I’m not sure if she sleeps. Her eyes are large, black, and surrounded by spidering veins and spread further down her face as the hours pass. She is high on FHB, that much is obvious, and she’s dangerously close to losing control.
I’m watching her skip in circles around the fountain when Andre—my least favorite of Ragnor’s wolves—comes outside. He looks down at me, neither friendly or unfriendly, and hands me a mug of coffee. “Wish we could fucking get on with it,” he growls.
“Alignment needs to be right,” I say, looking up at the pinkish morning sky. “Apparently.”
“Fuck,” Andre says, rolling his eyes. “She creeps me out.”
Eve is now draped over the fountain, her hair spread beneath her like a halo in the water. As if she knows we are talking about her, she turns her head toward us. She curls her finger at Andre.
“You’re wanted,” I tell him.
Andre swallows hard but doesn’t dare refuse. By the time he’s reached her, Eve has pulled her dress up around her thighs. She grins, sits up, and spreads her legs. Turns out, finding her creepy isn’t enough to stop Andre from fucking her.
As they start rutting against the fountain, I get up and stalk back into the house. The place is a mess, and it’s hard to imagine the days when Mack and the others were here. When Nova was here with them. When she thought I was her salvation.