Page 157 of Claimed By Fangs and Darkness

“Exactly,” I said, grateful Vesper was here. I fought the urge to make myself smaller, to cower in the face of my loved ones’ displeasure and anger. “I’m not doing all of this only out of guilt. Yes, it’s not fair that Aster has had his sights set on me sinceI was a child. It’s disgusting, but it gives me an advantage. I’m only trying to help everyone win a war against a king who has ruled for amillenniumand his powerful army that covers the entire fucking realm. We need all the advantage we can get. Why can’t you see that? Why can’t either of you see that?”

Idris blinked, his face twisting with conflicted emotions. The nearly full moon illuminated us with her soothing silvery rays.

“You’re bleeding nighttime, Evie,” he whispered, a sad smile on his lips.

It’s what he said to me before I killed our coven.

Darkness bloomed from me like ink underwater. A sob was forming from deep within me. I wanted to be saying these things to Kylo too. He hadn’t given me a chance.

I pulled my shadows back inside. When the sob finally broke free, Vesper sat next to me on the bench and rubbed my back. I clumsily accepted her affection, stifling more tears as painful vulnerability reared its head.

“We can’t see it because we love you and we don’t want you to risk your life or the healing you’ve only just begun,” Idris said. He kneeled and squeezed my hand. “That we both have only just begun.”

“War is going to risk everything anyway,” I said. “I don’t want to be treated with kid gloves. Same as you.”

Understanding washed over Idris’s features, and he didn’t look too happy about it.

“Mirrors are a curious thing,” Vesper murmured, staring off into the distance.

My head snapped toward her. “What?”

“The way you’re being treated now is how you once treated your little brother, I’m assuming?” Vesper said as she glanced between us.

“You could say that,” Idris said with a sigh. He sat back down.

“You said the same thing about hatred—that it was a curious thing. You said it could tell us a lot about ourselves,” I said slowly. I remembered all the imagery and dreams of mirrors the last few weeks.

“Botharecurious, this is true. Mirrors and hatred tend to go hand-in-hand. Why do you hate that Juliette is mimicking you, Evie?”

I frowned. I wanted to say because it was irritating and psychotic, but that felt too obvious. To be honest, I wasn’t really in the mood for cosmic lessons.

Where was Kylo? All of me was on high alert, paranoid about what he was doing right now. Could he not stand to look at me anymore? Or was he going to do something stupid like storm Conrad’s estate?

I just wanted to make things right. But every time I had the urge to get up and go look for him, I remembered him yelling at me to get away.

I slowly refocused on Vesper. I allowed my spiritual paradigm to take back its shape, focusing on the lump in my throat and the visions of mirrors. Princeton and Hekate’s presence bled through the cracks in my defenses.

“Because I’m scared of her being right,” I admitted. “Terrified of it.”

“Right about you being the same?”

I nodded. “I’m afraid that if I admit she’s traumatized the same as I was, perhaps even worse, then I can no longer purely hate her and want her dead.”

It wasn’t the whole truth, and I knew it. Something far deeper was triggered by Juliette’s fixation and mirroring, a rumination I was scared to say out loud.

Vesper saw it in my face. I know she did.

“You said she was my shadow.”

Vesper moved her gaze to focus on the city in the distance. “You are not the same, Evie. But the people I’ve hated the most have often had a quality within them that I detested about myself. A quality I denied, a quality I didn’t like seeing mirrored back to me. It’s good you’re still feeling empathetic toward her. Doesn’t mean her fate needs to change.”

“It doesn’t,” Idris affirmed. “My classmates in that building are gone, and they’re never coming back. Because ofher.”

“No one forced her to do that,” I added, shaking my head. The heat of anger was a welcome relief to the guilt and worry eating away at me. “She did it to prove she was as powerful as I was. But who knows, she might end up killing herself before we can. Whatever she’s doing is destroying her from within.”

At this, a smug smile formed. I tucked thoughts of psychological shadows and mirrors away for later.

“I can’t sit here anymore. I need to go find Kylo,” I said. “I’m scared of what he might do.”