Page 8

8

J avier pushed open the door to the bathroom, and humid steam billowed out into the bedroom. They must have been filling and refilling the bath with hot water for quite some time to turn the bathroom into a sauna like this. How long had the vision held me captive? I recalled my consorts’ voices whispering through the nightmarish scenes. How long had they been trying to wake me?

Javier helped me ease down into the soaking tub tucked along one wall of the bathroom, and I hissed in discomfort as I sat, the hot water feeling scalding to my icy skin.

“Why am I so cold?” I asked through chattering teeth. I forced myself to lean back against the edge of the tub, submerging myself up to my armpits.

Javier sat on the floor beside the tub, leaning against the tiled wall and drawing up his legs. He rested his forearms on his upturned knees and threaded his fingers together. “Your mother told me once that she believed it was Selene’s touch that chilled her.” He rested his head back against the wall. “When her connection to the goddess was at its strongest, her body temperature would drop. She would monitor her temperature throughout the day to predict when a particularly intense or significant vision might strike. It became something of an obsession for her, but I suppose it was a way for her to feel like she had some control over the powers granted to her by the goddess.”

His stare grew distant, like he was no longer seeing this bathroom but another time and place entirely. “A few days before the attack, she stopped. I remember teasing her about it—asking her where her thermometer was—and she just laughed and made some quip. But she looked so sad.” He shook his head slowly. “I’ve often wondered if she had a vision about that day. If she knew what would happen.”

“But wouldn’t she have said something?” I asked. So many of our people had died that day. All her consorts and so many others. Amaya, her own daughter and heiress. Not to mention all the vampire queens captured and imprisoned. “Wouldn’t she have warned everyone and tried to stop it from happening?” Wouldn’t she have tried to save Amaya?

Javier blew out a breath. “I honestly don’t know. I’ve often wondered if the vision convinced her there was some reason to remain silent. To let it happen.”

“But why?” I scoffed. “What possible reason—”

Javier’s attention cut to me, his stare sharp, his focus no longer on the past, but very much on the present. On me. “This,” he said quietly, his stare boring into me. “ You .”

You will save us, my shining girl. You will save us all. It is your destiny.

My mother’s last words to me whispered through my mind. I remembered little from before the attack, but that night, those terrifying moments were crystalized in my mind. Did my mom die so I could, what, flee and live in hiding, never really understanding who or what I was? So I could lose everything a second time when Javier was captured? A third time when Wes died, and I made the heartbreaking choice to give up Micah?

Did she die so I could live the shittiest life possible?

I turned my face away from Javier so he couldn’t see my trembling chin or the tears escaping over the brims of my eyelids. The weight of this suspicion threatened to suffocate me. The prospect that I was responsible for the attack on my people—my family—however passively, was crushing. I curled my hands into fists under the water, resentment toward my mom turning my few memories of her into fragile, fractured scenes.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Javier said, leaning forward to grip the edge of the tub. “And it wasn’t Diana’s.”

I gritted my teeth together, his statement drawing my ire if not my gaze.

Javier reached across the water and gripped my chin, turning my face back toward him. “If you wish to blame someone, blame the goddess. Blame Selene,” he said, a feral light shining in his eyes. “Your mother loved you and Amaya dearly. Nothing short of a command from the goddess herself could have convinced her to sacrifice her own daughters like that.”

“Daughter,” I corrected him. “ I survived.”

A bitter chuckle rumbled in Javier’s chest. “I didn’t realize death was the only sacrifice one could make.” His eyes narrowed and his grip on my jaw tightened before he jerked his hand away and stretched out his fingers, like he was willing his hand to behave. As much as I wanted to escape his heated stare, I couldn’t look away. “Was Amaya’s fate not merciful compared to yours? Her suffering was intense but over in an instant. Yours stretched on for decades.”

I felt mortified that he was so easily able to voice some of my most shameful thoughts. How many times had I envied Amaya for her easy escape? How often had I wished for a swift end to my misery, even as I slowly faded away, clinging to what remained of my life?

“How much did Bas tell you?” I asked, feeling betrayed. I had shared my troubled past with him in confidence, not so he could spread it around like Mardi Gras beads to every Tom, Dick, and Harry who flashed me the goods.

“I believe he told us all of it,” Javier admitted. “Or, at least, all that he knew.”

“Us?” I squawked.

Something that looked an awful lot like sympathy softened Javier’s gaze. “Isador sent us out of the room for a time while you were locked in the vision. He filled us in then. He felt we all deserved to know what you had gone through in the past, so we could better understand and serve you in the future.”

My cheeks burned hotter than the water as I thought of them all knowing about my time with the guys. I had been their plaything—by necessity, if not by desire—until Wes stepped in and put an end to the sharing. That was what really bothered me—that Javier and the others now knew about the choice I had made, how I had debased myself to survive. But I had been little more than a child, and I had been alone, and suddenly these boys were there and wanted to take care of me.

So long as I took care of them in return.

Looking back, it was almost like my queen instincts had kicked in, and I had gathered the only harem I could, however useless human men were to my actual needs. Was it possible—had I instigated the arrangement? Had I wanted them to take and take and take until my innocence lay shredded on the ground? Had I wanted to be punished? Had I desired penance for surviving when so many others had not?

My gut twisted into knots, turning my stomach. I pushed away the rancid memories, the insidious thoughts. Except, when Wes had offered me a way out, I had felt like I was being rescued. Like suddenly there was a light where there had only been darkness before. I hadn’t wanted it. I hadn’t wanted them —none except for Wes.

I swallowed, tasting bile. “Bas shouldn’t have told you about that.”

“I disagree,” Javier said, matter-of-factly. “I’ve told you before, but I’ll tell you again—you chose well when you bound the shifter to you. He can anticipate your needs better than you can yourself. He knew you would need us to understand your past, and also that you would be hesitant to tell us of all you had been through. So, he did it for you.”

Crossing my arms over my chest, I rolled my eyes and huffed out a breath. Javier was kind of right. Knowing he and the others already knew about the dark times, that I wouldn’t have to tell them, lifted some of the weight off my shoulders.

“Tell me about the Shadow King,” I said, purposely changing the subject. It was done. They knew. I didn’t want to think about it anymore.

I watched Javier linger at the tub’s edge a few seconds longer, sensing hints of his indecision, but then he sighed and leaned back against the wall.

“A very long time ago,” he began, “before the Houses of the Moon or the Sun or the Stars had been established and the only people who inhabited the earth were humans, there was a great war between the realms of darkness and of light. The Shadow King ripped a hole in the barrier between the realms, and his army poured through. Everything they touched withered and died, consumed by their boundless darkness.”

My irritation faded as I became engrossed in the story, and my arms relaxed.

“Gods fell, transformed into ghastly shadow versions of themselves, and served the Shadow King. The light gradually faded, and the war neared its end. Selene, Helios, and Eos were all that remained to defend the light, but they were not enough. So they planted seeds of their power within select humans. They nurtured their chosen and watched their powers grow until the balance in the war shifted, and the light pushed back against the darkness. In time, Selene, Helios, and Eos were able to drive the Shadow King back into his dark realm and seal the rift between worlds.”

The story felt familiar, and a vivid scene flashed through my memory: my mom sitting with me on my bed, Amaya snuggled in on her other side. Had she told us this story?

“Selene, Helios, and Eos retreated to the heavens, leaving their chosen to rule over themselves,” Javier went on. “Thus, the House of the Moon, the House of the Sun, and the House of the Stars were created as a way to contain and control the incredible powers the gods had granted to us. And for a while, there was peace in the realm of the light.”

I let out a bitter laugh. “So they just shot us up with magical steroids and abandoned us?” I said. “No wonder war broke out between the immortal races.”

“Indeed,” Javier said, his tone telling me he shared my sardonic view of the divine. “And now, with all the Houses at their weakest as this war between Sun and Moon drags out, we face the threat of another invasion from the realm of darkness. I can’t help but wonder if the gods will even care, or if they have truly abandoned us.”

I licked my lips, a shiver cascading down my spine. Only this time it had nothing to do with being cold.

“Except, Selene hasn’t abandoned me,” I said, thinking back to the vision. If my mom had been right about the source of the magical chill, it had come from the goddess.

Javier’s stare locked on me. “No, I don’t believe she has.” The corners of his mouth tensed, hinting at a wry smile. “Which means there may be some hope for the light, yet.”