Page 33 of King of Ashes (Kingdom of Sinners #4)
I recall the girl in the kitchen that night, her defiant eyes so reminiscent of someone else's. The way Keira hovers protectively whenever Brigit is mentioned. The strange secrecy surrounding her presence in the house.
"Who is she really?" I ask, the question slipping out before I can stop it.
Hampton's face hardens. "Our god-daughter. Nothing more."
But there's something in his eyes, a flicker of panic, quickly suppressed, that tells me he's lying. And suddenly, I'm certain that Brigit is far more significant than they're admitting.
"We'll see," I say quietly, filing away this reaction for further consideration. "Until the wedding, then."
I climb the stairs from the basement, Hampton's cryptic words about Brigit echoing in my mind. Something about their reaction doesn't sit right. The flash of panic in his eyes, Lana's unusual concern. There's more to the girl's story than a simple god-daughter relationship.
In the main living room, my brothers wait with their wives. The sight of them together, happy, united, sends a pang through my chest I refuse to acknowledge. There’s one person missing.
“Where’s Keira?”
“She went to her room,” Lucy says, her eyes staring at me like a mother who’s disappointed in her child.
“Is she okay?” I ask.
“Would you care if she?—”
“Lucy.” Flint gives her hand a squeeze to stop her, but the amusement in his expression tells he me he likes how outspoken his wife is.
She catches herself. “I like her, Phoenix. We all do.”
Jenna and Hannah nod in agreement.
“I won’t be sent to spy on her again.”
“Did you learn anything that would protect the family?” I ask, highlighting family. This isn’t just me I’m looking out for but their husbands as well. I suspect they don’t know yet that we were nearly killed.
"She's not seeing anyone, Phoenix," Hannah says gently. "She never has. Not since you."
I blink, processing her words. "What?"
"She told us everything," Jenna adds. "How you two fell in love that summer. How she thought you died in the fire. How she's spent the last decade pushing away every suitor her parents found."
"Because she never got over you," Lucy finishes.
A strange sensation washes over me. Relief, pure and unexpected, floods through my veins. The tightness in my chest loosens fractionally. No lover. No betrayal in that sense. Just Keira, waiting all these years for a ghost.
"That's impossible," I say, but the conviction has drained from my voice.
Ash exchanges a look with Blaise. "Is it? You've been looking for evidence of her betrayal since we arrived. Found any?"
I haven't. Not since the night I found her skulking through the house.
"She loved you," Hannah says softly. "Maybe still does, despite everything."
“Well, I don’t know about that,” Lucy says, disdain still lacing her tone. “But she could have loved you if you hadn’t been such?—”
“Lucy.” Flint interrupts her.
The relief deepens, becoming something dangerously close to hope. I crush it immediately. Even if she wasn't unfaithful, even if she truly loved me then, it doesn't erase what her family did to mine.
"I don't need relationship advice from people who barely know Keira—or me."
Lucy steps forward. "We know enough. We know you're punishing her for crimes she didn't commit."
"You don't know what she did or didn't do," I snap.
"Actually, I do." Lucy meets my glare without flinching. "I've spent my career investigating people, Phoenix. I know when someone's lying. Keira isn't."
Flint puts a protective hand on his wife's shoulder, but she shrugs it off.
"You're so consumed with revenge, you can't see what's right in front of you," Lucy continues, her voice softening. "A woman who never stopped loving you, even when she thought you were dead."
"Lucy," Flint warns, but she ignores him.
"Your anger toward Hampton and Lana is justified.
What they did to your family was unforgivable.
But Keira isn't them." She gestures toward the ceiling, where Keira is presumably in her room.
"You're punishing her for having the wrong parents while forcing her to marry you. Do you even hear how twisted that is?"
The room falls silent, my brothers and their wives watching me warily.
"You think I don't know that?" I finally say, my voice low. "You think I haven't considered the possibility that she was as much a victim as we were?"
"Then why treat her like this?" Lucy presses.
"Because this isn't a romance novel, Lucy. Not everyone gets a happily ever after."
"They could, if you'd let go of your need for vengeance,” Jenna says, apparently following Lucy’s lead for boldness.
"Some things can't be forgiven," I say, thinking of my parents' bodies, charred beyond recognition. Of my brothers, traumatized and forced into hiding. Of the decade we lost. "Some wounds don't heal."
"They won't if you keep reopening them," she counters.
I look at her, wondering why she doesn’t get it.
“They’ve never closed, Lucy.” I look at my brothers thinking they must feel the same.
And yet, in them I don’t see the open wound I live with.
Flint is healed because of Lucy. And Blaise through Jenna.
Even Ash, who I thought was more broken than me after losing our parents and Meghan, he’s whole again because of Hannah.
I suppose they’d all say because of love.
I had love once. Only once. With Keira. Lucy seems to think I could have it again. But as brave as I am in a gunfight, I’m not sure I have the courage to hand her the one thing she may have squashed ten years ago. My heart.