Page 35 of Illusory

“Close enough.” I swallowed the lump in my throat. “Morgan saw them in a vision last night.”

I went on to relay the details of what Morgan had shared with me during her impromptu visit at breakfast as well as the very unfortunate detail that there were in fact stillthreesisters, and not two as we had previously believed. The news had been as off-putting to Dominic as it had been for me since he’d been there with me that day in the abandoned mine. He’d watched me snap Arianna’s neck.

“She must have been tethered to her sisters,” Dominic offered as we tried to work out what had gone so wrong that day in the cave. “Perhaps some sort of anchoring spell.”

“She also had Revenant blood in her system,” I pointed out, remembering we had force-fed her some of his blood to bring her back from unconsciousness. “Fuck. Could she be…could you have sired her?”

He shook his head. “She didn’t have enough of my blood in her system to be Turned.”

“Right. Thank God.” I exhaled a weighty gust of relief. “So, tethered it is then.”

Frankly, it was hardlythatsurprising that the sisters had a fail-safe in place seeing as Nikki had done the exact same thing for Trace. And she’d come up with the idea under severe duress. Surely the three most powerful Dark Casters on this side of the globe had thought of it too, if for no other reason than a precautionary measure.

“So, now what?” I asked as I worried my lip. “We can’t just let them wander into town unchecked. We need to find them before they find Nikki.”

“I’m already on it. If they’re here, I will find them.”

“No.We’llfind them,” I corrected and then ignored the annoyed look on his face. “You’re not tracking them alone. I’m going with you.”

“That won’t be necessary. I work better alone.” He crossed his arms as though the decision was final. “Besides, I think you have more than enough irons in the fire as it is.”

“When do I not?”

“Speaking of which.” He eyed me pointedly. “My brother mentioned you’re going after the Sang Noir. Has there been any progress with it?”

“That would require that I have somehow manifested the ability to teleport, and since I haven’t, the book is still sitting at Temple under lock and key.” My shoulders slumped in defeat. Of all the mountains I had to climb, this one seemed like the steepest. “I mean, whatever. It’s no biggie. All I need to do is teach myself how to travel between space and time, and I’m interdimensional gold.”

He didn’t find my sarcasm amusing. “Why would you have to teachyourselfanything? You have a perfectly capable Reaper at your disposal.”

That certainly wasn’t the wayI’ddescribe Trace at this current juncture. “Trust me. He can’t help me right now.”

He quirked his brow at me as though I were speaking in tongues. “Why in the world not?”

“For starters, because he despises me,” I answered matter-of-factly.

He blinked at me, slow and even, as though I’d just uttered the stupidest thing he’d ever heard. “He doesn’t despise you,” he said plainly as he pushed away from the counter and made his way around me again, coaxing another involuntary shiver from my spine. “It’s not physically possible for him to despise you.”

I would’ve laughed at his clearly misinformed assertion had I not already been on the verge of tears “He literally can’t even stand to be in the same room with me anymore, and honestly, I don’t even blame him,” I said, tracking him over my shoulder.

After everything I’d done to Trace, everything I’d put him through since the moment I came into his life, it was a miracle that I’d stayed in his good graces as long as I had.

He paused behind me, hovering but not touching. “He doesn’t hate you,” he repeated lowly, his words vibrating through my body like distant, low rumbling thunder. “He’s afraid to hurt you.”

My lips popped open and then slammed shut on a failed reply as his words roiled over me like a mudslide.

Afraid…to hurt me?

Was that even possible? Had I been misreading the hate in Trace’s eyes for fear all this time?

I started to shake my head, unable to let the hope take root in my heart. Hope had always been a double-edged sword for me. No matter which way I grabbed it, I always ended up sliced and bloody.

“Turning doesn’t make you into a different person,” he explained casually, like my entire relationship with Trace didn’t hang in the balance. “It doesn’t erase your feelings or conjure new ones. Especially not for Descendants. It only heightens what is already there.”

My heart clenched at the idea, desperate to fill its empty chambers with something that could sustain me. And then I remembered what had happened when I’d gone down to the basement to talk to Trace. While I certainly preferred Dominic’s explanation to the conclusion I’d come to on my own, I still couldn’t accept it.

The way he had spoken to me—looked at me. It was asthough he had seen the devil himself. “I wish I could believe you, Dominic, but you weren’t there. You didn’tseethe way he acted with me.”

“That’s because he doesn’t trust himself around you yet. Your blood—” Dominic trailed off, a small smile forming on his lips, as though he had momentarily lost himself in the overwhelming memory of it. “It’s unlike anything he has ever tasted in his life, or will ever taste again, and right now, it’s the only thing he can think about. The taste does not leave you. It’s always right there at the back of his throat,” he said like he knew exactly what that felt like.

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