Page 113 of Mantle

A real home for all four of us.

And that was why I’d come here tonight.

To immerse myself in that.

To look around and take mental notes of how to incorporate therenovationsthat they’d each brought up.

To focus on living.

On making it beyond all of this.

On the four of us being together in our love without all of this wearing on us.

And on mesurvivingit.

I shuddered as Sylas’ warning echoed hauntingly through my mind.

“Death circles you.”

It wasn’t unfounded now.

It wasn’t something I could discount.

The Wrath of Hades was here on this very plane.

It shifted things.

It made the threat all too real.

I sucked in a breath and made my way toward the porch steps.

A rush of power stilled me before I made it up the second step, and I spun around to see Kai teleporting in.

“Hey,” I said, beaming out at him. “I thought you were pulling an all-nighter at Arcanum Conclave.” With Grandfather indisposed, the work was being overseen by Maelira.

Kai stared at me rather intensely.

“Kai?”

He blinked then walked the remaining distance to me. “You and I are a lot alike with our ingrained tendency to internalize pain, trauma, and burdens. We both learned to handle things on our own, to withdraw. And even though we’ve come a long way, it’s something that’s going to take time to go away fully.”

“What are you—”

“I know about Sylas Morgrave’s warning to you.”

I started, my gut twisting. “Kai, I—”

“I get it. I understand why you didn’t tell us.”

“You… do?”

“Yes, it connects to what I just said. I’ll admit that when I first found out, when he accidentally revealed it to me, I was fucking upset. That you didn’t come to us and share the burden, especially with the warning being so dire—about your actualdeath, Ari.” He scrubbed his hand over his face. “But I took a step back and I saw it asyouwould have when you made that decision. It wasn’t out of a lack of trust in us that you kept it secret. It was from love and protection. There was a lot burdening all of us at the time and you wanted to spare us. I get that. Deeply.” He reached out and took my hand. “But look at V. He confided in us about his awful situation with his family. That added thing upon us wasn’t a burden, it arguably brought us closer together. And V needed it, he needed our support. Just likeyouneed our support with this, instead of carrying it alone like you used to carry everything before we developed into our foursome.”

He released my hand and then surprised me as he jerked down his shirt to reveal a nasty burn scar—a third-degreefucking burn—in the shape of his parents’ Maven Coven crest. “And I need to remember to do that too.”

“No,” I choked. “They didn’t.” I reached out, my hand hovering over the mark. “This is punishment.”

“Yes,” he said. “It’s actually more insidious than that. It happens whenever I use my magic.”

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