Page 38 of Twisted Truths
What if I misread the entire situation?
What if I’m about to wake the serpent?
Before I can lose my nerve, the door creaks open.
Gabriel’s steel-grey eyes widen when he sees me, but he overcomes his surprise quickly and pulls me inside, shutting and locking the door behind me. “You shouldn’t be here,” he rasps, his voice rough with sleep. He moves to the kitchen window and peers outside.
“I…” My voice trails off as I realise the magnitude of what I’ve done. Showing up at a guardian’s cabin like this, especially when I’m of age, is reckless and irresponsible. What the hell is wrong with me?
For three years, I’ve kept my head down, following the rules and settling into life at the Circle, but since Zara arrived six months ago, my eyes are open to the darker side of the Sunfire Circle, and now I’m taking uncalculated risks. I want out, but I’m terrified after what happened to Zara.
She had a family to return to, and she still wasn’t safe. I have no one.
No one will realise if I go missing. That knowledge is sobering.
Nash seems convinced it was Gabriel or someone from the Circle, and while I’m unsure on the second option, my gut tells me Gabriel would never hurt Zara, and I’m praying what I heard yesterday was the truth.
“What are you doing here, Hadley?” Gabriel asks, his voice resigned. “This isn’t veryproperof you.” His derision at my words from the other day hurt. He turns away from the window and stalks over to his fridge.
Ignoring his dig, I shift on my feet. “I have questions.”
He arches an amused brow. “I’m sure you do.”
“I heard you yesterday.”
“You’re going to have to be more specific,” he says, pulling out some vegetables and a carton of eggs. “Omelette?”
“Not unless it comes with a side of answers.”
A smirk pulls on his lips. “There she is.” He busies himself chopping spring onion, mushrooms, capsicum, and tomatoes.
My brow furrows. “Who?”
“Madeline.”
Pain lances through me at the sound of her name so reverent on his lips, and I stagger over to a stool, sinking onto it before my legs give way.
Gabriel pauses and looks at me like he wants to say something, but he doesn’t. Instead, he pulls out a pan and places it on the stove. After it heats, he adds oil, and the sound of sizzling vegetables fills the silence.
When I can’t take it anymore, I have to ask. “Why did she come here?”
He cracks a couple of eggs into the pan, and I wonder if he’s simply going to ignore me. But after a long moment, Gabriel speaks, his voice quiet and vulnerable, even more so than yesterday when I heard him talking to my sister’s grave.
“I fell in love with her the moment I saw her,” he says. “She was standing on a street corner in Sydney, her hair piled on top of her head like a volcano as she yelled abuse at a magpie that had snatched her sandwich right out of her hand.”
I blink, trying to process his words. “What?”
He huffs a soft laugh, lost in thought as he keeps an eye on the pan. “Called him a beady-eyed sky goblin and told him she hoped his next swoop would end in a faceplant. I knew right then she wasn’t like anyone I’d ever met. I called her firecracker, and it stuck. She said she hated it … but I think she secretly loved it.” A flicker of a smile ghosts his lips, but it dies quickly. “She was chaos and warmth and defiance, and I couldn’t stay away.”
Gabriel scoops the eggs and vegetables onto two plates, pushes one across the counter towards me, then leans back against the bench like the weight of his past has anchored him.
“Maddy was lost when I met her. Your foster brother had just moved away for university, and it was like her compass broke. But it wasn’t only that. She felt like she’d failedyou.” He looks at me, and all the air huffs from my lungs. “She told me she left because she thought you’d be better without her. That she was too much, and she’d only screw things up for you.”
I shake my head slowly, trying to breathe through the ache blooming in my chest. “She was wrong.”
“I know,” he agrees. “I told her every day. But the Circle offered her a home, a place to start over. Only … she was a wildfire in a glass box. Every rule and tradition—it smothered her. She tried to play along for me. I was born into this family, so I have no choice, but she couldn’t pretend to be something she wasn’t for long.”
My fingers curl around the edge of the bench top. “She didn’t go through the Awakening prep. She wasn’t of age.”
