Page 143 of Wings of Lies
“How would you know that? Do you have another super-dandy power I don’t know about?” I asked, throwing out my hands and regretting it instantly.
“No, but I saw your fear too, Lucy. I saw your scum-bag father. I heard creepy iceman, which we will have to revisit later. And I saw your mom. I saw the love she had for you.”
I rolled my eyes and stared at Aspen. Oliver stepped forward, gripped my chin, and forced my attention back on him.
“No! Listen to me. I may not have a mother anymore, but I know what love from one looks like. Jumping in front of a fireball for you and standing in front of you, ready to duel it out with another Archangel, is love. So whatever memory you restored in your head isn’t the whole picture. You’re missing something, and we are going to that damn decapitating witch and getting you answers,” Oliver stated, practically stomping his foot.
“But what if it’s all true? What if my mom’s?—”
“What if my sister’s dead? What if, even with the cuffs, I can never get to her? What if, what if, what if? I get it more than you know. But the difference between you and me is that I’m willing to face any outcome just to know I tried for her. But you, Lucy, based on what I saw by touching you, you have a habit of ignoring your fearsor having your mom suppress them, which was why you were shit at controlling them in the beginning. She did you no favors even if you were hiding from a scum-bag father.”
I didn’t want to listen to his rational words, not after what I saw. I didn’t want to go to Magda’s and face the truth, whatever it was. My mom sobbed in front of my face and poisoned me with Marcus.
“Lucy, you went straight to the worst what-ifs and forgot to ask, what if your mom’s in trouble? What if there was no other option? Are you really going to forget about her and go on your merry way? Was surviving this shit place all for nothing?”
I didn’t want to face my past—my abusive father or my mother’s betrayal. But also, I didn’t want to remember how badly Aspen made me yearn to escape. Every time he met me in those woods, I longed to leave my mom behind and experience life in a different world. But the guilt wrecked me after thinking of everything my mom had done for us, which she always soothed away when I walked back from the forest.
Her touch was a comfort and a cage.
But it wasn’t just her betrayal that hurt. It was hating myself for wanting a different life and partially resenting my mom. If she truly was an evil mastermind, then all the guilt and self-loathing I had for myself was a lie. But if Oliver was right, and my mother was in trouble, I needed to help her like she always did for me, no matter how misguided her help might’ve been. If he was wrong and we found her… I didn’t know what I’d do.
Chapter
Thirty-Three
“Okay, but how are we carting Aspen around?”
Oliver glanced at the cuffs in my hands, then Aspen’s wrists. “We’re not. He’s walking, and we’ll cuff his hands so he doesn’t get any ideas.”
“You want Aspen to have the cuffs that’ll take you to your sister?” I asked, raising a brow.
He shrugged. “Not really. But I also rather not have an enemy prince with the ability to use his hands and chop off my head with his sword.”
“Good point.”
I stood slowly and handed the key and cuffs over to Oliver.
Oliver turned to Aspen’s twitching form, weighing the cuffs in his hand and contemplating.
Assuming what he was thinking, I said, “Lock them in front. If we run into anything, we may need the little help he can give.”
“I was thinking the opposite. But with your Binding Rune and my sapped powers, I guess we could give the evil princeling the ability to choke us in our sleep,” Oliver mumbled while securing Aspen’s wrists in front of his body. Then he proceeded to search for and remove every dagger stored on Aspen’s person. As he was about to touch his sword, Aspen came to, lurching up and smashing his forehead into Oliver’s nose.
“Fuck-a-duck!” Oliver fell back, blood seeping through his fingers. “You’re lucky she wants you alive!”
I scrambled forward before Aspen could use the cuffs he was glaring at as a weapon. “Stop!”
The rage on his face had me stepping back. “I don’t let anyone touch me, prisoner.”
Prisoner?
“Aspen?” I whispered, staring in horror at the rune underneath his chin. The red looked almost black.
“Do not address me in such a way. It is Prince Aspen, prisoner.”
I just stared at him, listening to the haughty disgust in his words.What the hell did the rune do to him?
“The way I see it,princeling,is you’re our prisoner until we figure out what to do with your sorry ass. If I had it my way, I’d leave you here to be pulled apart by the Ethereal Kingdom.” Oliver glanced at me, making a face. “Speaking of, we should probably leave so that doesn’t happen.”
