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Someone tried to pull the picture away, but I reflexively held it against my pounding chest. I’d let go of her once, and I couldn’t do it again.
It was my fault. How could I have been so stupid? Why hadn’t I realized?
The things she’d told me, the things she knew about me. The way she’d sing to comfort me in the dark.
I should have made the connection.
Bryce had been wrong.
Her physical death might not have been my fault, but the destruction of her soul had been.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Damen
Wands
Finn and I were having a past-due conversation about the merits of open communication when Julian’s shout echoed through the upstairs. His tone was enough to cause my alarm to flare to life. Before I realized what was happening, I’d abandoned my brother and raced into Bianca’s room in time to witness the other man smacking her on the face.
“What the fuck, Julian?” I moved between them, horror and alarm battling for dominance inside me. I barely restrained myself from lashing out—only resisting with the unsettling knowledge that something was deeply,terriblywrong.
Though I’d forced him back, Julian hadn’t even attempted to respond to my question. Panic was heavy in his expression, and he was already on his feet, pushing past me.
“Move!” he demanded, and without thought, I stepped aside.
Finn stumbled into the room a second later, a wildly confused look in his eyes. And there was Bryce—and Brayden—standing to the side, fear radiating from their every pore.
Then I saw Bianca, and my heart twisted painfully.
She’d been thrown to the settee at my arrival, and Julian was only just forcing her back into a lounging position. Her expression was dazed, emotionless, and she had no reaction to Julian’s frantic questions. Nor was she acknowledging a thing. It was as if she wasn’t here at all.
My throat closed—I’d seen this once before, during my undergraduate years.
“What happened?” I turned toward Bryce. “What did you do?” He’d pushed her too far, and too fast. This was his fault.
“Nothing!” Bryce threw his hands into the air. For once, there was no snark in his tone. “She was upset about not knowing our mother, so Brayden and I brought her a photo. Then she went like this.”
That didn’t make any sense. “Why would that—”
“What in the world are you plotting?” Julian had taken up a defensive position at Finn’s arrival, and was now glaring at him.
I was about to defend him—Finn had been with me, after all, so there was no way he’d done anything to contribute to this—when I noticed his expression.
“Finn?” I asked.
He blinked, turning his startled gaze toward me. “I was thinking.” He sounded younger than his age, almost unsure. “This is the look she’d get when we’d talk about her first ghost. Except, this time, it’s worse.”
My heart jerked, and my attention returned to the woman in front of me.
When she wasn’t afraid, her blue-green eyes would sparkle with a quiet inquisitiveness. They shone when she was happy, which was never often enough. But usually, they would shine with dark mischief. That, I’d learned, was when she’d plot. And when she was angry, her eyes would turn into a dark green. Like furious waves cresting in against a boulder.
I was beginning to live for those expressions.
But now her gaze held nothing but a dull emptiness that haunted me. What it meant terrified me on a foundational level, and my thoughts turned to dread.
She held a locket tightly against her chest, almost as if it were her only lifeline. Inside it, according to Bryce, was a picture of their mother.
Shit.
