Page 113 of Vengeance and Vipers
I stop in my tracks, and my gaze turns towards the wood. She hasn’t gone back to the house.
I walk quickly, at times breaking into a run as I follow a trail I can’t see or smell. But I know I’m going the right way. I just know.
It doesn’t escape my notice that how I view Jules has changed. Whether it’s being able to sense her true feelings, or the time we’ve been spending together … or the fact that she almost gave me a heart attack when she was messing around on Pitch earlier. She’s not what I thought, and I realized today that I care about her a lot.
I break out of the tree line and look frantically around the pond, finding her sitting on a rock that juts out over the deeper water. She has the jacket on, but her bare legs are dangling down over the edge. I sigh in relief. I knew she hadn’t done anything yet because I could sense her still, but I can almost feel her thoughts of self-destruction. I glance at the murky surface, and my heart leaps into my chest.
I approach her cautiously. I don’t say anything; just make sure she can hear me approaching. I sit next to her, not touching her as I watch her in my periphery.
She’s not crying; she’s not doing anything but staring at the water.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say quietly.
She turns to look at me, her eyes dull.
‘It’s not your fault.’
She looks back down at the water.
‘I know you can feel … where my head is,’ she mutters softly. ‘I’ve thought about doing it a thousand times. Just let it end. Float away.’
I don’t say anything as her suffering flares in me, bringing tears to my eyes.
‘Do you know what stops me?’
‘Revenge?’ I ask.
She barks out a small laugh and then looks surprised.
She opens the jacket and looks down. ‘I haven’t looked at the real me in a very long time,’ she whispers. ‘I thought it would have gotten easier.’
She thrusts it back together, hiding her body from herself and from me, her chin wobbling.
I want to tell her it isn’t bad, but that would be a blatant lie. It’s awful, but it’s not because of how it looks; it’s because her marks tell the story ofyearsof suffering. Pretending to her that it’s less than it is undermines what happened to her, what someone did to her.
Someone I’m going to kill, I vow silently.
I close my eyes and concentrate, putting the conjure back the way it was before Daemon fucked with it, and she straightens with a small gasp.
‘I thought he’d destroyed it,’ she whispers, her voice breaking.
‘No, I just displaced the magick … like breaking a circuit,’ I say. ‘It’s back as it was now. No one can see, Jules, and I promise no one will mess with it again.’
She nods, her jaw tight as she forces back tears.
I raise my fingers to her cheek and turn her to face me gently.
‘Who did it, Jules?’
‘Doesn’t matter. It was a long time ago.’
I don’t ask the other questions that are eating me up inside.
* * *
JULES
Iron sits with me in silence until the sun is low in the sky.
