Page 33 of Taloned Heart

No.

No, she wasn’t all right.

She would not be all right until this was all over and done with, and that would not happen any time soon, so if she didn’t get a hold of this anxiety, it would ruin her. It would swell up over her head and threaten to drown her in her sorrows until she saw nothing but all the people she’d lost.

Swiping a hand over her mouth, she shook her head and gave him the truth. “No. No, I’m not. That spell... Margaret will know where we are. We need to move.”

“I know.”

“You know?” She snapped, her words echoing across the marsh. “And you said nothing? You don’t care if Margaret hunts us down before we’ve done anything? You should be yelling at me right now!”

He didn’t. Of course he did. Abraxas held his hands up as though she had pointed a weapon at him and quietly said, “You’re doing enough yelling for the both of us.”

She was. She knew she was and she still couldn’t stop. Lore could only hope that he wouldn’t be too angry at her when she returned to them, but right now, she had to get some air.

“I’ll be back,” she said, taking another shambling step away from him.

“Will you?”

His words hung between them, a quiet reminder of the last time she’d said that. And all the times she’d done something stupid in the same state as this.

She swallowed hard before responding. “I will do everything I can to come back to you, Abraxas. I’m not going far. I just need to remind myself why I’m doing this. To plan how to keep us all safe from Margaret. I need... I need to get my confidence back, and I don’t think that’s something you can help with.”

His silence was damning.

Lore knew she’d made him angry with all this. They had promised she wouldn’t go running off on her own during this trip, and already she was going to break that promise.

She was a terrible partner. A worse mate, and she knew that would grate on both of them. She had to prove herself to be worthy of his trust or she’d lose him. The painful truth rode on her shoulders so heavily that she stalked toward him with single-minded intent.

Grabbing the back of his neck, Lore tugged him down and kissed him hard. Not a soft kiss or even a reassuring one, but a kiss that bit at his lips and would have drawn blood if he’d let her.

“I’m not going anywhere,” she said. “I just can’t look at the two of you while knowing that I might have caused all our deaths with a stupid mistake that I never should have made. I need time with my thoughts, and I won’t go far. You’ll be able to see me the entire time. I just need to be quiet for a bit. That’s all. I need to pretend that I didn’t just kill my friends.”

“You didn’t.”

“I might have.” She stared up at him, eyes wide and heart in her throat. “I might have killed you. And I refuse to let that simmer in my mind while I can see you. I’ll just start picturing all the ways they could murder you, Abraxas, and I won’t do it any more. I can’t.”

He smoothed his thumb over her cheekbones. “You’ll stay within sight?”

“At all times. Just give me a bit to feel better. That’s all I’m asking.”

And he let her go.

Lore stomped ahead of them, picking the path of least resistance that would get them far away from her home. From the memories that haunted her every step of dying friends, wars, the screams of people who fought to get their freedom and now had it. The freedom she might very well be taking away from them again.

Shouldn’t she feel more guilty about that? Shouldn’t she do something to ensure that the magical creatures never returned to the life they had lived before?

Except, she worried they were the problem. Her mind was so twisted up and she couldn’t even guess at where to start unraveling all this.

“Mothers,” she whispered, her words carrying through the marshes. “If I’ve ever needed you in my life, I need you now.”

But no one responded to her plea.

There was a time when she’d hoped that they would have a more active presence in her life. She’d gotten her birth mother back, and her grandmother, and all the women who had come before her. That’s where all this power had entered her body, through the strings and ties of them. But now, they had left her to her own devices. She had to figure this out on her own.

Instead, she reached out with her mind and let her magic spread out. She shouldn’t. But Margaret already knew she was here and using magic, so what was a little more power when they already knew she was near Tenebrous?

She needed to talk to someone. And that someone was her daughter.

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