lives peacefully. Something better than the media spectacle I’ve grown up in. “Please. There has to be another way. Can’t we just stay under the radar for a while longer? Until you work things out?”
Z tugs on the collar of his pale-blue shirt, which perfectly matches the brilliance of his eyes. “Like Veronica said, we’re in limbo at the moment.”
“You said you’d make calls,” I remind him more accusingly than I probably have the right to.
“I have and I will. My brothers and I, we’re due for a family reunion. There’s a reason why people organize these dreadful things. Too much time goes by, things get lost in translation. Grudges go deeper. People take the rules a touch too seriously. We just need to clear the air is all.”
“If it’s that simple—”
“It’s not simple at all,” he replies with the quick confidence of a god who knows everything. “But nothing ever is. In the entire history of time, not a single thing has ever been simple. This I can promise you.”
I release a tense sigh. “And you really think this will work?”
“Darling,” my mother chimes in, “there’s nothing I do better than publicity. The good, the bad, and the ugly. If it’s a media frenzy we need to whip up to keep the gods at bay, I’m the best person for the job.”
I pause to take in her promises and her determination, even wrapped in her arrogance. “Why would you help me?”
She winces. “Are you seriously asking me that?”
“The last time we spoke, your designs for my life were very different. You were pushing me out of Alameda, forbidding me from seeing Maximus ever again, forcing me onto Arden—”
“My purpose here has never been to ensure your happiness. It’s always been secondary to your safety, to setting you on the path you were meant for. You defied me, but here I am once again, doing what I need to do to keep you safe. I’m not standing here in defense of love and romance. To hell with all of that nonsense. I’m doing this because you’re my daughter, and I won’t have you taken from me.” She exhales her breath with a soft hiss. “At least not without a fight.”
I have to measure my own breaths. They’re nearly painful from the unexpected emotion sawing through me. All this time, I never thought she cared that much for me. But perhaps we’ve simply been seeing the world differently—focusing on such divergent things that I discounted her love. Maybe she couldn’t offer me the warmth and sweetness one might expect from a mother. But for all her biting words and self-absorption, there’s something about her ready stance now that I can’t ignore. Her teeth are bared slightly, and she has the distinct look of a feral creature ready to attack to protect her young.
Though we’ve rarely seen eye-to-eye, I believe what I see now. I trust it. Enough to go along with this plan that defies all my instincts and shatters all my safety zones. A plan that will forever change Maximus’s life too, because being associated with a Valari for more than a single news cycle will have implications he can’t possibly understand now.
But we have no other choice. If this is the only plan, then I have to show up for it.
“What do we have to do?” I finally say.
“Well.” My mother glances to Z briefly, then back to me. “You’ll be seen together, obviously. And casually, with the rest of us too.”
“And Arden… He’s just going to let this go?” I hedge. “Just like that?”
My mother’s lips purse slightly. “Not exactly.”
“Meaning what?” I press.
“He obviously had his sights set on you, but in the end, we came to an agreement. He was able to readjust his expectations, given some perspective.”
In the few seconds between taking in her subtle glance at Kell and my sister’s nervous shifting, I piece it all together. With horror. With the teeth-baring fury that clearly runs through our demon veins.
“No!”
My mother’s jaw tightens. “It was the only way.”
“No,” I growl it this time and step between the two women, taking a protective stance in front of my little sister. The moment I do, my shoulders are caught beneath her clamping hold.
“K-Demon,” she rasps. “Please don’t make this any worse—”
“Kell, this disaster isn’t yours to fix.”
My mother rolls her eyes. “You’re being dramatic. Please. She could do far worse than Arden Prieto.”
“He’s a snake!”
“He’s a demon, and he was promised something he now can never have.