Boundary Born (Boundary Magic Book 3) - Melissa F. Olson Page 0,56

that moment that by dragging them into this mess, I had more or less asked Simon and Lily to choose loyalty to me over loyalty to their own mother, to their own kind. Shame burned my cheeks as I absorbed the size of that.

But before I could apologize or beg for forgiveness, Lily answered me, her words rushing out in a burst. “We had to tell her, Lex.” Her hands twisted together in knots.

“You . . . Hazel knows about Maven?”

Simon looked away. “This whole thing has sort of snowballed out of control—” Lily began, apologetically.

I waved a hand around for her attention, and she cut herself off. “It’s okay,” I croaked. “I get it. What did she say?” A terrible thought occurred to me. “Is Maven—”

“She’s fine,” Simon assured me. “Or in the same condition as she was last night, anyway.”

“We told Mom about the attack and your father trying to kill her. She said that as long as there’s a chance of Maven recovering, she’ll stand by her promise,” Lily explained.

“But,” Simon added, holding up a finger, “she said she can’t really help us, especially if it takes a while for Maven to wake up. Mom’s not just the witches’ leader—she’s their representative. If the other clans learn that Hazel Pellar had the chance to usurp Maven and didn’t take it, there will be problems.”

Lily batted her eyes with great innocence. “If, on the other hand, Hazel Pellar’s reckless younger children decide to go rogue and help the vampires, that’s certainly not Hazel’s fault.” Despite the difference in their skin tones, Simon’s smile matched his sister’s perfectly.

I bit my lip. “If the other witches find out you guys are trying to save Maven . . .”

“There’ll be a witch hunt, so to speak,” Lily said cheerfully.

“But if we can resolve this quickly, there’s no reason for them to find out,” Simon finished.

I felt the prick of tears in my eyes. I blinked hard, not knowing what to say. I had pledged loyalty to Maven, and more importantly, I still believed she was my best chance to keep Charlie safe. As long as she was—well, whatever passed for alive for vampires—I had to do everything I could to keep her in power. But if she died, or someone found out she was paralyzed and took action against her, I wasn’t the only one who would suffer. We would all be screwed.

“So,” Lily said, “what do we do next?”

Slowly, I pulled myself into a sitting position and swung my legs over the side of the bed. Lily’s hands hovered nearby to spot me. The movement was awful, but I’d had worse.

“I need everything you know about crystals,” I told her.

Chapter 23

Ten minutes later, Simon, Lily, and I were sitting around the little kitchen table. I kept eyeing the empty chair where Quinn should have been sitting. He’d gone to ground for the day, of course, but I hated planning things without him. It felt like riding a bike without one of my arms.

Simon had been examining the small sample of Emil’s blood, but the only thing he’d determined was that we were right about the belladonna. “There wasn’t enough in his system to kill him, but given how far gone Maven is, it would likely have killed her,” he told me grimly.

“How was he able to run if he was half-poisoned?” I asked, keeping my voice just above a whisper. Lily had crushed up four Advil and given them to me to swallow, but talking still hurt like hell. “I know you didn’t see him, but he was fast.”

Simon nodded like he’d expected the question. “I didn’t get a great look at all the crystals he was wearing, but probably one of them was boosting his stamina.”

I wanted to follow up on that, but before I could, Lily placed a hand on mine. “I’m so sorry, Lex,” she said. “We both are.”

Guilt flashed across Simon’s face. “Right, yeah. Sorry about your father being a . . . um . . .”

“Murderer?” I suggested.

“Yeah.” He glanced at Lily. “If anyone knows how rough it is to have evil family, it’s us.”

“Thank you,” I said, meaning it. “But he’s not my father.”

Their eyebrows rose in the same way, at the same time. “Um, he looks just like you,” Lily ventured.

“He’s my brother.”

The two of them exchanged a worried look—not in an oh, that explains it kind of way. More like an uh-oh, being strangled has degraded poor Lex’s brain kind of way.