The Brightest Night (Origin #3) - Jennifer L. Armentrout Page 0,4

him say that made my heart feel as if it were being squeezed in the best possible way.

Genuinely curious and disbelieving, I asked, “How can you not be?”

“Because I have faith.”

I stared at him.

“In me.” His head tilted, and I felt his cheek against mine, curving up in a bigger grin. The next breath I took was full of pine and fresh air and so very full of Luc. “I have faith in you. In us. You’re not going to turn into some mindless minion.” A pause. “Unless it’s Halloween.”

He was referencing my last costume. “I thought you said I looked like Big Bird.”

“My sexy little Big Bird,” Luc corrected, and I wrinkled my nose. He slid a hand back, curling his fingers through my hair as he gently guided my head until our eyes connected and held. “You’re Evie. You will not lose control. I won’t allow that. You won’t allow that. Do you know why?”

“Why?” I whispered.

“Because we didn’t come all this way, survive all we have, only to lose each other again,” he said. “You won’t allow that. I know you won’t, but if you can’t believe in that yet, then believe in me until you can. How about that?”

Emotion swelled so acutely that when I blinked, my lashes were damp. His words broke my heart and also soothed the sting. I nodded as some of the panic died.

For a heartbeat, Luc rested his forehead against mine. The simple comfort released the rest of the panic. “Together,” he murmured. “We’re in this together.”

The shaky breath I took felt clean. “Together.”

Lifting his head, he stopped to press a kiss against my temple before pulling away. His hand dropped from my hair but stayed against my lower back.

“I thought you two forgot I was even here,” Eaton remarked dryly, but when I looked over at him, his lined features had softened. “The Daedalus still haven’t taken it into consideration.”

“Taken what into consideration?” Luc asked.

“Love.” A brief chuckle followed that one word as Eaton leaned back against the couch. “No matter what they do, they never take love into consideration. It’s like none of them have ever experienced its power.”

“You have?” I asked, not knowing much about the man.

“He has.” Luc’s hand moved in a slow slide, traveling up the length of my spine. “He was married once. Had a son.”

I had a bad feeling none of that had ended with a happily ever after.

Eaton’s smile was more of a grimace. “Why am I not surprised you know that even though I haven’t spoken about Amy and Brent to Daemon or Archer?”

Luc didn’t respond as his palm made another pass down my back. He didn’t need to.

General Eaton didn’t appear to need the answer either as his rheumy gaze met mine. I was sure that when he’d been younger, those blue eyes were as brilliant as the summer sky. “Sylvia healed him.”

Luc cursed.

I’d already suspected as much, but hearing it confirmed knotted up my insides. Sylvia … would, God, she would always be Mother, no matter what she’d done. I couldn’t change the way I saw her or how I thought about her, but she had lied so much, and those lies hid terrible things and ugly truths.

She had been so convincing when she told me about what my “father” and the Daedalus had been involved in—so convincing, so seemingly horrified by how the Daedalus had begun to exploit the Luxen in the pursuit of using the alien DNA to create weapons of destruction and by what Dasher had attempted to do to Luc.

How could she be that skilled of a liar? Convincing me wasn’t an Olympic-level feat, as I hadn’t known any better at the time, but to lie to my face like that?

“I listened in on their thoughts but didn’t pick up on any of this.” Anger vibrated in Luc’s voice. “I knew they were using deflection, thinking about inane crap, but to be able to block all of this?” Bronze waves toppled over his forehead as he shook his head. “I should’ve known something else had to be going on there.”

“It’s not often you’ve had to go up against those who knew exactly how to be prepared when it came to an Origin’s ability to read minds,” Eaton reasoned. “They knew how to deflect your ability, because they had a hand in creating the Origins. It wasn’t a failure on your part.”

My heart pounded against my ribs as I opened my mouth, about to tell Luc that