The Deck of Omens (The Devouring Gray #2) - Christine Lynn Herman Page 0,57

forest floor, but he was too dehydrated to even vomit properly.

He was a pathetic excuse for a founder. He deserved to rot here like one of the corrupted trees.

He did not know how long he knelt there, shuddering, before a light broke through the trees. He tipped his head up and realized it was bobbing and weaving, a flashlight beam.

“Hello?” he choked out, then cleared his throat and yelled, “Hey! I need help!”

The trees rustled, and a moment later Violet was standing in front of him. He squinted into the beam of her phone flashlight. As his eyes adjusted, he saw the dirt splotched across her velvet dress. Her tights were ripped; twigs poked out of her crimson hair.

“Isaac.” Something happened to her face that he’d only seen once before?—that day in her bedroom, when she had told him about Rosie. Like it pained her just to look at him, but she didn’t want to stop. “Are you hurt?”

“Not more than I deserve.”

“Good.” She knelt down beside him, carelessly smearing dirt on her tights, and tipped her head up so that her eyes locked on his. Something stirred in his throat, in the core of his stomach, a different kind of heat, a different kind of fear. Then she held out a water bottle. “Here. Drink this.”

He’d never tasted anything sweeter. When he looked up, the bottle drained, she was holding her phone up to her ear.

“Yeah,” she said, sounding exhausted. “He’s fine. You can go home?—I’ll handle this.”

“Justin?” Isaac croaked.

Violet nodded. “He’s had a bad night.”

“Shit. Sorry.”

“You think that’s all you need to say sorry for?” Violet said, her tone leaving minimal room for interpretation.

Isaac felt something new?—anger. Justin never would’ve talked to him like this. “I get it. You’re pissed at me, I ruined everything, I’ve heard it all before.”

“Is that the story you always tell yourself?” Violet asked him softly. “That you’re just going to fuck everything up?”

“It’s not a story,” Isaac said. “It’s the truth.”

“You’re more than this.” Violet’s jaw tightened. “Self-pity doesn’t suit you.”

“You don’t know me well enough to say something like that.”

The words hit Violet harder than Isaac had intended. She jerked backward, hurt spreading across her face.

“It took me two hours to find you, asshole,” she said. “And I didn’t know if you’d be alive when I did. Maybe I don’t know everything about you, but I know how it feels to have powers that seem like they’re taking you over, and, Isaac, I’m scared for you.”

The last few words were said in a rushed, embarrassed whisper, and Violet dropped eye contact, sighing.

Two hours. Two hours of Violet walking through the forest that had taunted her for months, that had ripped her up and spat her out. Just for him. The thought made Isaac almost as nauseous as the alcohol. He didn’t deserve that kind of loyalty.

“I’m sorry. I’m scared for me, too.” It was the most honest thing Isaac had said since his confession to Justin, and the truth of it scorched his throat. “I just… My brother, my family… it’s all too much. And what I said, about you not knowing me… the only reason you don’t know is because I haven’t told you. But you deserve the truth. You’ve deserved the truth for months.”

He knew exactly how long he’d wanted to tell her. It had started that night in Violet’s bedroom, on the equinox, when he’d watched her rush into trouble to save Harper in the exact way he would have done for Justin. But Isaac had known even then that the truth would change things. What Justin had seen the night of Isaac’s ritual had changed their relationship forever.

Isaac wanted her to know what had happened to him without it becoming a burden on them both. She deserved better than that. He had no idea how to do that, but he could not fathom keeping it a secret from her any longer, either.

And so there in the burned-out crater of destruction he had created, in the witching hour, Isaac Sullivan told Violet Saunders the truth about his ritual.

“The thing about the Sullivans,” he began slowly, “is that we are taught, from when we are very young, that either our destiny will be to cause pain, or to stop it. And I never wanted to cause it.”

“Who would?”

Isaac smiled grimly. “You’d be surprised. It’s useful when you want people to take you seriously. And we did.”

In elementary school, there had been a group of bullies, a few years older