The Deck of Omens (The Devouring Gray #2) - Christine Lynn Herman Page 0,77

it’s better that way.”

Isaac scar throbbed, and he felt bile rising in his throat. “It wasn’t you,” he whispered. “All those years… I thought you had chased me because you wanted to finish the job.”

Gabriel shook his head. “No. I chased you because I wanted to heal you.”

A puzzle piece clicked into place: Gabriel’s medallion on the ground beside him when he’d come to. Isaac had thought he’d ripped it off his brother in the struggle, but that had never quite made sense. Isaac reached a hand up and touched the line at his throat, remembered what Justin had told him. That there was so much blood. That the wound had been too deep. But he’d lived anyway; he’d lived, and he’d never questioned why until now.

“Then why did you leave?” Isaac asked. “If you healed me… You left me in the woods.”

“I went to get help,” Gabriel said. “The Hawthornes found you before I could. And after it was all over, everything moved very quickly. Everyone who survived that night split in the next few days. They didn’t want to be around when you got out of the hospital. They were ashamed of what they’d done. And I couldn’t look at myself without thinking of how useless I’d been?—I was supposed to be a healer, but I couldn’t save Caleb, or Isaiah, or Mom. It felt better to leave you in the Hawthornes’ care than to own up to everything I’d done.”

“But you saved me,” Isaac whispered, his heart pounding in his chest. All those years of running and hiding, and here it was: the truth. That Gabriel had never wanted to hurt him after all. “You saved me, and I never knew.”

“Because I ran,” said Gabriel. “Fuck it… I’m glad you destroyed the house. We weren’t a family?—we were a cult. And I’ve spent the past few years turning it over in my mind, trying to understand. Why our ritual asks for so much when the others don’t. Why we did it for so many years. Why the rest of the town just let us kill children for hundreds of years. What the fuck? I mean?—how did our uncles live with themselves? How could Mom have kids at all, knowing what might happen to us?”

“I don’t understand it,” Isaac said. “I don’t think I ever will. Sometimes I have nightmares that they’ve come back. That’s what I thought you were when I first saw you. A bad dream.”

“It doesn’t matter if they come back,” said Gabriel. “This ends here. With us. No more sacrifices. No more bloody trades for power. I don’t care what it gives us?—it isn’t worth it.”

“Agreed,” Isaac said, his words carried away on a sudden gust of wind. A weight tugged at his wrist: Gabriel’s medallion. He hooked his fingers around it and unwound it from his wrist, the cracked red disc shining in the sun. “Hey. You should probably take this back.”

“I don’t think I deserve it.”

“You’re a founder.” Isaac held it out: a gauntlet. “You earned it.”

“All right. If you insist.” But Isaac could see how much it meant to him as he gently tied it around his wrist.

All this time, he’d been wrong. He’d tried to stare at his fear head-on and found that there was no monster waiting for him, just someone who was as frightened as he was. The only person who could truly grasp the magnitude of betrayal he’d faced that night.

If he’d been brave enough, if Gabriel had been ready, they could have done this years ago. Isaac ached for all that wasted time where they had suffered separately, both unable to cope and struggling to heal. But against all odds, they had figured it out.

It wasn’t too late. Not for him and not for Gabriel, either.

“About Mom,” he said, thinking of Maya in her hospital bed. “You really think she’s never going to wake up?”

The regret on Gabriel’s face was palpable. “I really don’t think she will, Isaac.”

Isaac sat back, contemplating this. For the first time, he allowed himself to consider the possibility that maybe he’d been grieving her all along, that maybe, just like everything else in his family, he could not let her go.

And then something stirred in his peripheral vision.

“Hello?” He rose to his feet.

It stirred again, and he walked toward it, Gabriel following a step behind him. The moment they cleared the underbrush, Isaac understood.

The buds that hung above the Sullivan altar were blooming, terrible pulsating flowers in the shape of hands