Wolves at the Door - Lidiya Foxglove Page 0,39
to turn back and when you say Helena is the one to be at your side, I believe you, but…I will test her.”
“Test her? What kind of test?”
“It’s better to know now,” Marisa said, “what she is willing to do. How far she is willing to go. And that goes for all your new friends. If they don’t survive my test, it’s better to know now.”
“But then I would have to start over and find someone else, and it will be too late. The council is hunting us down. The Sons of Pandora are dead and dying. They can’t protect the maps anymore. Marisa, there will be no others.”
“If you believe that, you might as well give up, come home, and haunt me,” she said.
“You have no right to test the people I’ve chosen to trust.”
“I gave you a second life and you trusted the wrong people,” she said.
“Did I?” I didn’t like to be challenged this way. Yes, it was true. Forty-five years ago, the Sons of Pandora turned out not to be the men I thought they were. But as they aged, they changed, the way people do at their best. I had forgiven them, but Marisa was the one who made sacrifices to bring me back to life as an incubus.
“I claim the right to test them,” she said. “And you won’t be able to say a word.”
That stung.”Do you realize how painful it is that I can’t tell Helena the truth? ”
“I’m sorry. I can imagine. But I’m still your big sister, and if Helena passes the test, I will welcome her with open arms. But…what about the other girl? Billie? She seems much more willing to do what needs to be done.”
“I don’t love Billie.”
“Why not?”
“Why not!? I just don’t. I was already falling for Helena.”
“I gave you the life of an incubus so you wouldn’t fall for one person!”
“You’re starting to sound more like a puppet master than a loving sister.”
“Well, you know that’s not what I want, but…I’m worried you’re losing your resolve now. I can’t hold back.”
“That’s just…cruel,” I said, trying to keep my cool. “But you won’t actually hurt Helena. Even if she fails, I mean…you won’t… It’s too soon.”
“Our entire world is at stake, Byron! There is far more for me to worry about than your feelings for the girl! She must be willing to take this to the end or all the centuries of my life are for nothing. Too soon? What do you think ‘too soon’ for a human life means to me?”
Anger seared through me. “Am I your brother or your tool?”
“Maybe you just have to be both!” Her hands curled into fists that she slowly worked back open again. “I didn’t create you. I just…saved your life. I don’t always know if it was right, but…I did it. I still think it was right. I have to see it through.”
“It’s still my life.”
“Not when you’re a god,” she whispered.
“Demigod. What does it even matter,” I growled. “What does that even mean? I love her. You gave me this life and now you can just let me figure it out.”
“I’m sorry,” she said.
I knew I couldn’t budge an immortal.
I was getting an idea for what this meant. If I found a woman to love, and even a bond-mate or three, I might also lead them to their deaths. And I couldn’t tell them the choice they were making. They were starting to figure it out. Billie had some idea of the danger already. But that didn’t do me any good. It wasn’t Billie I wanted.
“Do you have the medicine?” I said, just wanting to leave.
“Always.” She said softly, “I am so sorry. I wish I could have just left you in the library…believe me…I wish it.”
Sam was the last of them now. As long as he was alive, his wards kept the final piece of the box, the final map, safe and sound…at least, as safe and sound as anything could be in this world.
While Fiore and Deveraux remained sharp to the end, Sam no longer remembered who the hell I was. He just knew I was the person who forced medicine down his throat.
“Sam, listen to me. You have to live. Just a little bit longer.”
“Boy, I’m ready to go, just leave me the hell alone! Hannah! Hannah, the—” I muffled him before he could yell for his human nursemaid.
Hannah came anyway and I had to hide the medicine with a spell and melt into the