I suspected, but I didn’t know. Still, it feels like a lie when I say, “No.”
Her brows lower and her eyes grow sharp. “Did you burn her bones?”
“Wh--what? Who?”
She rises, and now I see it in her face. She doesn’t believe me. “Are Bron and Dwade at her grave?”
“Esmeray--”
She turns and runs.
It takes everything inside of me to stand unsteadily and race after her. I feel like I’m walking sideways, and the ground seems too far away, but I run through the rain, keeping an eye on her small form far ahead of me. Already I know she’s heading to the graveyard, but I don’t know what she thinks she’ll find. Does she really believe we went out to burn some bones in the night?
She explodes through the gate to the graveyard, and I’m ridiculously far behind. For a minute I lose all sight of her, and my heart races. If someone was burning bones, if someone knew what Esmeray was doing tonight, she might just be running straight into the arms of a powerful enemy. But just as the thought makes me run harder, I spot her.
Esmeray kneels before an undug grave, and I can’t be sure if it’s the rain or tears that track her face, but I’m relieved to see she’s alone. I slow and approach her carefully, having no desire to find myself flat on my ass again. But when I get closer, when I open my mouth to say something, anything, she stops me with her own words.
Her cold words. “If I find out you had anything to do with this, I’m going to kill you, Lucian.”
I believe her, and she must truly be my mate, because her words only make me love her more. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Her grey eyes lock onto my own. “You lie to me. A lot. So much that I don’t know when you’re telling the truth and when you’re blowing smoke up my ass. You may as well stop talking to me.”
Her words cut me to my core, and I kneel down in the mud beside the grave, staring into it to see smoking bones. “I only ever lie to protect you.”
“Well, stop,” she says. “I don’t need protection.”
“You don’t understand.”
Her eyes seem to weigh my soul and find it lacking. “I understand that I’m a dark fae in a school where I’m not wanted. I understand that I’m going down the same path that my brother walked, and that this path led to his death. And I understand that I thought that at least I could trust you three when I got here, but the truth is that I can’t trust anyone.”
I rub my chest, trying to take the strange ache her words bring away. “We care about you.”
“Then don’t stop me.”
She stands and her hands are curled into fists. I follow her as she exits the graveyard, and I find it hard to find the words to make things better between us. She’s right to not trust us. We are lying to her. But she has to eventually accept we’re doing it for her own good, right?
“You’re going back to the tunnels?” I ask, surprised when I realize our direction.
She doesn’t answer, so I hurry to keep pace with her.
“Don’t, Esmeray! Don’t do this!”
She ignores me.
I grab her arm and spin her to face me, saying the only words I think might get through to her. “Rayne wouldn’t have wanted this!”
She slaps me, and the sting shocks me. “Don’t tell me what my brother would have wanted! You weren’t there when he was dying! I was! He came to me for a reason. He knew that I would stop at nothing to uncover the truth. Now either help, or get out of my fucking way.”
She keeps walking.
I follow her as if in a trance. “I’m coming with you.”
Her steps slow. “Have you ever been in the tunnels before?”
“No.” The lie slips so easily from my lips, but it’s a lie I’ve told a thousand times.
She keeps walking, her back rigid.
I don’t know what else to do, so I just follow her. Through the rain, through the night, and to the place my best friend was attacked. It all feels so wrong, and yet, I’d follow her to hell and back. So there’s no other choice.
When we enter the tunnels, it’s strangely quiet. She picks up a torch from the ground and doesn’t look back at me as she begins to lead us. I fully expect her to take a different path, but as time passes, a gnawing sensation eats at the back of my thoughts. This path is dangerous, and there’s no way in hell she should know to take this one out of all of them.
We come to a tunnel with blood smeared on the wall. I step forward and grab her, yanking her toward me. For the first time on this path, our eyes meet, and I stretch my senses out, needing to know how she feels…but there’s nothing. She’s locked her emotions down so carefully that there’s not even a trace of them. But her face…it tells me she’s angry.
“Esmeray, how do you know-- why are we going this way?”
“It’s as good a path as any,” she says, and there’s something taunting in her voice.
Is she trying to get me to admit I’ve been here before? I clench my hands into fists. If I tell her that, I’ll have to tell her everything, and she’ll never forgive me.
So I just say, “Okay.”
She turns away from me and we continue down the path. I feel sick as I see the blood smeared on the wall. Some of it is Rayne’s, but I’m pretty damn sure some of it is new.
And then she stops before a wall, and every muscle in my body tenses. There’s no way she could know… Her hand skims the wall and finds the subtle mark of the raven. Her fingers press the stone, hard, and it slowly
