Page 147 of Stalked By Seduction and Shadows

“She didn’t know,” Snow repeated. She appeared guilty for a moment, her features twisting as she reached into her satchel and pulled out a leather-bound book. “She read this, right before you came in shadows blazing. This was how she found out, at the same time you did. She might not want anything to do with me after taking this and giving it to you, but if it saves her life, then it will have been worth it.”

Snow stepped forward, her eyes glassy and bloodshot. Her shoulders hunched with the weight of emotional burden and exhaustion. The depth of her care for Scarlett had my guts churning all over again. Her friend saw her for what she was, underneath the magick and the glamour and the manipulation, and she still defended her. Even in a room full of vampires who could kill her in the blink of an eye.

Sadie’s voice echoed in my ears, one of the last things she’d said to me before I flew to Hatham.

There are no absolutes, Rune. Sometimes we’re wrong. Even infallible gods like you.

“It’s Isabella’s diary,” Snow said.

I took the journal from her extended hand. When I’d picked apart Scarlett’s apartment, I’d assumed this had been her diary. I hadn’t even thought to grab it and search for information when I’d last been there. But what succubus kept a journal of their duplicitous exploits?

“Her sister had known for years,” Snow forged on. “But she never told Scarlett because she feared Scarlett would flee Crescent Haven in search of her unknown origins, or to find others like her. Sometimes, there are no deeper plots of subterfuge. Sometimes a born vampire fucks a human, and the human leaves that baby at Helia’s feet in some nowhere town. Perhaps to keep the baby safe, naively thinking that if humans raised her, she might turn out more like them than her born side. It doesn’t matter what happened, and we might never know the full truth. What matters is that Scarlett didn’t know what she was. She thought she was human until three days ago.”

Snow didn’t falter, not at Mason’s snide remarks or my unflinching stare. She forged on, and I tried not to be distracted by the faintest hint of Scarlett’s scent on her clothes. Even as it triggered my fangs to ache and my invisible leash to reach out unconsciously. Before I could follow the magickal bond and place where she was, Snow continued, breaking my concentration.

“She has lost nearly everything in the blink of an eye. Her family, her identity, her sense of security, and her understanding of her life and her future. She lost you. And she is crushed, devastated beyond words while you make assumptions and feed her your biased, baseless opinions. She loved you with all of herself, with her beautiful heart and soul. Her soul that does in fact exist despite your attempt to cover it with shame and derision.” Venom leaked into her tone. “And you abandoned her in an instant, without hesitation. Without even bothering to hear her out. You made the most heartbreaking moment of her life infinitely more devastating. Today she sobbed in my arms and begged me to cut her powers out of her. She hates who she is, and I fucking hate you for not only allowing it but demanding that level of self-hatred.”

Mason stepped forward as Snow did, but I waved her off.

“Succubi can’t induce love. She wasn’t manipulating you.”

“I know,” I said.

Mason and Uriah exchanged a look of confusion.

“I cannot be influenced by succubus magick, just like I can’t enter bloodlust,” I explained to my closest friends, my fiercest comrades who I hoped would defend me half as valiantly as Scarlett’s witch friend. “That was what Sadie showed me today.”

“Rune,” Mason said sharply. “None of this is proof of anything. She is still a threat to us. She could still be a plant or had been made into a spy at some point. She could still harm all of us. Harm you.”

Snow watched me keenly, her shoulders relaxing and her chin lifting an inch. “You still love her,” she said. “She needs you.”

Those words hit me at my core, and soon I didn’t even see Mason or Uriah in my periphery. I saw stars and oceans and a deep darkness too, tasted decadent wickedness on my parched tongue.

Snow pointed her finger at me, her eyes narrowing. “I don’t like you. I don’t trust you. I don’t approve of what you’ve done to her, ever since she was a child.”

I could nearly hear Mason and Uriah’s unspoken questions rattling around in their brains.

“But sometimes people find each other because they were meant to, and everything falls into place. Other times, you have to fucking fight. Scarlett needs someone to fight for her. Against all my better judgment, I think you have it in you, underneath all that paranoia and fear.”

My brows lifted.

“Don’t let her down now.”

As Snow backed away, recrossing her arms and shutting her mouth with a calm finality, I once again felt my humanity rise from the abyss.

I wanted to believe. I wanted to believe in me and Scarlett and love written in the stars. I couldn’t live inside the same world that Mason did. For a frightening moment, I had the thought that I’d rather live in delusion than in reality if my reality was one without Scarlett.

I flipped open the notebook, already dogeared at several key passages. I skimmed. I saw what Scarlett saw, and I imagined what she must’ve felt to read such cruel words about her. The scripts I knew had already been running inside of her head for years, provoked by her mountain of shame and guilt. I read the way her sister had blamed Scarlett for her several assaults and cases of harassment and unwanted obsession. I read Isabella’s account of Scarlett’s origins and her ignorance of her true nature.

I closed the book and handed it to Uriah. “Put this in my study, the top left locked drawer of my desk.”

I was going to find Little Flame. I was going to tell her I made good on my promise and that her undeserving, vile sister was safe.

The side of me that had shriveled came back to life, fueled by fire I never thought I’d feel again—Scarlett’s eternal flame, now only fading embers. I was going to have to fix that.

Snow’s lips quirked up knowingly, and Mason reached for me with irritation. Before Mason could speak again, a couple of my inner circle dragged an unconscious Race through the front door.

My confusion soon turned to panic. Because Race was who’d stayed back to watch Scarlett, and the other two men were on the task force to patrol Nyx and hunt down Liza. A woman entered in behind them, one of the clan members in the faction who corresponded with eyes and kept tabs on the kingdom.

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