Page 128 of The Witch is Back

It was true. It was couched and hidden, only noticeable if you were looking for it—and if you’d grown up with him as a father.

He’d made it into a game when she was little, she remembered, gazing at nothing, empty inside. Giving her a note that said one thing, letting her work her way through a lockpicking spell to the words hidden beneath. She’d thought it fun, clever, a childish game to fool her mother.

He’d used it when she was older, too, when his need to hide his other daughter had driven him to hide the truth on the papers she and Kole had discovered, the ones that had told about Sloane.

She’d known all of that, had known how her father’s mind worked. But she hadn’t thought to check the contract.

And it was there. She could call off the engagement with no repercussions.

She could make this right. And all she had to do was let Bastian go once and for all.

The knowledge was a howling roar in her head, but she felt numb. Even the cold wind didn’t touch her as her eyes tracked the ripples on the water.

Choices. It all came down to choices.

It had been two days since the Exhibition and Bastian had played the coward and hadn’t been back to see Emma.

He brooded in a chair overlooking the Nile. Ethan had put him up for the past two nights with minimal questions, a blessing when Bastian didn’t even know if he could get the answers straight in his head.

Emma had put the silencing hex on him. But she’d done it because she’d been young and stupid and had thought whoever had overheard her was a threat to Sloane. She’d thought she’d needed to trap him to help her sister.

Hadn’t he also been young and stupid when he’d fled? Should that excuse her?

The whole thing made his head hurt. Logic was down and insanity was up and right meant left and two wrongs made a right. And he was just so tired of it all, the whole messed-up thing. At least Emma had finally lifted the silencing hex; he’d felt it dissipate the night of the Exhibition. And even now, he hadn’t said the words aloud to anyone back home—just Ethan. Who’d blown out a long breath, said how screwed up it was and had offered his spare room for the duration. Bastian knew whenever he wanted to talk about it, Ethan would listen, but he didn’t know if he’d ever be ready.

“Okay,” his friend called from behind him, as if reading his mind. A frosty beer bottle was thrust into his line of sight. “I’m calling it on the brooding time. Either talk it through like a modern man or get the hell off my continent.”

Bastian grabbed the bottle and took a swig, glad for the cool drink. He’d forgotten how hot it could be out here, even if it was a kind of cleansing heat that baked the pretentiousness out of a man. Or woman.

Emma would love it. He thought about those picture frames, thought about her traveling with Sloane. Wished he could be there as their guide.

To hell with it.

“I see we’re sticking with brooding.” Ethan threw himself into a chair he conjured seconds before he fell on his ass and stretched like a human cat. Sunglasses appeared over his eyes. “Where’s your head at, Bas?”

“My head? Fucked,” Bastian said succinctly.

“Well, sure. The woman you’re about to marry lied to you, hexed you and blamed you for leaving her when actually she was the reason you left.”

Bastian shifted. All true, but he didn’t like the scathing tone that Ethan used. “Yeah, but she did do it for her sister.”

“And she didn’t talk to you like a normal person because...”

“She was scared. And maybe she’s right.” Bastian swept his thumb through the condensation on the bottle. “Maybe if I could’ve talked, I would’ve got the contract suspended.”

“Maybe?”

Bastian cleared his throat. Looked off to the distance. “Moot point. Look, I get why she did what she did. But it’s that she didn’t tell me, even after we...” He stopped.

“Made sweet, sweet love?” Ethan yelped as Bastian made best use of his telekinesis. “Easy, bud. Take it out on your lady love, not me.” He shifted again and lifted his own beer to his mouth. After a swallow, he glanced over. “Why do you think she didn’t?”

He didn’t know, and that was what was killing him the most.

Bastian couldn’t sit anymore and surged to his feet, bottle left behind. He took a few steps away toward the powerful river. Fall in there, get swept away pretty damn quick, he thought. He knew what that was like.

“Gotta say, kind of sad not to have met her,” Ethan said. “She sounds unusual if she’s brought Bastian Truenote so low.”

Bastian quirked his mouth. “She is. Smart, funny, pretty.”

---