Page 34 of The Heart of Moonlight Falls

“I couldn’t face my own guilt.” Samantha made a pained sound, looking away from him. “You have to understand. I didn’t do this because I wanted to. What would you have done if you found out your child was damned to live a cursed life?”

“Not curse another child, that’s for sure,” James cut in, stern and unforgiving.

Samantha fixed a hollow gaze on James. “I know it wasn’t right, but I couldn’t see past protecting my kid.”

“And I wasn’t your kid?”

Samantha looked at the table.

“Fine, don’t answer.” Sebastian sat up straighter. “You’ve already made it perfectly clear you didn’t want me. Whatever, it’s in the past. But it doesn’t explain why you ignored me after the deed was done and I was trapped. Why not tell me where you last saw Selma’s spell? Why not help me at all? You knew I was alone. For years.”

A tear fell down Samantha’s cheek, but Sebastian refused to care. “What I did was horrible. I know. I couldn’t live with the reality of it after Stephen died. I was sorry I did what I did, but there was no taking it back.”

“But you made it worse,” James said. “You could have visited Sebastian. Helped him. You could have changed his imprisonment and made it bearable. Hell, you could have done that for your brother like your mother did for your father. You didn’t have to abandon either of them.”

“I know,” Samantha pleaded, even as she glared at James for voicing truths she clearly didn’t like looking at. “I did the wrong thing at every turn. But the only way I could act like it was worth it was if I forgot about Storm House.”

“You’re selfish,” Sebastian said.

“I am.” She nodded grimly like this was something she had no control over but accepted. “I chose my own comfort and my daughter’s life over everything else. You’re entitled to hate me for it.”

Sebastian rubbed his eyes, the beginning of a headache pulsing uncomfortably. “That doesn’t actually make me feel any better.”

“Well, what do you want me to do about it? I’ll never make it up to you. I’ll never put this right. Not after nearly three decades of choosing to let others suffer so my daughter and I didn’t have to.”

There was a heavy pause. Sebastian didn’t know what to say. The past couldn’t be changed. It would always hurt.

James took Sebastian’s hand, lacing their fingers together and stroking his thumb lightly over Sebastian’s skin. “You can’t make things up to Sebastian, but you owe him everything you know about the curse and the veins. You may have come here to find out what was going on to see if the curse would come for your daughter, but you can choose to help. For once.”

“You seem to have a lot of opinions on something that has nothing to do with you,” Samantha snapped.

“Nothing to do with me?” James’s voice turned cold. He ran his free hand through his hair, his gaze cutting to Sebastian. He seemed to reconsider his next words. “We can get to that later. We’re not telling you anything until you share everything you know.”

Samantha eyed Sebastian like she wasn’t taking James’s word for anything.

Sebastian tried to ignore the growing ache in his head. Fuck he was tired. Of this and everything he had to deal with. “If you want to find out what’s happening with the curse, it’s the only way.”

“I don’t see how telling you about the veins will help.” Frustration leaked into Samantha’s tone. “Who’s out at Storm House now? I assume you found Selma’s spell and trapped someone.”

“Not all of us will damn innocent people to save ourselves, Mom. You don’t need to understand how talking to me will help. You just have to do it. Or would you rather keep secrets on the off chance that revealing them will hurt you and Kira? Are you going to make the same choice you supposedly regret? Or will you do the right thing this time?”

After a long pause, she said, “What do you want to know exactly? I assume Stephen told you everything.”

“Why don’t we compare notes and check? He might have missed some things, seeing as he was dying.” Sebastian had a lot of anger for Stephen after he died, but he’d loved his uncle too. His mom’s flinch at the blunt reminder of Stephen’s death gave him a stab of guilt for using it as a weapon. He shook it off. “Tell me everything your dad told you about how the imbalance started and what his father and Nelson did.”

Samantha ran a hand through her hair. “He was only little when it all happened and didn’t tell Stephen or me anything until he was dying. I don’t know?—”

“Mom, please.”

She gave Sebastian a barely-there nod. “Okay. Apparently, Sullivan and Selma weren’t as secretive about things as my father was when Stephen and I were growing up. We didn’t know about the curse, but everyone in the generations before us did. The whole family knew the secret back then. My father knew what was coming for him well ahead of time. My mother knew too. But they decided not to tell my brother and me. We weren’t there for the initial disaster, so we might not understand and therefore try to escape our duty, or so their justification went.”

“And learning the secret never trapped anyone?” Sebastian asked.

Samantha gave him a confused look. “No. Selma told who she wanted, and they were prevented from telling anyone else by the secret-binding. She died not long after my father and mother were married.” She turned to James, her gaze sharpening. “How did you find out? Did you break the secret-binding and get trapped?”

James didn’t respond.

“Right. You two aren’t telling me anything.” Samantha turned back to Sebastian. “Sullivan and Nelson were scientists. They bought the property to study the veins. Nelson was always confident veins could be used as an energy source. He wanted to power the house with them as some sort of experiment. The brothers filled my father’s young mind with all their ideas, and even decades later, he spoke highly of their intellect.”

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