Page 46 of A Dagger of Twisted Starlight

“You know him?” Xavier asked, shocked.

Cassius swallowed. His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. He looked down at his tightly clutched hands. His tan skin went pale around his grip. He shook his head.

“He’s my uncle.”

Chapter 20

Family Ties

Xavier

Cassius had stunnedthe room with his admission.

“Uncle?” Blake repeated. Not even his best friend had known this fact.

“Yes…” Cassius looked down at the half-eaten pizza crust on his plate.

“How did you not recognize him during the attack at the White House?” Blake asked.

“The last time I saw him, I was a kid. He and my dad had a huge falling-out. I don’t think I ever saw him in his wolf form, much less in that fucked-up half-wolf, half-human face he had on. He’s twisted now. Different. He’s changed. But the second I heard his name, his real name, it all clicked. Especially because he loved woodworking when I was a kid. He called himself ‘the carpenter’ back then. It’s him. For sure.”

I rubbed the bridge of my nose. How had we been traveling with a direct family member of the man we were hunting downwithout even knowing it? And what did this mean for our mission?

“Do you know if he and your father have communicated at all?” Damien asked. Robby sat next to him like a statue, eyes trained on Cassius. Dawn exchanged a glance with Claire, who was spinning her bracelet around her wrist as if she wanted to tighten a screw.

“I don’t think they have.” Cassius shook his head.

This was big. The biggest break we’d gotten in our case for the missing dagger. And unfortunately, it had been laid directly at the feet of Blake’s best friend. This was likely a lot to process, but we didn’t have much time. “Do you know how to contact him?” I asked. “Where we can find him?”

Cassius remained quiet. He shut his eyes, wincing as if he were in physical pain. Blake reached over and rubbed his friend’s shoulder.

“It’s okay, Cass. We can figure this out together,” Blake reassured him.

“I can ask my dad,” he finally answered. “He might know where it is we can find him. Maybe he’s kept tabs on his brother.”

“He wasn’t in the room during the attack, was he?” Caleb asked. He was a detective with an agency called Stonewall Investigations, so his expertise was welcome right now. Maybe he should have been the one to take the helm on this. I was clearly proving to be more and more out of my league. If I hadn’t fought off that Dragonsbane, Blake could have been seriously injured or worse, all while we lost an innocent life and weren’t even able to extract a location from the Time Turners.

All my insecurities rose to the surface of my psyche. Childhoodmemories of seeing my siblings master their powers early while I could barely create a handful of sand, much less turn back time. My mother would spend hours with me, day after day, trying to teach me how to work my magic. She was a golden dragon just like me, but her powers seemed like an infinite well stored inside her, while mine felt like a shallow puddle slowly drying up in the hot summer heat. If it wasn’t for her, that puddle may have evaporated completely. She pushed me to grow, to learn, to believe in myself.

The belief was slowly waning, flickering like a candle underneath a cold draft.

“No,” Cass answered Caleb’s question. “I don’t think so, at least. He said he had left right before the attack happened. He was rushed somewhere safe.”

Caleb cocked his head. He pursed his lips. “But how did they know to rush him to safety?”

“It was a large attack—they probably got some kind of word it would be happening,” Cassius said. I noticed there was a bristle in his tone. The stress of this must have been getting to him.

A question popped into my head. For a second, I wasn’t going to ask it, the doubt clamping an invisible hand around my mouth. But I spoke anyway. “Does your uncle have any strong relationships with other people in your family?”

With a deep breath, Cassius said, “Yes. I have a cousin, his only daughter. I think they still talk. I keep in touch with her, but we aren’t close. And her mom passed away around the same time mine did. That made it difficult for us; we were just constant reminders of what we lost to each other.”

“Wow, so both your father and his brother lost their wives?”Dawn said. “I’m sorry. That must have been a very difficult time.”

“It was. And it’s what pulled my father and uncle apart too. They were never really close, but things got really bad. They started to fight a lot. It got fucked. My dad said to me one day that he’s never speaking to Simon again, and after that, I didn’t see him.”

“Are you comfortable with talking to your dad about this?” Blake asked. He clearly cared about his friend’s mental health, which must have been taking a beating through this.

“Yeah, yeah. I just need a minute.” Cassius stood, the heavy chair sliding back across the polished hardwood floor. “Is it alright if I go for a walk?”

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