Page 129 of Seduce Me in Shadow

“I understand if you can’t say more now.”

I shake my head. “If I don’t, I’ll never finish. I was chasing him, pretending I was going to scoop him up and tickle him until he cried uncle. He ran, as always. He was a fast little bugger.Rather than catch him myself, I worked a little of the magic I’d been learning on him. He tripped.”

I can see it in my mind, those little feet stumbling, chubby hands flying. Why doesn’t closing my eyes make the vision go away?

“He fell?” Sydney prompts softly.

The only heat in my body comes from her soft touch. Everything else inside me is dead cold.

“Yes. And hit his head on a stone retaining wall. It was my fault.”

As I speak the words, I can see Westin’s feet tangle before he collided with craggy rocks, then crumpled to the ground, blood spewing from a ragged cut that burst his forehead wide open.

Sydney gasps. “It was an accident.”

I stab my eyes with a thumb and forefinger.Choke out the rest. Get it over with. After all, I owe her a complete explanation for breaking her heart. “I screamed, and my mother came running. I told her everything. She was rattled but promised that simple magic would make him well again. She squeezed my hand, and I remember feeling utter relief as she hovered her wand over Westin’s wound. Instead of healing, he choked, sputtered, and suffocated to death.”

Sydney frowns. “I don’t understand.”

“Her magic, meant to heal him, went awry. She was rattled, perhaps applied the wrong spell. I don’t know. After my mother stopped screaming, I remember hearing the song from the same fucking birds that were singing ten minutes before my life changed forever.”

“I’m so sorry, Caden.” Sydney wraps her arms even more tightly around me. “But it wasn’t your fault.”

How easy it would be to lean against her, let the balm of her love fill the festering wound inside me.

But dangerous.

“After that, my mother and I barely spoke. She retired to her bed and rarely left it. She claims she never blamed me but… Of course she did—and she should. I wouldn’t blame her for hating me. I used my magic, and it ultimately killed him and?—”

Tears. Scalding drops make a path down my face, and I wipe them away angrily before dragging in a rattling breath. “I can’t be with you. I shouldn’t even love you. Because I’ll lose you like I lost Westin, my mother, all my friends, and now Lucan. Their losses hurt like hell. Yours would kill me. I would have no reason left to live without you.”

“You have every reason to live. Lucan isn’t gone, and you won’t lose me. We’re going to fight this bastard and win.”

“There’s too much at risk. My heart is gone. I’d like to keep my sanity.”

Resignation stiffens her expression, and she steps out of my embrace. “I’ve lost my heart, too—and I embraced it because it could lead to something wonderful.”

A shrill female scream suddenly rips through the house. Adrenaline rushes through my veins.

“Stay here.” I push past Sydney and charge out of the room and down the hall. “Sabelle!”

Naturally, Sydney is on my heels. “Perhaps she didn’t leave. Is Lucan hurting her?”

Likely so, but if I confess that, then Sydney will insist on helping. The woman truly doesn’t understand the peril she puts herself in. Since I refuse to assume the risk of mating with her, I have no right to dictate to her. But damn it, I’m finding it harder and harder to hold my tongue.

As I reach Lucan and Anka’s bedroom, I try to slam the door in her face.

But Sydney pushes her way in. And we both stop and stare in horror at the drama unfolding.

I don’t know how, but Lucan came free from his bonds. He’s captured a female underneath him, her blond hair twisting in ringlets across the bed before cascading to the floor.

Shit. That’s not Sabelle. Who is she, and how did she get here?

I feel frozen with shock as I watch my brother growl, his face contorting with menace as he chokes the witch with all his might.

Fuck, he’s trying to kill her.

Instead of struggling, the woman embraces him while her whole body shakes. Something gentle and magical pours off her. I feel it in the air, soft and settling, flowing into Lucan.

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