Page 28 of Fallen Heirs

I stared at him, trying to determine if it was his genuine smile or his fake reassuring smile that he used to just make me feel better.

It was fucking indecipherable.

He was too good.

“It’s for the best at the moment anyway. Elliot has been asking me to head up to theExemplarcompound.”

“So you are going to take Abigail’s offer then?”

“I’ll be considering it as I take things in.”

“Right, get all the information first before making a decision. Especially a life-changing one like this would be. What about the mantle in the Dark Fae Realm? Becoming King one day? Being your father’s heir? Are you thinking of doing something along the lines of Elliot, jugglingExemplarandSabre Tech?”

“Perhaps.”

I pushed my chair closer, then sank into him. “I can’t believe you’re not going to be there at the Academy with us, withme.”

His arms came around me, holding me to him. “I’ll still be close. I’ll still be with you. You’ll have X and Alena too. It will all be okay, baby bird.”

“You promise?”

“I do.”

“I love you, Ore.”

“I love you too and I’ll never leave you.”

I buried my face in his chest, holding his words right there, needing them to roll over me and infuse me.

“I’ll never leave you.”

“I’ll never leave you.”

“I’ll never leave you.”

8

~Elliot Sabre~

Change.

There had been so much of it over the last few weeks.

More than there had been in years.

It had been happening slowly, bit by bit, since Constantine had been resurrected and that had surged following Abi’s untimely death.

Hersacrifice.

It had been eating at me fiercely that I hadn’t gotten there in time to stop her, that I hadn’t been able to find another way. That she hadn’twaitedfor me to find another way.

It was what I did, what I’d been doing for years.

Making the impossible possible.

Whether I could have found a way to extinguish black magic that hadn’t involved her having to use her celestial light and sacrifice her own life, I didn’t know. But I hadn’t even been able to give it a good try before she’d done what she had.

She’d wanted to die.

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