Page 15 of The Most Wanted Witch

“You suspected and didn’t think you should tell me, of all people?”

“No. I didn’t.” He kept staring at me as he shrugged.

“How could you not?”

He let out a sigh, as if this was the last conversation he wanted to have right now. “Because you can’t defend yourself without twisting your motivations into some story of why it’s good for your opponent if you win. If it turned out I was right, I didn’t think this would help matters. From the look of you right now, the waves of agitation you’re throwing off, I was right. You took ten steps back the minute you realized.”

I’d give him one thing: he’d never been more correct. I was rattled so badly that if I crumbled into a thousand pieces right now, it wouldn’t be a surprise. The only thing keeping me standing was pure resolve, backed by nothing other than the knowledge that I had to keep going.

But that didn’t make it any better. I was somehow connected to something that was pure evil. What did that make me? How could I be good if I was linked to evil? All the fears I’d barely buried felt like they were being washed ashore by the storm of tonight’s revelation.

This wouldn’t do. I couldn’t afford to have a crisis of self on top of all the other problems happening. I needed to be on top of my game, not clinging to stay in the arena.

His eyes tracked me around the room, making me realize I’d been pacing. I stopped moving, gripping the back of the couch in front of me with both hands to anchor myself. I’d use whatever I had to get through this, even a stupid piece of furniture.

He wasn’t talking, but his gaze didn’t leave me, as if he were waiting to see if I was going to implode.

“It was a shock, but I’m fine. You don’t need to worry about me. I can take care of myself.”

He nodded, not fighting. It had an altogether placating feel that I wasn’t fond of. The fight I could handle. This was new territory.

“You didn’t want to run this little experiment because of me, did you?” I asked.

“No. If there was a connection, I did not want an audience to observe it. Just as you’re rattled, I was afraid of others being rattled and the possible ramifications. If word gets out that it throws off a rainbow, all they need to do is look at your hair to know there’s some link.”

“Ifword gets out…” I scoffed. There was no way it wouldn’t, but we both knew that. As soon as two people know a secret, it’s not a secret, and a lot more than two knew. Besides our group, we’d had an audience at the end of the alley.

I didn’t need to ask if this was going to become a bigger issue. It would. Impossible for it not to.

“Will our alliance hold?” Half of Xest hated me enough to dream of murder. I couldn’t afford to lose the other half, not even a fraction of it.

“It will hold even if I have to make it hold.” The placating tone was replaced by steel. This was a Hawk that was much more familiar.

“If you had told me…” The woulda/couldas were piling up in my head so high that I’d be scaling a mountain before I slept tonight.

“We already covered this. I wasn’t getting in your head over a guess. No one knew what was going to happen.”

But some of us had guessed better than others.

“There’s one good thing that came out of this,” he said.

I waited for him to continue, hoping he had something good. I needed a silver lining in this cloud like a person getting pounded by a category five hurricane on the slippery rocks of the coast.

“We don’t know what Dread is, but if we follow the connection back, figure out where your magic originated, we might be able to find Dread’s origin. If you know what a thing is, you can destroy it. Tonight did serve a purpose. Bibbi was right. This was our first step toward getting Dread.”

“Yeah, it proved I’m connected to this monster somehow.” I waited for shock, condemnation, revulsion, something that mirrored the dredged-up feelings shifting inside me.

He continued to sit there, staring at me, no change in his expression.

“Well? You’ve got nothing to say about that?” I asked, daring him to speak the truth, that I might be a monster as well.

“No. I thought that a possible connection was an obvious problem.”

I took a step closer, still waiting for the disgust I was feeling to show on his face. What was wrong with this man? Couldn’t he put two and two together? Had he failed math completely?

“I’m connected to a monster.” Did he not understand what that meant? The worst evil Xest might’ve ever known, and I was linked to it.

“I know.” Still as calm as ever.

---