Page 45 of Magic of Sins

I want to laugh. The idea that Caden’s suggesting is absurd. It can’t be. I’m just an ordinary girl. There’s nothing special or remarkable about me. Nothing at all.

But the laughter gets caught in my throat. What if he’s right? I felt something when he kissed Sasha, and it definitely wasn’t jealousy.

Well, not just jealousy.

“Your mother was one of us,” Caden says softly.

He looks at me like he expects me to lose it at any moment, that I’ll start screaming or crying. But even if I felt the urge, I couldn’t. I’m frozen. It’s so surreal. Like I’m watching myself through a veil.

“She was a sin mage?” I repeat slowly. “How do you know that?”

“I did some research. Apparently, she lived in the East End for many years, until she had you. Your father was human. She must have hoped your powers would never manifest if she gave you away and you grew up far from our kind.”

It sounds logical, yet I find it hard to believe. What mother would give away her own child?

My foster mother condemns sin mages. Under her roof I grew up strictly virtuous. Even the smallest of sins was punished with food deprivation. Once she caught me reading an old romance novel that one of my friends from school had found in her parents’ attic and given to me. As punishment for my unchaste thoughts, I was locked in the dark pantry for a whole day. I wonder what Lady Rose would say if she were here now. If shelearned what I was.

I stare at my hands, unable to comprehend what Caden just said.

“So my mother wasn’t murdered by sin mages?”

He shakes his head, his gray-blue eyes full of compassion. “She gave birth to you and left the country a little later. A close friend arranged for you to go to a foster mother in the countryside.”

“And my father?”

Caden shrugs. “I couldn’t find out anything about him.”

Because he was a nobody. Not like my mother, who passed on this hideous gift to me.

I’m a sin mage. I feed on other people’s sin. The thought makes me sick to my stomach. I have become what I fear most.

“It’s going to be okay,” Caden says softly. “You’ll learn to control it.”

He starts to reach out as if to put his hand on mine but stops when I recoil.

“Trust me, once you accept it, it will be freeing.”

But I don’t want to accept it. I’ve seen enough of Caden’s world to know that I want no part of it.

I jump to my feet. The broken glass crunches under my shoes, but I pay it no mind. I just want to get away from here. The best thing I can do is put as much distance as I can between Caden and me. Being around him makes me feel like I can’t breathe.

Caden straightens up as well.

“Kaya,” he begins, but I push him away.

Panic spreads through me. My legs tremble as I walk toward the door.

“Where are you going?” Caden asks.

“Home.”

I can’t stay here. And I can’t go back to the palace either. If the king finds out what I am… I just want to go back tomy apartment, crawl under the covers and pretend none of this ever happened. Can’t I just go back to my old life? For the past nineteen years, no one even suspected what I was—until Caden came along.

Dazed, I walk down the hallway, having to hold onto the wall to keep from collapsing. The sun’s blinding when I step outside. I glance back over my shoulder to see if Caden followed me out of the living room, but I’m alone. Maybe he can sense that I need time to process all this.

The limousine is still parked in front of the villa. Caden’s chauffeur Rey is leaning against the car door. She looks up when I take another shaky step.

“Do you want me to take you somewhere, Miss Ashton?”

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