Page 462 of Shadowblood Souls
I’m not totally sure why she’s asking, but I turn toward her without hesitation. “Of course. I don’t mind letting you call the shots.”
Whoever’s listening in can assume we’re only talking about landmarks to gawk at.
I raise my hand to Riva’s cheek as if this is a romantic moment, but from the back of my head, I draw up my recollections of the shadowkind demon who took us under his protection. Fixing my eyes on hers, I let the images flow from my mind to hers.
Some of the moments Riva was there for too: when we first confronted Rollick in his Miami hotel, when he organized hisshadowkind underlings to help us practice our powers, when he agreed to give us the resources we needed to rescue some of the younger shadowbloods from an isolated facility.
Others she’ll never have seen from any perspective. There was the time when I asked him for permission and the opportunity to make amends with Riva by way of that party, which the demon agreed to without argument. A conversation while she hid away after she’d accidentally hurt one of our shadowkind friends, when Rollick assured me he wasn’t going to retaliate.
I believed in him. I can’t say with certainty what happened after we got the kids free from the facility that turned out to be a trap for us, but no part of me can imagine that Rollick purposefully had the younger shadowbloods slaughtered.
If they’re dead at shadowkind hands, it was in spite of him, not because of him.
My feelings won’t come across in the memories, but maybe that’s beside the point. Riva wants an objective perspective to add to her own recollections.
And I can do that. I can show her a broader view of reality.
As I jump from one memory to another, a different sort of satisfaction wells up inside me.
Riva called me the shadowbloods’ history-keeper and storyteller, but those things mean more than just entertaining people. I can show the truth with the glimpses of the past I hold in my head—truths that might be lost to us otherwise.
I’ve done it before: when I showed Riva how the guardians had deceived us about her role in Griffin’s supposed death, when I offered her my perspective of my argument with Jacob after she and I first had sex. I just never thought about it quite that way until now.
Reliving the memories while I project them to Riva’s mind only solidifies my own sense of what’s true. Rollick wasn’thuman, and his sense of morality might have been somewhat skewed by that… but not much more so than our own morals are as shadowbloods.
When it mattered, he was there for us. I never saw him show unnecessary cruelty.
When I ease back from the psychic connection, Riva blinks a few times and rubs her forehead. She shoots me a twisted smile that looks more uncomfortable than happy.
“I just want to make sure… that we don’t get lost,” she says quietly. “Heading in the wrong direction. But I guess pretty much everything we could do is right, comparatively speaking.”
More right than what we’re experiencing back at the villa? I chuckle softly. “Yeah, I’d say so.”
I pause, recognizing the tenor of Riva’s uncertainty even if I don’t totally understand what she’s working through. She’s deciding between believing our impressions of Rollick… and what the guardians showed us?
There’s a little more I can say—or rather show—on that subject.
I stroke my fingers over her temple. “Something else to consider.”
In a fleeting stream, I bring up the memories of the various ways the guardians have betrayed us. Misled us. Manipulated us. Just a glimpse of one and another, enough to stir the unpleasant memories Riva already has without forcing her to dwell in them longer than she needs to.
Wetting my lips, I catch her gaze again in the present. “We know going in that direction definitely wasn’t right for us lots of times.”
We have no direct proof that Rollick ever lied to us. But the guardians did all the time.
Riva’s fingers curl around the map. Then she dips her chin in a sharp nod.
“All right. I know where we should start. We never got dessert.”
She tugs me farther down the street, around a couple of corners… and toward a pastry shop she must have noticed during our earlier wanderings.
A pastry shop with a small sign announcing an internet café up top.
Twenty-One
Riva
It feels strange, making what might be the most daring move of defiance since Balthazar kidnapped us while chatting idly about the excellent cannoli we’re enjoying. I take a bite, the thick, sweet filling coating my tongue, and furtively tap on the keyboard of our rented computer with my free hand.
