Page 72 of Captured in Love
Levi takes a step closer, and I instinctively retreat, bumping into Raphaël. Anguish crosses Levi’s face, but he stops and keeps his distance from me.
“He used a spell that deteriorated your mother’s heart muscle. I found it in one of my great-grandmother’s grimoires, and I called him out on it.” Levi’s gaze is imploring as he adds, “I didn’t know what he had done until long after it was all over.”
Long after my mother was dead.
He doesn’t say the words, but they hang between us anyway.
I’m trembling all over, and I dimly realize I’m probably going into shock. Raphaël tries to get me to move again, but I can’t, not until I know the full truth.
And there is one question I need to ask above all.
“When did you find out?”
The skin on Levi’s face takes on an ashen color, and I’m almost tempted to step forward, make sure he doesn’t keel over, but I can’t. My feet feel rooted to the asphalt, and I can’t move.
“Last year,” Levi whispers.
My gasp is loud in my ears, but the air I inhale does nothing to fill my lungs. The pressure of Levi’s confession threatens to crush me. Heknew. He has known formonthsand kept the horrible secret from me. The betrayal hurts more than I could have imagined.
And now I see his behavior in a completely different light. His recent moodiness. His ready acceptance of my crazy plan to enter the Ballendial Games with a stolen invitation.
“Nora, listen,” he says, his voice more urgent now. “There’s more you need to know. My father said—”
I hold up my hand to stop him. Ireallydon’t want to hear what his murderer of a father said to him in their cozy chat.
A little voice inside me pipes up that Levi hasn’t had a cozy chat with his father in years, if ever, but I ruthlessly shut it down. My numb horror is being replaced by anger, a slow flame that grows with every inhale, as if every breath I take fans the flames inside me.
I turn to Raphaël. He lets go of my arm and watches me with wary eyes, his face a mask showing no emotion.
“Did you know?” My voice trembles just slightly, so I grit my teeth, swallow, and try again. “Did you?”
His composure cracks, and he reaches for me again. “Nora…”
“It’s not his fault,” Levi says from behind me.
Suddenly, I can’t breathe. They werebothin on it, keeping secrets, massive, ugly, painful secrets that I had every right to know.
I can’t be here anymore.
The thought shoots through my mind, and I belatedly realize I must have said it out loud when Raphaël takes my hand again to shepherd me toward the car.
“We’ll get somewhere safe and talk,” he’s saying. “Levi hasn’t told you everything yet…”
The idea of getting in that car with them has me digging my heels in again. The enclosed space, the proximity, their ability to read every one of my expressions—I can’t deal with that right now. My insides are raw, rending apart. The knowledge that my mother’s brilliant life was snuffed out by someone Iknowopens up old wounds that had scabbed over as I grieved her. Those wounds now fester—every interaction I had with Levi’s father, with Levi, is painted in a different, sinister finish.
I stop.
Levi’s and Raphaël’s imploring, urgent voices wash over me, and it wouldn’t matter if they were speaking Icelandic—I’mfarbeyond understanding anything.
I know a way out.
My breaths come faster, shallower. I’m panicking, and I don’t know how to stop. I just need to get away, to think, to process, to curl up somewhere safe and hide until this burning pain passes.
I close my eyes and dip into the well of my magic. It’s bright but distressed, the edges of my power jagged and trembling. I shouldn’t be doing spell work in this state of mind, but I don’t care. It’s all I have.
I pull up a ball of energy, but rather than shaping it and fucking up a spell—even now, I don’t want to hurt Raphaël and Levi, not really, which just pisses me off more—I slam all my power into the two amethyst chunks I created for them. I let the guys keep them, mostly because they did carry protection spells as well as my hidden magic, and now I crack them open with twin bursts of pure, undiluted magic.
The effect is instantaneous.
