Page 24 of Bullied Pretend Mate
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“Maeve! I’m so glad you could come!”
My throat feels like it’s coated in sand as I walk into the restaurant in downtown Silverville and spot Phina Winward and Valerie Foley sitting at a table, waving me down.
Or, rather, I suppose they’re probably Phina Sorel and Valerie Cambias now. Did they get married? Do the human thing and take their mates’ names?
If they did, it’s like they’ve become new versions of themselves. Women, the town can forgive, even after everything.
“Hey,” I say, my voice coming out through gravel. I set my purse on the ground and take a seat, feeling their eyes on me as I tuck my legs under the table, sit up straight, and turn to face them.
“This is weird,” Valerie says, glancing between the two of us. “Right? It’s weird to be together again.”
The three of us glance at the fourth empty chair at the table. But there were five of us back then, and I wonder whether they’re thinking of Aurela or Tara, which of the two they miss most, and who they’re picturing in that chair.
Tara could take care of herself. But there’s no way she survived that fire, the way it consumed her from the bottom up, licking at her body with a relentless hunger I’ve never seen from flame before.
Aurela, on the other hand, always gave me the sense that something was wrong, even when she denied the question. Even when she was quiet enough that you could forget she was there, forget that something could hurt her at all.
“So,” I clear my throat, look at Phina, then Valerie, leaving Valerie’s question unanswered. “What’s up? Why did you want to meet?”
Hurt passes over Phina’s face. “I thought…Well, I guess I thought we could catch up.”
Anger and hurt flutter through me. I grit my teeth and look away from Phina, knowing she went through her own shit. But when I look away from Phina, it just leads me to look at Valerie.
Valerie, who ran away before we faced our punishment from Holden. Who disappeared. There were five of us, but at the end of it, only Phina and I faced any real punishment.
“Before coming back to Silverville,” Valerie says, lacing her fingers together and leveling a gaze at me as though she can hear what I’m thinking, “I was bouncing around Colorado, picking up shitty jobs and trying to avoid my magic. It caught up to me, and I ended up back here. Lachlan—well, the short of it is that I started another fire.”
The sound of that strikes fear right through the center of my heart. I can’t stop myself from glancing around the restaurant, afraid that someone might be listening in. I can’t stop thinking about what it was like for me after the first fire.
Staring, jeering. A stranger shoving me hard enough into a brick wall that it dislocated my shoulder.
“And I stayed here,” Phina says, thanking the server when she drops off a round of drinks for us. “My grandmother died and left me her house. Nora and I lived there until it burned down in a daemon fire.”
I suck in a breath through my teeth. “There were a lot of fires, weren’t there?” After the initial fire, there were quite a few of them before I finally left town.
“Yes.” Phina looks down at the table and swallows. “And there haven’t been some in a long time.”
“Why did they stop?”
“Xeran isn’t totally sure—it’s really hard to investigate after the daemon fires. But at first, he thought it was Declan starting them as part of an insurance scheme. Then, after Declan’s death, his brothers were trying to harvest the daemon energy, but for them to try and harvest it, it was starting fires.”
I stare at her for a moment. “Harvestit?”
Valerie rolls her eyes. “Yeah, it was stupid. They’re just so greedy, and I guess they couldn’t stand not being in power. Not having control over this place.”
“Are they, like, in jail?” I ask, though I know the answer.
Phina’s face darkens, and I wonder what it’s been like to help Xeran through this. It seems like his brother, Kalen, is the only family he might have left.
“Sorry,” I mutter, shaking my head. “I know better than that.”
The fact that we were minors and girls meant we were spared the absolute harshest of the pack’s punishments.
Valerie clears her throat, and she and Phina share a look before Phina turns to me, shifting in her seat. “If I’m being honest, Maeve, this is about more than catching up.”
I thought so.
