“He’s yourdad, kiddo. He loves you—even more than you can possibly imagine ever loving him.”
Lydia rolled her eyes. “And so what? What’s it gonna change if I tell him ‘hey, Dad, I don’t care if I die’?”
The way Rahil’s throat closed at the sound of those words felt like being back in the hall of the house he’d raised his boys in, opening the bathroom door as water spilled across the floor. He curled his fingers around Lydia’s shoulder, holding himself to the present. There was nothing in the past that could help him now. No one left there.
Only mistakes.
Through the ringing in his head, he managed to say, “No. Under no circumstances are you going to phrase it like that, you understand?”
Lydia nodded, looking at her beanie, now discarded into her lap in favor of the candle. It had droplets of wax scattered across it.
Rahil felt like he was the one who wanted to die now. “Violet, do you…” Fuck, he didn’t know how to say this.
“I want to live,” she said, and he believed her. Thank god, he believed her. “It’s just if I did die in the process of living, I think I’d rather have done that, then done nothing at all? Whether it works or not, or lasts or not—whatever happens—I want to dosomething. That’s all I can do, right?”
Rahil had witnessedbothsides of that equation end in death, and he didn’t know how to answer her, except perhaps, to tell her there was no answer to any of it.
18
MERCER
Mercer could barely see the text through the sheen that had flooded his eyes the moment he opened it.
Rahil
She’s safe. I’m with her at the cemetery. Don’t come.
She’ssafe.
At thecemetery—
Leah. Fuck. He hadn’t even thought—she’d seemed so disinterested the last few years he’d taken her for their bi-annual visits, one on Leah’s birthday and the other on her death anniversary. Lydia had spent twenty seconds muttering under her breath at the grave and then trudged off with her hands in her pockets. Had that been a show? A mask? What was wrong with him that he couldn’t read his daughter at all?
But Rahil—bless that ridiculous, wonderful vampire—was with her now. Of course he’d somehow found her, as Mercer had been tearing his car down the nearby streets, his hands shaking and his foot clumsy on the accelerator. He wanted to drive straight there, despite Rahil’s warning, but he stopped himself, both hands fisted so tightly around the steering wheel that he could barely feel his fingers anymore. His back hurt, he realized. His back and his heart and his throat.
Thank God Rahil had found her.
He was amazed—and a little guilty—at how relieved that made him. Well, not relieved, exactly, with his heart still pounding and his mind still racing toward the nextworst thingthat could happen to her, but comfortable, at least. If Lydia was going to run away from him, he wouldn’t have wanted her to run into anyone else.
Despite Rahil’s terrible flirting and his lack of self-preservation, Mercer had seen how calm and confident Rahil could be in a stressful situation, and suspected that when he cared about someone, he cared a great deal indeed. And he did seem to care for Lydia. Or, in the least, he’d gotten Lydia to care forhim, which Mercer knew meant far more than an obvious sign of the reverse.
Mercer
Thanks
I have to meet William 830 Van Gogh Park
Don’t let her leave until I can pick her up
As much as he wanted to race straight to Lydia’s side, Rahil was right—it wouldn’t be good for either of them to invade her safe space. And it was 8:23. Mercer had somewhere to get to, now that he knew he wouldn’t be showing up to his meeting with William to find a freckled body part in a—
Mercer had to swallow down the bile that shot up the back of his throat and force himself to imagine Lydia sitting beside Rahil, laughing and crying together. No vengeful hunters came blowing through the cemetery’s front gate. No rogue vampires leaped from the shadows. No freak fires. No earthquakes. They were just happy.
Mercer checked his phone. 8:25. Dammit, he had to go.
With his body still feeling like it had been run over by a boat and strung out to dry, he turned the car around.
Why did Lydia have to do this to himnowof all times? Not that he’d told her where he was planning to go tonight, or why. She knew that there was someone targeting them in the hopes of getting holy silver—he’d decided it wasn’t safe to conceal that from her—but nothing more, no matter how much she’d begged and shouted. When she’d started screaming that she was fae too, and that meant she was also a part of this, even if she was broken, he’d wanted to strangle her and wrap her in the longest bear hug of the century all at the same time. Instead, he was pretty sure he’d snapped something about her age—that memory was an empty hole of terror and grief—and told her the conversation was over.
