Page 282 of Dawn of Chaos and Fury
“What? Why?” Lange demanded, trying and failing to keep the panic from his voice.
“I don’t want her to remember…this,” she rasped, each breath becoming harder. Shallower. “But you swore…”
“Eviana, stop,” Lange ordered, her face in his hands as he leaned over her. “Stop. We’ll get a Healer. Cienna. Someone. We’ll?—
“You swore she would be part of your family,” Eviana forced out. “That she wouldn’t…be alone.”
“Eviana!”
Corbin was there then, leaning over her, and Eviana could just make out Caris holding Priya in her arms, softly discussing the flower. Priya was none the wiser, listening intently to whatever Caris was saying. She was a mother. She understood.
“It’s okay, nightmare,” Corbin said gently, taking her hand in his. “We’ve got her.”
Eviana gave him a weak smile. “Thank you.”
“No,” Lange snarled, shaking his head in denial. “No, you didn’t… You hauled us all over the continent for her and now… No.”
“She always knew it would come to this, Lange,” Corbin said softly, ever the observant one. “It’s why she took us with her.”
He understood. Good. That was good.
“Make sure…she knows the trees,” she rasped.
Corbin nodded, his throat bobbing with emotion. “Yeah, nightmare. We will.”
Because there was always a cost. For every good, there was an evil. For every light, there was a dark. For every sacrifice, there was a reward.
And hers was getting to watch her daughter admire a flower, bright and beautiful, as she took her last breath. Not as a Source on her knees for her Master, but as a mother knowing her daughter would never have to be what she had become.
49
TESSA
“Idon’t understand,” Axel said, all of them sitting in the Penthouse living room once again. This time they weren’t sitting in jarring defeat, but the shock was still there.
Valter was dead, never to threaten any of them again. Theon. Axel. Maddox. Caris. They were all free of him.
And so was Eviana, though not in the way Tessa had intended.
From the first time she’d visited Eviana at the Faven Palace, she’d intended to free her of the Arius Lord. She’d worked to build a tentative trust, and then she’d trusted Lange and Corbin to be the good souls they were and build it even more. They’d clearly done that, and nothing was more evident of that than the way Corbin was holding a sleeping Priya in his lap next to Lange on the sofa.
“Thank you,” Caris said softly as Eliza placed a glass of wine and plate of food on the table before her.
Xan, Eliza, and Razik had all come to the Underground to wait for their return. Even with Bree contained and no longer a threat, Axel wouldn’t leave Kat and Maddox alone.
“Do you need anything else?” Theon asked, his voice monotone as he sat with what had happened.
“No,” Caris said gently. Her gaze slid to Axel. “But I can clear up the confusion.”
“Please do,” Axel said, swiping a hand down his face. “Never in a thousand decades did I think I would be upset my father’s Source was gone.”
“Don’t call her that. Her name was Eviana,” Tessa cut in sharply.
Axel winced. “Sorry, Tessa. I’m just…” He lifted his gaze back to Caris. “Confused doesn’t begin to cover it.”
“As I said earlier this evening, your father was a very paranoid male. It only grew after Rordan’s betrayal. He started taking extreme measures,” Caris said.
“Like linking Cressida’s life to yours,” Theon said.
