A Curse of Shadows - Page 100

Dad bursts into the room, his gaze wide and his face going pale. “That’s not a fire. That’s dark magic.”

He throws a towel over the clothes and picks the pile up, snarling as he takes them away. I don’t know where he’s going, but I know he’s right because the moment I’m free of them and the water is cascading over my naked body, I’m no longer feeling weighed down.

“How the hell did that happen?” Estee asks, but I can’t answer her.

Seconds pass and I begin to heal from nearly dying again. I don’t know how, but I feel rather confident that my body was slowly shutting down just then. With every new breath I take, my strength and memory return, but with that comes a soul-deep ache, a knowledge I almost wish I didn’t know.

Tears fall freely down my cheeks and I shake my head, not wanting to believe what I now remember.

Estee bends down, coming into the shower with me, still fully dressed. “Are you okay?”

“Physically, yes,” I manage to say, then I look up at her, my body shivering with the weight of this truth. “I know who’s behind our deaths.”

She tenses beside me. “How? Who?”

“When you took the dagger out of me, I felt like I was suspended in this weird in-between place,” I tell her. “There was pain and the call of death, and I felt so alone, but there was also light. Just as I began fighting harder to reach for it, there was this voice.”

She grabs my shoulders, fingers digging into my skin. “Who, Isla?”

The single word feels like razor blades being forced up my throat as I speak it. “Gideon.”

“Like Asher’s dad, Gideon?” Her eyes widen and her face pales. “You’re sure?”

I nod, never more certain of anything before in my life. “He said the same thing to me when he was in the room after you stabbed me. ‘I’m going to fix everything.’ I don’t know what he’s trying to fix by killing me, but I don’t think he’s done.”

“We have to tell Asher,” she says, standing up, but I don’t move from the shower floor. “What’s wrong?”

“How am I supposed to tell my mate that his own father is responsible for hurting him in the worst way possible?” I shake my head, wishing I never would have pushed to find this information.

Sure, I’d love to fucking strangle Gideon right now, to pluck out his eyes and jab daggers into every inch of his body, but he’s not my father.

While he killed me and my sister, he betrayed his son, my mate. The man I care most about in the world is going to have his entire existence rocked.

So more than my fury, my heart is already breaking for what he’s going to go through once he finds out.

Asher will kill his father, no matter how fucked up that will be, no matter how much I intend to beg him to let me handle this. He’ll need to do this because he’ll feel responsible for Gideon’s actions.

So, not only will Asher be hurt, but he’ll also be branded with guilt, and for those two reasons most, I want to murder Gideon myself.

How could he have done this to his own son? It no longer matters that I lost centuries of my life. The scars this will leave on my mate are all that concern me.

“I need to find Asher.” I close my eyes and try to reach him through the bond, but there’s no answer there. I can still feel him and he doesn’t seem to be in distress, but it’s almost like he’s nowhere close to me. “Where did he say he was going?”

“He’s requesting a meeting with the gods,” she says, reaching for me again, but this time, I don’t fight her. “Come on. We’ll get him back here.”

As she pulls me from the shower and grabs a towel for each of us, I almost tell her we should just wait for him to come back on his own. Except that’s the part of me that’s terrified of hurting the most important person in all the worlds to me.

This truth can’t wait to be told. Asher needs to know, not because he deserves to, but because I’m now wondering, who else might Gideon have killed over the years because they didn’t fit into his plan?

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

ASHER

Aurora pours two drinks, humming joyfully. The pink, bubbly liquid stops just at the edge of the flute before she picks each one up, walking back into the room with the utmost grace.

I expect her to offer one to me, which I would have declined, but instead, she takes both with her to the couch, sipping on the first as she practically floats over the floor.

“So, are you going to take me up on my offer?” she asks once she’s settled, ankles crossed and fiery-red hair spread around her shoulders.