“No, you’re not. You are an imposter. My brother should never have given you that name.”
“If I’m an imposter, then who is the real Eve?”
“Our younger sister,” Anne said, looking away as if remembering another time. “She was so different from the rest of us.”
I was named after my aunt? I’d always wondered why my parents had given me a name that seemed to go against all they believed in. “Where is she?”
“Eve died when I was sixteen. She was fourteen.”
“What was she like?”
Anne chuckled. “Stubborn, brave. She defied our father constantly, refusing to do what he asked despite the torture he put her through. She had this remarkable ability to tune it all out. It was as if she were somewhere else.”
My mouth dropped open. I couldn’t believe it! It sounded as if my aunt had the same ability as me.
Anne continued, “My father was embarrassed by her. He thought she was a regular human, but little did he know that she was more powerful than both Erik and I combined.”
“How do you know?”
“I saw her once. In the woods. She thought she was alone, but Erik and I spied on her. We watched as she somehow managed to reroute a whole section of a stream, creating her own personal swimming pool. When we told our father she could use magic, he vowed to make her use it in front of him. He tried everything, torturing her mercilessly. But she just laid there with a calm expression on her face as if she were sitting on a beach somewhere and not enduring a hot stake through her palm.” Anne sipped from the bottle again. “She had that same expression on her face when his torture finally killed her. After she died, he walked away, not glancing back once. He hasn’t mentioned her since.”
“He killed her?”
“Does that surprise you? His son raised you. Didn’t Erik try to kill you, too?”
I didn’t answer.
Anne crossed her legs and slumped farther into the chair. “The Segurs have always been about money and power. You can’t be in our family if you feel differently.”
I spoke, my voice low. “The twins said your husband was killed in an accident.”
“There are no such things as accidents in our world.”
“But the twins were too young! They couldn’t have killed their own father.”
Anne chuckled. “Of course not, but imagine the guilt they’d feel for thinking they had. Whatever humanity they had was destroyed the moment they believed they killed him. They stopped caring about anything else and finally became moldable.”
“All for money and power,” I whispered.
“Is there anything else?” She moved the bottle in a circular motion, watching the last of the liquid slosh around. “The twins will beat you tonight.”
“How can you be sure?”
“There is still hope in you, small as it may be. It makes you weak.”
I smirked. “I might surprise you.”
“It doesn’t matter. Win or lose, you will be destroyed tonight.”
Chapter 18
I sat alone in my room, staring out the window. The last of the sunlight was chased back by the darkness covering the night sky. I craned my neck, searching for the moon, but there was none. It, too, had abandoned me.
I slumped against the wall. I hadn’t been nervous about tonight until my conversation with Anne. An ominous feeling had grown steadily ever since, and I was unable to shake it. I needed Boaz.
Quietly, I unlocked the window and pulled it open. “Boaz!” I whispered into the night. The wind carried my small voice to the woods beyond. Within moments, a black mist glided across the lawn toward me. I stepped away from the window when the darkness poured over the windowsill and into my room.
“I can’t do this, Boaz.”
His darkness swirled at my legs, rising higher. The coolness of his presence ignited every part of my body, and then it turned electric, shocking new life into me. I’d never felt this much power from him before, and it overwhelmed me.
“Do not be afraid,” Boaz’s voice said in my mind. His icy touch brushed against my neck, sending chills down my spine. “They are weaker than you.”
My body lifted when his mist engulfed me, trapping me inside a wispy cocoon. Every part of him pressed into my skin, shaping and molding, creating something dark and beautiful. I breathed him in, enjoying the intoxicating power as he moved inside me.
“You will destroy them,” he said one last time, but I barely registered his words.
In the distance, a bell rang out, shattering the climactic moment. Boaz lowered me to the ground.
“Go!” his voice commanded.
In a daze, I obeyed.
***
“Welcome, Eve,” my grandfather said from the balcony in the training room. His hands rested on each armrest of his king-like throne. He wore a three-piece suit as if he were attending the theater, a play that would never make it to Broadway.