Jayden nodded. “Because of Noah and Cabe. He trusted Miro to get close to you, but when he realised that you’d stolen a second pair, he was forced between a rock and a hard place. He didn’t trust them the same way he trusted Miro.”
“Because Miro was in love with someone else,” I uttered softly, my mind connecting all of the dots. Sorrow flooded into me, washing away all of the confusion with a barrage of memories: Quillan’s face was in every single one of them, looking distraught, torn with confusion, reeling in his own personal brand of regret.
I had never hated anyone so much as I hated myself in that moment. I was the worst kind of monster alive.
“I’m ready,” I croaked out, standing on wobbly legs.
Jayden pulled a cell phone out of his pocket and punched in a number, handing the phone over to me. I didn’t need to ask whom he had called, just like I didn’t need to think about what I was going to say. There was nothing complicated about how I felt or what I needed to do. In fact, nothing had ever been so simple.
“Jayden.” Weston answered the phone after only a few rings.
“No,” I replied, my tone surprisingly even. “It’s me.”
He paused on the other end and I thought that even his breathing had halted, held back by his surprise.
“You’re going to release Silas,” I continued. “Tonight. I’ll meet you at the Komnata, and this time nobody is shooting anybody. You’ll secure my invitation into that stupid boat house, I’ll leave with you, and Silas will leave with two of Jayden’s men. Do we have a deal?”
“That’s it?” Weston didn’t need any time to digest my offer. “After three months, that’s all you have to say?”
“Not quite,” I hedged. “I need a little extra insurance.”
“How much extra?”
“I don’t want him hurt ever again.”
“I can’t promise that. I’ll give you a month. One month free of pain.”
“One year, for all of them.” One year until Silas reached the cut-off age for bonding and Weston had no excuse to torture him anymore.
“Define all of them?”
“Every single one of my friends.”
Weston laughed, the sound booming through the metal and glass instrument in my hand. “You’ve got balls, girl. Five friends, one year, except Silas. He still only gets a month.”
“Seven friends. Eight months. Including Silas.”
“Not happening.”
I growled, my fingers pinching the phone so hard that my hand started to throb. “Eight months for the rest of them and six months for Silas. Final offer.”
“Fine.”
“And Weston?”
“Yes?”
“That starts right now.”
He laughed again. I could feel the curiosity in Jayden’s stare, so I turned away from him to face the bare hallway leading back to his sitting room.
“Done,” Weston said, hanging up on me.
The Komnata didn’t hold fond memories for me. The scar on my shoulder tingled as I stood on the edge of the swamp, glaring into the reflection of the mossy ripples before me. There was a bite to the breeze that wrapped cold fingers around my body and squeezed, stealing my composure and filling me with familiar trepidation. A borrowed beanie attempted to shield me from the mist of rain that whispered over us, but it was unsuccessful, and I was shivering by the time Weston arrived.
I ignored him, my eyes on the two men that had dragged a body from the back of Weston’s limousine. The man was limp between them, his skin stained in a red-turned-brown meld of colour, his head lolling and his limbs hanging. He was taller than the two carrying him, so the tops of his feet were scraping against the bitumen. I cringed and reigned in the urge to run to Silas to make sure that he was okay, because he wasn’t okay. He never had been, and he never again would be. He might have had a chance, before I had stolen him from his true Atmá, but there was no use dwelling on things that might have been. If there was anything in life that was guaranteed to slow your progress forward, it was the knowledge of an alternative path to the one you were on. This was my path now, this was Silas’s path now, and there wasn’t any point in thinking about the other paths that might have been taken, because they were innumerable. Silas could have been born to someone other than Weston. He could have been the firstborn, the Voda Heir, and an Atmá himself. He could have been an opera singer. He could have been a drug dealer like I had always expected. He could have been anything; he could have done anything…
I could have stolen anyone.
I watched as Silas was loaded into the car by the side of the road and I was filled with a shame so deep it brought tears to my eyes. It had taken me months to work up the courage to do this. I had been forced to choose between the threat of betraying the people who only wanted to protect me and the threat of choking on my own self-loathing. Eventually, the latter had won out.