Page 41 of Night Fall
“Greg?” she said, calling his attention. When his eyes met hers, she swallowed down the ball in her throat. She knew it would be hard to say her next words, but she had to. He deserved them. “You were right. You were right about Erik being alive, and you were right when you said I had given up all those years ago.”
He looked at her, as if he could tell how much she struggled to start the conversation, but still he said nothing.
“How did you know? About him, I mean. Why did you believe he was still alive?”
He clasped his hands and settled further in the chair. “Because he loved you, Mya. When Erik asked me for my blessing, it was to look after you, take care of you, to keep you as his number one priority. It was never to be with you. In all the years we were together, he never took your love for granted. He never expected you to be love him, to choose him, and he was willing to force himself to be content with just being by your side if that was what you wanted. Your happiness and safety came first to him, which is the same reason I was willing to give him my blessing.”
Tears gathered in Mya’s eyes, but she refused to let them fall.
Greg leaned forward and squeezed her arm. “Now that I’m older and I have more experience, I understand mate bonds. I can only try to understand what Erik felt when he thought you rejected him. I believe he wrote the goodbye letter to you because his want, his desperate need to protect you was prevalent in his words, but leaving you? Committing suicide? No.”
“Erik was my mentor and my closest friend, but he would never have trusted me to look after you. Even with a broken heart he would have stayed by your side. He would have never left you alone, even if that meant staying in the shadows where you couldn’t find him. I’m just sorry that the both of you had to go through this much to end up here.”
Mya tried to cover her mouth as sobs began to rack her. She felt her brother take the weight of Ruby from her. She heard him step outside the room, and then he was back, holding her close to his chest.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured into his shoulder. “I’m so sorry for all the times that I—”
“I know,” he said, his voice laced with pain. “I know there have been times you’ve hated me, and I know our relationship has never been as good as it once was, but that doesn’t make me love you any less, Mya. You’ll always be my sister, and I’m sorry for all the times I was hard on you. I know that didn’t help.”
She wiped at her eyes and shook her head. “No, I deserved that. I needed that. If you had coddled me, I would’ve stayed in my sorrowful little state and never tried to do anything with my life. Because of you I now have a chance. You fighting with me gave me that.”
He smiled, and his warmth broke through some of the darkness surrounding her heart. “If you need someone to fight with or for you, I’m always happy to do so. I love you, Mya, and I will always do anything I can to help you, no matter how difficult you might make it.”
“Thank you for always being there, and I love you too.”
A soft knock on the open door broke Mya and Greg apart, and Mya smiled as Daniella walked in then and dropped a kiss on Mya’s head, then turned to kiss Greg.
“Hey sweetheart,” he said as he wrapped his arm around her waist.
“Good morning, love.” Daniella smiled at Greg, and there was so much adoration in her eyes that it felt as if Mya were intruding on a special moment between them. It was equally heartwarming and heart-wrenching for Mya to watch. If Gregori was a king, Daniella was his queen. If he was the patriarch, the father of their circle, Daniella was the matriarch, the elemental mother—equally kind, protective, and wrathful of anyone who hurt their family.
She simply fit in a way that was astonishing to witness, and that extended to her place in the entire circle. Daniella had the respect, admiration, and devotion of every single one of their battle officers, warriors who could be difficult to please. She’d become someone they went to for advice, someone who aided them whenever possible, and an incredible fighter that Mya was proud to battle alongside. But even more than that, Daniella had changed Greg.
Mya had seen the same thing with Johanna. Luke was calmer, more positive, serene in a way Mya had never seen before. There were immortals with mates, but the changes she’d watched her family and their other halves go through over the last year were incredible to witness, and Mya had to admit to a small bit of jealousy, of longing. Had she been that way when Erik was around? Was that why his loss was so potent, why it had changed her so? And what would happen when she found him?
What would happen if she didn’t?
Mya looked at the maps again with renewed vigor. She had to find him, and once she did, she’d get him to Johanna to restore his memories. She just had to—
“Let me see those,” Daniella said, and Mya stood and pulled back her chair to let her sit down.
“There’s something there. I can feel it. It’s like there’s magic I can’t see in between the pages,” Greg said.
Mya’s eyes widened and she moved to look over Daniella’s shoulder. She gasped as she realized that she’d been so focused on finding Erik, on making the maps mean something she could understand, that she’d missed the aura surrounding them. It was only a tingle, like static electricity, but it was there.
Daniella fingered the corner of one of the maps. “You won’t be able to see it because it isn’t meant for you,” she said breathlessly.
“The spirits?” Greg asked, rubbing Daniella’s back.
She nodded. “We need Johanna and Luke.”
***
“What did you find?” Johanna asked when she and Luke approached the table, breathless and still charged of energy from teleporting to them.
“Tell me what you feel,” Daniella said, tapping the map.
Johanna ran her fingers over the edges, then gasped, pulling them back. “It’s filled with magic. Witch magic.”
