Page 115 of Tainted Souls
I flinch at the venom in his tone. “Only half.”
He shakes his head in disbelief, and I don’t blame him. I’m far too malnourished to conjure up any good argument right now. The silence stretches between us, taut and uncomfortable. I want to explain and defend myself, but the rebuttal is literally on my hands—dried vitae.
“What happens now?” I ask.
Saul runs a hand through his hair, agitated. “Ace is still deciding.”
“Will he kill me?”
“I don’t know.” His honesty is more terrifying than any threat. “He might. Or he might hand you over to Cain after all.”
A chill creeps down my spine. “You wouldn’t let him do that.”
Saul looks at me then, really looks at me, his hazel eyes so like my own. “Sister, I’ve already used what little influence I have to keep you alive thus far. The others wanted you dead the moment Hanae fell.”
“Why aren’t I?”
“Because, despite everything, despite what you did…” He pauses, struggling with the words. “You’re still my sister.”
Something cracks inside me, a hairline fracture in the wall I’ve built around my heart, finally feeling a connection I’d almost forgotten was possible. “I thought I lost you,” I whisper, eyeswatering. “When you disappeared, when you joined them, I thought you were gone forever. That I was truly alone.”
He drops his head for a moment, waiting for me to compose myself, then shifts on the cot, turning to face me fully. “After Father died, what did you do?”
I blink, confused by the sudden change in direction. “What do you mean?”
“How did you cope? What kept you going?”
The answer comes easily. “Redmoore. My friends. Max.”
“Revenge,” he corrects, his eyes searching for something in mine. “You channeled your grief into hunting vampires, into finding Ace, into making someone pay. I did the same thing, only I went looking for answers instead of blood.”
“And what answers did you find?” I can’t keep the bitterness from my voice.
“That nothing is as simple as Redmoore taught us to believe. That there are no heroes in this story. Just survivors.”
I shake my head, unwilling to accept his philosophy. “There’s right and wrong. Good and evil.”
“Is there?” Saul challenges. “Was it evil when you tore out Hanae’s heart? Or was it survival?”
Survival. The things we do for it.
I open my mouth to respond, but no words come.
Saul continues, relentless. “The Ravens saved me when I was lost. They showed me there was more to being a vampire than bloodlust and violence. They gave me purpose, family, and belonging.”
The fact that he sought family elsewhere instead of sticking by the one he already had, the only one he had left, hurts me deeply. Although my friends feel like family to me, too, it’s not the same. Friends can be chosen, but blood is something you don’t get to choose. It’s messy, complicated, and sometimes hurtful—but it’s unbreakable.
It’s the one thing that lasts when everything else falls apart. The one thing that is bound to us through shared history and pain.
And he chose to abandon it.
“I’m sorry,” I manage to say, grunting as if I’m admitting defeat in a battle I should’ve won. I’m not sure what I’m sorry for, not exactly. I just know that I am.
Saul’s expression softens slightly. “I just wish for you to find peace with who you really are.”
“And who’s that?”
“I don’t know,” he admits. “That’s for you to figure out. But I do know that you can’t keep fighting what’s in your blood. It will destroy you from the inside out.”
