Page 151 of Bound By Fury

Daisy said you left.

What’s going on?

Are you okay?

Do you need anything?

I bite the inside of my lip.

Through it all there has been one constant. One person who didn’t repeatedly question me, who didn’t judge me, who didn’t call me crazy, who didn’t gaslight me. There has been one person who, at the end of the day, earned what miniscule, microscopic amount of trust I had left.

But that trust is shattered.

Am I really supposed to believe that whatever scheme Malachi and Alastair have cooked up, Lucas isn’t a part of it, too? After everything, I have nothing to do but face it.

I pick up my phone and hit the Video Call button.

My entire plan is dependent on the fact that Lucas is a drop of blood in the snow, just like me. He understands me in ways no one else ever will. What it’s like to always have one foot in Earnest and one somewhere else. To be desperate to fit, but never quite cutting your edges right to get there.

When he answers on the third ring, my stomach sinks. His face lights up the screen, concern rounding out his eyes.

“Harp? Where are you? What’s going on?” He jumps to his feet, his green comforter bunched up on the bed behind him. “Tell me where you are, and I’ll come get you. Whatever it is, I can help.”

I refuse to look at my image in the bottom corner. I know how I must appear. Puffy, bloodshot eyes and a swollen face. Cracked lips and matted, rain-soaked hair. A crazed, murderous glint in my eyes.

“Harper?” His voice is soft, and I hate it.

“How long have you known?” I ask, straight to the point.

“I—I—”

“How long, Lucas?”

He crumples, the phone dropping down to his waist before he heaves a breath and comes back into frame.

“I’m so sorry,” he says, voice wobbly. “I’m so sorry.”

My mouth goes dry

“You’re sorry for what, Lucas?”

He shakes his head. “I’m not like them. I promise I’m not like them.”

But I already knew that.

“How long have you known?”

He’s quiet for a moment. “Since just after the accident,” he mumbles, and I finally understand.

“That’s what changed,” I murmur to myself more than anything. “That’s what broke us.”

“After the accident and the funerals… after we said bye to Lex,” his voice wavers, “my dad sat us down and explained who my uncle and aunt really were, what kinds of things they were a part of. But I could tell from the way Kai was reacting that this wasn’t the first time he was hearing it like I was. And I didn’t know how to process that. So we got into a fight. And at first I thought it was going to resolve just like our fights always do, but this one was different.

“Something about Kai was different. It was like the grief ate up every good thing about him, and now he was just miserable to be around. But even then I couldn’t get over the fact that he knew before me, and he kept it from me. There was this whole supernatural world out there, and he’d been living in it without me.

“So, like, on one hand, I felt totally abandoned because I don’t have Guardian blood, and I’ll never truly understand how he feels. And I don’t agree with what they do. I don’t want any of this… but that’s—he’s my brother. They’re my family. The only family I’ve ever known.

“Maybe that makes me a coward, and maybe you’ll hate me now just like you hate him, but I’m not confused anymore.