Page 185 of The Incendiary

For the first time since I’d met him, he laughed. A strange, melodic sound that warmed my blood with an inexplicable trickle of joy.

“Warding is more complex,” he answered calmly. “It will take a while for you to learn it.”

“How long did it take you?”

“Five years.”

My gut twisted. I had a feeling Simeon’s remaining magic wouldn’t last five years.

“Your real question, then?” he questioned.

I had so many. One, about whatever entity was strangling me in my sleep, but she hadn’t come back for days. I should ask about the magic again, where it came from and how Simeon and Molochai obtained it, but my instinct was pleading for me to ask something long overdue.

Don’t let anyone leave you in the dark.

With a frustrated groan, I lifted my shirt to show the scar below my navel, ignoring the searing pain in my core begging me to stop, and turned around. “What is this?”

Simeon stared at my stomach, swallowed thickly and paled.

No, no, no, no⁠—

“What did you do to me?” I demanded, my voice breaking with a sob.

“Aryella, please understand.” He backed away slowly. “It needed… to end with us. With you.”

My hands fell helplessly at my sides. “What are you talking about?”

“Our bloodline’s power,” he answered. “And your power. It’s too much. For someone to wield the power of the Selvaren is⁠—”

“What the fuck did you do to me!” I screeched, panic thinning the air in my lungs “Tell me!”

“I sterilized you!” he rushed out. “After putting you to sleep, I performed an operation.” Finally, he found the audacity to look me in the eyes. “You will never have children.”

His words rattled around in my mind without settling.

Sterilized.

I wasn’t even sure I wanted children, but now that choice was gone. Another thing he’d taken from me, just when I thought he couldn’t get worse.

“Fuck you,” I breathed tearfully, too numb and exhausted to come up with words brutal enough to capture my hate.

I turned to go, desperate for space, but a tug in my chest stopped me in the doorway.

In my mind, I heard a distant, begging voice, “Please don’t forget me.” I winced as the sound of screams echoed in my ears, along with a deep, empty ache. The same ache that haunted me every month when my cycle came. I’d told myself it was nothing, ignored it and locked it away. But I knew there was something there, in the past.

Or someone.

Maybe Gavin had awoken a distant fragment of a memory, embedded in me somehow. I just knew…. the cries. I still heard crying. For him—for us—I had to face that part of me that no magic could ever erase.

Always assume your uncle is hiding something.

Stomach clenched in iron knots, I turned back to Simeon.

“I was nineteen and a half when you woke me, but Gavin and I were married when I was eighteen and three quarters. He and I were together in that cabin for ten days before you took me. Then, you waited months to put me to sleep.” I swallowed the lump in my throat. “Nine months.” It was the first time I’d said it aloud. Admitted it to myself, even. Of all the half-truths and suspicions I’d shoved deep, deep down into boxes I was too afraid to open, this one was the deepest.

Of all the things I’d lost—even him—I knew this was a loss I was not equipped to handle. But if it was true, I couldn’t not know. Not anymore.

“Why did you wait nine months, Simeon?” My voice was a rasping whisper. “You’re not telling me the whole truth. What happened before you sterilized me?”