Page 47 of Devoted

This was a terrible truth, but somehow, not as terrible as not knowing at all. My head flooded with emotion, eyes burning, tongue thick, throat closing off, I let the sorrow flood through my body in choking waves. She’d been gone my entire life, and I didn’t think I’d ever missed her as badly as I did right now.

When she was standing right in front of me.

“Blackwood told Luca and me a story.” My voice shook so badly, I could barely force the words out. “He said you could have saved her, but you chose not to.”

My mother’s thin, pale fingers tightened around my father’s arm, holding on for dear life.

“Blackwood told you this story?” Enzo’s question held a sharpened edge. “Lord Cesare Blackwood?”

I nodded. “He was… he was trying to goad me, but he said you could have saved her after the explosion but chose not to. That…” I swallowed. “We could have grown up knowing our mother but were cheated of the chance.”

Enzo took a long time to answer, such pain flickering across his face I regretted even asking.

“The answer is yes. I could have kept her alive.” Enzo glanced at Ottavia’s blank expression. “Like machines could keep a corpse breathing or a heart beating or lungs moving. But they would never be truly alive, not in the way we think of living.”

“So, you let her go?”

Enzo patted Ottavia’s hand gently. “The explosion destroyed too much,” Father said quietly. “I could have gone to Emilia. Used blood magic to keep her with me. Forbidden magic to tether her to the world. Had I been a more selfish male, I would have. And I was… tempted.”

My stomach twisted at the conflict still so plain in his voice.

“But?”

His eyes met mine. “But I am not cruel. She would have survived as something broken. A half-life she did not deserve, not when she burned so bright. She begged me to let her go. So, I obeyed.” He kissed her hand. “Still the hardest thing I ever did.”

Mother smiled sadly. “Together now. Always.”

“Yes, my love, we’re together now. Always and forever. And here…” Enzo lifted his gaze, and still, there was sadness. So much sadness. “She is still not who she was. The explosion took… something away. She speaks, and thinks, in fragments, but she is mine to take care of, and in here, I can keep her safe.” He smiled sadly. “Which was why, when Giovanni took my life, I did not mind so much. I only regretted I had to leave you and your brother behind.”

I sat with that for a moment, only half noticing the mist around my feet had turned black, the air I breathed tasted of sulfur.

“He has such darkness inside him now,” Ottavia muttered furiously, shaking her head from side to side. “A hole that will never be filled. Watch him as he changes. From gold to black, from good to evil, from…”

Darkness inside him. Panic hammered through me, a foreboding that strangled my lungs until I couldn’t draw air.

Was she talking about Luca? Or Giovanni? Or Blackwood?

And why did my mother’s words always sound like prophecies, and then—in some strange way—come true?

“That’s enough, my love,” Enzo scolded gently, catching her fluttering hands. “She’s been more agitated than usual. Is Luca hurt? Has something happened?”

“Blackwood happened. And his guards, and their soul-sucking demon monsters. And Giovanni has disappeared.” As far as Luca… well, telling my parents I’d dragged my brother into a gauntlet of death was not a conversation I wanted to have right now.

“Blackwood is dangerous in ways you cannot fathom. And my brother never truly disappears,” Enzo warned. “He only regroups and comes back stronger than before.”

“I know, I just…”

The shadows twining harmlessly around my ankles turned vicious, tendrils grasping my waist, my arms, my shoulders, digging into my skin like sharpened fingers. A choking blackness swept in around me, cutting me off from my parents.

I barely heard my father shouting my name or my mother’s maniacal screams. All I knew was panic as I was dragged forward.

Toward the opening to the Underworld.

I clawed at the shadows, and they clawed back.

My bare feet slid across the rough ground. I was nearly to the threshold, cold flooding through me, my blood crystallizing to ice, filming over my eyes until the world went hazy. This close, the veil roared like a storm unleashed, like thousands of distant voices screaming.

Terror crashed through me, and I tore at the shadows, my nails slipping through the inky shadows like they were water.