Verum (The Nocte Trilogy 2)

It’s a suggestion, but she’s pulling my elbow and so I find myself beside the lapping flames. She sits next to me, and her gaze is magnetic.

“Why do you feel unsafe here,” she asks. “Has something happened?”

My brother and mother died.

That’s what I want to say.

But I don’t because that’s awkward, and so I swallow hard instead.

“Do you feel guilty for surviving?” she asks, her words direct and insightful.

I swallow again.

“Because things happen for a reason, the way they’re meant to happen. You survived them because you were meant to. There is no guilt in that.”

“I miss them,” I whisper. And it feels like a confession. I always felt I had to be strong for dad, to not show weakness. To hold up Finn.

But Finn wasn’t real.

He was gone all along.

I don’t have to be strong anymore.

Sabine nods and she gazes into the flames.

“I know,” she says. “I didn’t know your brother, but I miss your mother. She used to brighten my days, child. Whitley can be dark. Your mama was a light.”

For some reason, her words only make me sadder because that light has been snuffed, and there’s only darkness here now.

The fire warms my knees and my bones, and I cup my hands to my chest. I block out my emotions, because emotions only hurt.

Instead, I want to know about Dare.

“Dare grew up here?” I ask, trying to sound casual. “He must’ve been a light for you, too.”

Although even now those words sound ridiculous. Dare is beautiful, Dare is my heart, but Dare isn’t a light.

He’s my darkness.

Sabine smiles and her smile is sad.

“Dare did grow up here,” she confirms. “He was mine, as much as Laura was. He still is, child. I couldn’t help him once, but I’d protect him now with my life.”

She looks at me now defensively, as though she has to protect him from me.

I’m confused, and I want to ask why, but I can’t.

Because Dare himself finds us.

“Sabby,” he says as he crosses the room, but his eyes are on me. “Jones needs you.”

She stares at him knowingly. He has come to save me once again, to rescue me from this situation and Sabine knows it. She creaks out of the chair and shuffles away.

She doesn’t look back.

“She loves you,” I offer, without looking up.

The flames are red and they lick at me.