His implication was a slow leak begging to burst.
I caught my bottom lip, twisting it, bruising it—anything to slow the spinning thoughts.
West continued. “My father wouldn’t let a chance for a coin slip through his fingers. Do you think Beryl Crowne would? What has he done? What will he do?”
Stolen from him.
This was all my fucking fault.
I gave Woodsy a coin thinking it was the best gift I could give him, and it was the worst.
I put Story in danger.
“There is only one thing a du Lac and a Crowne have ever agreed on, and it’s their disdain for her. What are they going to do when they find out she’s the key to finding the one thing they’ve been after for decades?”
I slammed West back against the glass, caging him with both arms. “And how the fuck would they find that out, West?”
“They won’t.” A slow, easy grin speared his lips. “If we work together.”
I snarled. “You’re working with your fucking father.”
“I haven’t told my dad jack shit in months. We were raised to believe those coins could do anything. Grant wishes. Change lives. But you know the truth. It’s only as powerful as the person making the demand. There’s one wish I want granted. I think it’s the same as yours. There are four people standing in the way. Four people who would rather light the world on fire than grant it.”
The coins weighed heavy in my pocket as he spoke, seemed to burn through the fabric. Four gold coins was enough to demand almost anything of anyone…
Bloody and pointless.
“Don’t you have a fiancée?” I gritted.
“Don’t you have a wife?” he clapped back.
“You have a real knack for rewriting history, West. You conveniently left out the part where all of this is your goddamn fault, because you saw something you wanted, so you took it, even though she didn’t want it. Again.”
West’s nostrils flared. “I did what I had to do to keep her safe. With me, she isn’t a threat. That baby is relegated to a place they understand. As my mistress, she won’t tear apart an empire. As my mistress, she’s safe. You were too chickenshit, too moral, to make her your mistress.”
“Because she would have been miserable.”
“So what are you going to do, Gray? What’s your big master plan to save her?” He leaned forward, glare sharp, our noses almost touching. “You gonna steal her off into the sunset and live happily ever after?”
I ground my teeth.
Every day Story spends with West was a thread pulling apart my veins. When she was gone, I didn’t eat, I didn’t sleep. I lay awake at night thinking about all the different ways I should have saved her. It always came back to letting her leave.
I imagined what he could be doing to her—what I’d let happen.
If I’d just dragged her into the blizzard, maybe we could have made it into town, maybe it wasn’t that bad, maybe we both wouldn’t be stuck here—
The thought drove me down another spiral.
His eyes narrowed. “What about the innocent baby in her belly with the ability to tear down two empires? You think your grandfather will let that shit slide? How’d that work for your father? They’ll never stop looking for her, and you fucking know it.”
“Maybe,” I agreed, stepping off. “But you are no better.”
He grabbed my wrist, stopping me from leaving. “You can’t beat them without me, Crowne. You need me. We both want the same thing. So why not a truce?”
Seventeen
STORY