27. Phaedra

PHAEDRA

T ears still streamed down my face when I reached my bedroom, and a sob tore free from me as I collapsed next to the bed. Asher's harsh voice echoed in my mind. It hurt knowing he'd rather suffer alone than have me there. It was the same way he'd spoken to me when the fated marks first appeared on our wrists. Back then, we'd both made it as obvious as possible that we wanted nothing to do with each other. But hadn't we moved past that? Why was he pushing me away?

I'd wanted to talk to him, to hold and comfort him. I wanted to hear him talk about his uncle and share memories about him. I was willing to do whatever it took to help him in his grief. But what could I do but respect his wishes?

Was it na?ve or presumptuous of me to think he would want to share memories of his uncle with me? Was it unfair of me to think he would want to spend time with me as much as I wanted to with him? That he would want me to comfort him? Mates were supposed to be there for each other, to stand by each other through tragedy and joy. We had mated. I thought that meant we were in love. Was I wrong?

I felt awful for going there in the first place, and I felt even worse for not leaving the medicine kit with him. But would he have used it? What if he got in trouble for having it? Everything was so uncertain, and all I could do was second-guess myself. My doubts plagued me until I gave in to my exhaustion and slept.

I was back in that white space with Mara.

"Have you been practicing?" Her ethereal voice echoed through the space

"I—yes," I said, though I hadn't practiced since the funeral. "A little."

"It's about time you started," she said. She held out her hand, and a small puddle formed in the floor between us. I knew somehow that the puddle actually went pretty deep. "Show me what you can do."

I closed my eyes, then held my hands over the puddle and tried to call the liquid up to my palms. As soon as I felt that tug, my mind shifted away from my task and onto Asher. The way he'd spoken to me, the loneliness I felt, the way I missed him.

The water splashed onto my feet as it fell back into the puddle.

"I-I'm sorry," I said, trying not to burst into tears.

Mara was unmoved by the emotion in my voice. "Try again. Concentrate, this time."

I nodded. At first, I didn't feel anything, Asher's refusal again echoing in my mind. But I shoved it away, determined to show her what I could do. The second time, I got the water up high enough that I felt the surface tension of the water right at my fingertips.

When I opened my eyes, I saw two pillars of water about the diameter of the glass of water that I had by my bed. I turned excited eyes to Mara.

"What do you think?"

"I think," she began, "that if that is the best you can do, you are hopeless."

My confidence shattered, and the pillars of water ruptured, splashing messily on the floor.

"I'm trying my best," I hissed.

"Your best isn't good enough."

She said it so bluntly, and my emotions were still raw, so I started to retort before I could think better of it. "I don't have a ton of time to practice! I have so many things to worry about with my pack, and with Asher's. I have so much work to do, and then I come here with progress, and all you do is shut me down."

Again, she was unmoved. "I'm not one of your friends, Phaedra. I will not coddle you with encouragement."

"How am I going to get better without any acknowledgment of my hard work?"

"How did you get yourself into this mess in the first place? You didn't need any practice to do that."

I bristled. She was obviously referring to my giving blood to Kestrel in exchange for getting rid of the fated mate marks, yet she was still being cryptic about it. If I hadn't figured out Kestrel was the threat, I never would have known.

"Why didn't you just tell me what the threat was?" I demanded. "Why did you insist on hiding it from me?"

"It's not the way I do things," she said, as if that was any answer.

My blood burned in my veins, igniting a fire in my belly. "I used to dream of meeting Holo in Emerys when I was younger. I never would have thought that the one time I get to meet a goddess, she would be rude and obtuse."

I'd thought Mara would react the same way she had to everything I said—coldly and monotonously—but something must have struck a nerve, because she was suddenly out of her chair and in my face. The white world became a bit grayer as she grew angry.

"You were an idiot for wanting that in the first place. You are lucky that I'm the one contacting you and not one of those other pompous gods. They would have chewed you up and left you with only your bones, like they always do with your kind."

I took a step back. "What are you talking about?"

"Mortals and gods aren't meant to have contact with each other. In Emerys, the place you and yours hold so dear, shifters were treated like slaves. It was a blessing to all of you when the last of your finally died out, because the most you could have hoped for was to become one of their pets, a thing for entertainment and comfort and nothing more. That was how your father Otavio started for Holo."

"What?" I demanded. "Holo used my father for entertainment?"

"I said, that was how it started! But she fell in love. She wanted to help him. So, they staged a rebellion, but all it did was get him and the other shifters killed by the gods, and she fled to Earth, where she ended up dying herself. And she left me to make sense of it all. You know what I realized after all this time of thinking?" She didn't wait for me to reply. "It was pointless! Her love, her fight, her popularity with the gods… none of it mattered!"

Tears glittered in her eyes as she turned away from me and went back to her chair.

"If it was pointless," I asked, wiping my own tears from my cheeks. "Then why are you going through all of this effort for me?"

"It's not for you, Phaedra," she said. "Nor is it for Holo. I'm doing this for myself. For vengeance."

She snapped her fingers, and the dream ended. I sat up in bed, tears still on my face. Groaning, I pushed my face into my pillow.

I didn't want to believe what Mara had said about the gods treating shifters in Emerys like slaves and killing them when they rebelled, but she hadn't been lying. She had been painfully, intentionally honest about everything she'd said, which only made it hurt all the more.

I wanted to push forward, but it weighed heavily on my mind. I had no one to talk to about this. Penny was holed up in her room, Theo was busy with her work, and Asher… I couldn't go to him now. If the gods could be as cruel and unhinged as Mara had been in that dream, maybe their magic could be, too. Maybe that was why he and I were bound as mates in the first place, as some cruel joke.

I opened the door to my room and found Connor waiting for me behind it.

"I want to talk," he said.

"I heard what you did to Garrett."

"Who?" He seemed genuinely baffled, and I wanted to smack the expression off him. Doing that would be only a fraction of the pain Asher and the other Daggers had to be going through right now. "The man from the Dagger pack?"

"You told me you wouldn't kill any of them."

"What was I supposed to do, Phaedra? He was going to kill me. It was in self-defense."

"You were torturing Asher in front of his pack. You put yourself in that situation, Connor."

"Stop saying their names," he said. "Stop acting like you know them."

"I do know them," I snapped and pushed past him.

He followed me. "Phaedra, wait. Can't you try to see things from my perspective?"

"Maybe I could have if you'd spoken to me before."

"You would have talked me out of it."

I whirled around and glared at him. "Of course, I would have! It never should have happened. There's no reason that man should have died."

"Don't… don't look at me like that," he said, suddenly unable to look directly at me. "I hate it when you look at me like that."

"Fine." I turned my face away from him. "Stop following me. I am done with this conversation, Connor. You broke your one promise to me. I don't have to keep playing nice."

"Don't you have any sympathy for me?" he called as I started walking away. "I just lost my mother."

I hesitated. My sorrow for the little boy Connor used to be, the one who worshipped the ground his father walked on, and who I'd seen sitting in his mother's lap fast asleep during meetings that ran long, compelled me to stop and to think about it.

But then I thought about Garrett. I remembered the kindness in his eyes, the fierce love he had for his nephew and his pack. That man deserved better. But for Connor, he would have lived to see the revolution, and Asher wouldn't be in the grips of his grief. It didn't matter how much I pitied the little boy Connor used to be because I hated the man he'd become so much more.

I kept walking, heading to Penny's study to grab some work. Fortunately, Connor didn't follow me.

In the library, I found a nook by one of the large windows and let the librarians know I was doing a project for Connor, so they knew to keep potential prying eyes away from my corner of the library. I had some green tea brought to me so I could stay focused.

Miranda's death had come at an unfortunate time. Vendors on the mainland were waiting on paperwork from us so they could send supplies Den City needed. It couldn't be pushed back or delayed another day if we wanted to get them shipped in at a reasonable time.

As I finished those supply orders, I caught myself nodding off. I shook my head, trying to banish the sleep from me, but the urge to close my eyes was just too great.

As I nodded off, I got the sense I was back in that dark, dark void, and it was squeezing me to death. I woke with a gasp, and found myself standing in the nook at the window. I had been in the process of pushing it open, one of my legs extending out of the window.

A cool breeze lifted my hair, tickling my face. It carried the voices of some guards who were chatting as they walked together down below. They would have been the first to get to me had I not stopped myself.

I hopped back, nearly losing my footing on the way down, my heart slamming against my ribs. The drop wouldn't have killed me, but it would have broken some bones.

I quickly gathered my papers to take the supply orders to the courier. On my way out, I saw Kestrel sitting in a chair in the main hallway. She smirked at me as I jogged by. I had the sense she had been waiting for me. I quickly looked away.

I knew immediately that Kestrel had had something to do with what had just happened, and with all of my tired spells. Had she tried to kill me, or was that just a power play? Either way, it was clear to me that Kestrel's control over me was getting more and more powerful.