Chapter 33

TOBIAS

"Whitlock?"

No. No. No. I"m too late to turn away or close my mind against him as the world retreats to an echo of the past.

He grins. "It is you! Man, I haven"t seen you for... what? Eight years? Your hair"s shorter, but I knew I saw you at the bar earlier."

"Hello, Silas," I say stiffly. "I don"t want to be rude, but I have to go. I"m late for a meeting."

He arches a brow. "Not staying to tell me where the fuck you"ve been? I hear you joined the Dominion. Bunch of psychos. I"d never get involved with them."

Maeve"s hand slides into mine, having joined us. Shit. She"s back from her mind-reading spell and lucid.

"Then I heard you got kicked out of the Dominion for not controlling yourself," he continues, and I give him a tight smile. "Where"ve you been?"

"Travelling." I place a hand on his shoulder. "We can catch up sometime soon, Silas?"

"Back to old haunts while in London, huh?" He steps to one side as a couple pass by to re-join the dancers. "Unfortunately, the place is more popular with vamps targeting humans these days. Fewer witches come here. Less pickings for us."

I swallow, every hair on my arms lifting as Maeve hears every word.

"Right. You"ve found somewhere better to go?" I force a smile. "You could show me around. Meet up tomorrow?"

Silas leans around to look at Maeve and chuckles. "Trust you to find a witch this early in the night."

I need to move now.

"Hello, sweetheart," he continues. My skin goosebumps when she doesn"t respond. "Keeping her subdued, Whitlock? Nothing changes, huh?"

Fuck, fuck, fuck. Still no response from Maeve. My heart lodges in my throat.

Is she in Silas"s mind right now?

"You local now or visiting? I"m still in Camden with Rem and Dalziel," continues Silas, eyes still on Maeve. "You should come over tonight. Bring your witch." He leans forward and whispers, "Look at your control over her. We need your skills. Get the team back together."

I give another tight smile. "I"m more into one on one these days."

Silas runs his tongue along his bottom lip and whispers again, "She"s one you should share. That energy..."

Alright. Enough. "Yeah. Not this one. Excuse me." I attempt to push past Silas and hope Maeve doesn"t knock into him because he"d sense how she"s more than a young witch seduced by a vamp.

"I"ll buy you a drink before you go!" he calls. "One for your witch, too."

Without responding, I shove my way through the throng, my palm sweating around Maeve"s hand.

Do I leave?

Yes.

Weaving my way through those moving into the club as we walk out, I tug Maeve after me and burst out into the witch and vamp free air. The moment we"re away from the people queuing, Maeve tears her hand away and stands close to a wall, arms crossed.

I"m too fucking scared to look at her, but I turn.

"Why did you leave?" she asks icily, and before I can reply she adds, "Didn"t you want to catch up with your friend?"

"Ah. Not a friend. Someone I used to know."

"You never told me you"d visited the place before," she says coolly.

Because everywhere blurred into one. Towns. Clubs. Cities. Parties. "The place changed a lot."

Maeve regards me for an uncomfortably long time. "So have you."

"Yeah." I smile. "As you know."

"Mmm." Maeve steps closer. "You looked different with long hair."

My heart jerks. "What?"

"We"re here to mind read, Tobias." Her expression"s inscrutable. "Silas has a lot of memories of your nights together."

My breath rushes out. "Maeve, I?—"

"I always wondered about your life before the Winterfalls," she says evenly. "You never speak to anybody about your history. About yourself."

"Because why would I? That"s the past and not relevant to now. You know I spent a lot of time out of control. That"s why the Dominion recruited me."

Maeve tugs on her bottom lip. "Don"t you want to know which memories I saw?"

"No. I can guess," I say flatly.

"Good. Because I don"t want to describe any of that out loud. Seeing disturbed me enough." Still, she remains calmly looking into my eyes. "How often?"

"Can we talk about this later?" I ask hopelessly.

I take another sharp breath as she moves until our chests almost touch. "Talk." I nod. "And I mean talk, Tobias."

Before she can step back, I cup her face with my hands, desperate to take away the man in her mind. "I love you, Maeve. None of this matters. We"ve been through so much shit, and I"d give my fucking life for you. Always."

"I know, Tobias, and I love you," she says quietly. "But enough is enough. You share the whole of yourself or I"ll struggle to trust you. And right now, we all need perfect trust in each other, or we"ll lose our war."

"You want me to speak to everybody about this?" I ask hoarsely.

"They—we—all know you"ve a past that stretches beyond killing the Winterfalls. Nobody believes they"re the only witches you"ve killed, just nobody"s ever said it."

Fuck. I drag a hand through my hair and close my eyes. I didn"t need to read Silas"s mind to know what memories he had. But when he looked at me, Silas inadvertently shared them with Maeve who plucked them from his head.

"How many?" she asks. I blink at her. "Or did you lose count?"

"Maeve. Please. Don"t do this."

She swallows. "Did you do... any of that to any Winterfalls?"

"No!" I say in horror.

"Why? Because you never had time?" she asks tersely.

Sickness washes over me. I don"t answer because I don"t know. "I"m not him."

"Yet you insist that he"s still part of you," she says. "But then never quite explain what you mean beyond "witch killer"."

I slump against the wall. "Maeve. Back then, I spent day after day high. I didn"t know where I was half the time. Years blur together in my mind."

She makes a derisive noise. "You don"t remember how many witches you used your powers on to help the team?"

"Maeve, please," I whisper again.

"Quite the team," she continues. "Very generous of you to share with each other."

"How much did you see?" I blurt. "Why did you not stop looking?"

"Because you never tell me everything!" Her voice rises. "I respect that you want to leave the past behind, but I know nothing."

"And did you want to know that?" I reply, voice rising too. "Does that part of my past change anything?"

"You killed my family!" A passing man glances at us as Maeve"s voice rises further. "How can anything be worse than that?" She closes her eyes, takes a shuddery breath, then stares at me. "How long were you like that for?"

"A long time." Her glare intensifies. "From sixteen."

"So, plenty of practice before you worked for the Dominion and the Blackwoods?" she half-spits, her mask slipping. "Did you meet the Blackwoods at the club? I can"t see any of them letting a vamp near their blood."

I hold a fist against my mouth. Not at that club. More memories break through the haze. Suppressed ones I told myself weren"t relevant anymore. Fuck. If I don"t tell Maeve now, I"ll lose her. But if I do, will that happen anyway?

"I made a mistake one night and seduced a Blackwood," I say stiffly. "Or that"s what I thought I"d done. The Blackwood seduced me."

"Who?" I hold her look, not wanting to say the name. Maeve"s mouth parts. "Don"t say Anastasia."

The world stills, my heart thumping in my ears as silence hits us. Is this another moment everything changes?

"Fuck!" I turn away and count my heartbeats as the memories keep rolling. Taking a long breath, I look back to Maeve. "Yes."

She continues to stare, open-mouthed. "What the fuck, Tobias?" she rasps out.

"I had a reputation. She targeted me, and I was too fucking stupid to realise until it was too late. Anastasia almost killed me the night I..." I shake my head. "I"m powerful, but you"ve seen Anastasia"s magic weaken me the night she took us to her house. I"m no match for a Winterfall or Blackwood, as you keep telling me."

Maeve"s hand flies to her mouth and her eyes go wide. "Why didn"t she kill you?"

"Because the Dominion was looking for someone like me! What do you want me to share with you? That Blackwood blood is as addictive as Winterfall? That I spent months with Anastasia until she"d prepared me enough, then starved me of what I"d become addicted to so that I"d do what they fucking asked?"

Maeve"s hand remains over her mouth, mind sealed tightly against me.

My fists ball, nails digging into my palms, grounding me in a moment that should never have happened. "It"s also easy to manipulate someone who"s lost, Maeve. I"ve never understood why I"m like this... the hybrid. I"m not something created like Dorian, but my family died when I was eight, and now I swear the fucking Confederacy were involved in killing them. After that, I was passed between families, never knowing where I belonged." I laugh at myself. "I"m not making excuses about "poor Tobias and his messed-up childhood" because that"s not what created the killer. But those years as a lost and confused kid contributed."

"Anastasia. I don"t know what to think." Maeve"s voice grows distant, lost, not listening to me.

"Nothing"s worse than what I did to the Winterfalls, right?" I ask, echoing her earlier words.

Maeve says nothing, but her silence screams this is. Somehow, Anastasia overrides everything and creates a man more unforgivable than the one who enjoyed a life of uncontrolled violence and deaths.

Why the fuck did I tell Maeve everything when I didn"t need to? I"m the only one remaining who knows because the secret went to the grave.

I should"ve left it there.

"And when we were held at the Blackwood House," she continues hoarsely. "When I saw you with Anastasia at breakfast and she acted like you"d come back to her... You had." Maeve backs up. "That"s why Anastasia believed you when you "pretended" to join her against me." Maeve"s almost inaudible. "Did you rekindle your relationship?"

"No, Maeve! No." I attempt to take her hands. "I promise, I never went that far to keep the pretence while the Blackwoods held us."

"I feel sick." Maeve swallows hard. "You never told me, Tobias. So many times, you could"ve told me this and held back."

"Because Anastasia died and couldn"t influence anything in our lives again. Anastasia wasn"t relevant once the curse lifted and we became closer. She"d gone."

Maeve"s derisive laugh hits at my pathetic excuses.

"I"d broken you once when you discovered the truth about the Winterfalls, and I was too big a fucking coward to hurt you again. I thought this part of my past would destroy us, Maeve." Her eyes well. "And I"m right, aren"t I?"

"Who else knows?" she whispers, swiping at her eyes, and my stomach bottoms out when she doesn"t answer my question. "Gabriella?"

"No. Only Nikolai. This secret went to the grave with the Blackwoods. I could"ve chosen to never tell you."

She scoffs quietly. "I guess not. Because Professor Whitlock always liked his secrets."

"Don"t call me that."

"But you"re a chameleon, Tobias. You said yourself, you don"t know what or who you are. I don"t—how could I if you"ve no idea yourself?"

Maeve"s words hit deep, the girl who knows me more than anybody before, sometimes more than I understand myself. Yet still I held back because I"m scared she"ll reject the man she saw in Silas"s mind tonight.

"I do now," I whisper. "Recently, everything changed. I felt I belonged with you. All of you."

"Belonged?" Maeve"s brow pinches. "Are you leaving again?"

"Do you want me to?"

Her cheeks redden. "We need your help to kill Gabriella and deal with the First, so don"t you dare run away again, Tobias." I look at my feet. "Because if you do, I"ll follow, and you"ll regret being such a fucking coward."

My head snaps up. "No, Maeve. I won"t leave."

"Ever?" I open my mouth to respond, and she shakes her head, interrupting. "Stop talking about this. I"d like to return to the others now," she says stiffly. "We"ll discuss this another time. At least I found information I wanted tonight."

"You wanted to know about my past?" I ask in shock.

Her eyes narrow. "Information about Dominion recruitment. You know, the whole reason we came here tonight?"

"Shit. Yes. What did you find?"

"I"d like to return to the others," she repeats. "I don"t want to be alone with you right now."

"Understood," I mumble and hurry to catch up with Maeve as she strides away.

Neither of us speaks a word as we take the short walk back to the house, but as we reach the white wooden gate, I take her arm.

"Don"t worry, I won"t burst into the place and tell everybody," she says, not looking back.

"That isn"t what I wanted to say to you." Her eyes turn to mine, void of tears, hard and expectant. "I love you, and I"m sorry I"ve hurt you again because I"m exactly what you say. A coward."

"You haven"t hurt me. I"m too numb to feel anything for you right now," she says and unlatches the gate. "I must be, because the shadows never came."

The light silhouettes Maeve as she opens the door, walking inside without another word. Maeve"s right—I have a job to do. We work together and however much my stupidity pushes at me to walk away, that"s impossible. Leaving now would be a bigger betrayal to her than any of this. Taking a steeling breath, I follow.