“Did you kill her?” I ask him softly. I press a palm to my tense chest. I cling tightly to the banister railing.
He blinks, like those are the last words he expected me to say. “No. I didn’t have the chance.”
“Good.”
“Bright one.” His voice breaks.
My heart sinks.Did I hurt you?
My brow pinches. That’s when I realize that he’s not angry that I’ve come to this place without his permission.
“You have no idea what you’ve done,” he tells me.
He’s scared.
Panicked.
Devastated.
“You were not meant to come to this place,” he says, voice shaking. “Not yet. It’s destroying—”
It is a betrayal, he’d told me.
His hands clench and unclench. Darkness rattles in the air, slithering like it’s a separate being he can no longer control.
His eyes go unfocused, but he stumbles another step forward. “You are so beautiful,” the beast whispers, then falls to his knees before me.
God, why does that sound like a goodbye?
Panic rushes through me. Was there more I didn’t understand? Is there more to this than I’d known? I step toward him. “Jarron,” I whisper uncertainly. “Jarron, I’m sorry.” My nostrils flare, eyes filled with tears again.
I did hurt him.
“I didn’t want you to hurt her,” I tell him. “That’s why I came.”
Even in his demon form, I can see his own hopelessness. I don’t fully understand the extent of this potential betrayal, what he thinks I did.
This place is the answer to those questions.
Does he assume I’ve explored the house already? He assumes I know. And it’s breaking him.
“Jarron,” I whisper. “I didn’t—"
Bea once told me, If he tells you, and you do not accept him, that is the same as rejection.
My blood runs cold.
I’m not supposed to know, but he believes I know now.
But I don’t. I didn’t enter any place in this house he didn’t already invite me to.
Coming into the house saved Bea’s life. But not waiting before I entered any place I hadn’t been invited was deeply wrong. The last thing I wanted was to betray him.
I needed to wait. So I did.
“I can’t—Candice. I don’t know how to fix it,” he sucks in breaths, biting back a roar of pain. “My soul is—"
I drop to my knees in front of the demon in front of me. His magic flares around him, sizzling and writhing. I press my palm to his chest.
