Besides, after I got to see how this situation played out the moment she stepped out into the clearing, yeah, I wouldn’t hold high hopes for everyone’s safety for as long as Sage is like this.
“More about Rose or Vince?”
“Vince,” I tell him, and he nods.
Andrei calls Casen over, and I watch him get up from the ground. Everything seems somewhat okay until I feel the familiar, cold rush of a message in the Moon Goddess realm.
I click my tongue, annoyed – always right when we are in the middle of something. Eziah suddenly gasps, and I look over at him to see him doubled over. Eziah staggers and Mateo tries to grab him when he throws up against a tree.
“Eziah?” I shriek as I rush to his side. Just as I do, I feel the realm suck me in. I reach out for him a moment before Eziah grabs my arms.
“Marabella,” he chokes out, and we are ripped through the realms. My surroundings fade and I am pulled into an extra dimension. It feels like a brief moment until I find myself in front of the fountains.
Eziah still holds his stomach, one hand on my arm. He lets go and rushes to the fountains, swirling his hands in the water while I go to check the bonds.
I desperately look for what it is that pulled me here, and then I notice Kora, floating around in the abyss of mist, in limbo. I race back to the fountain of the past that Eziah is sifting through when he stops. His thunderous growl is blood-chilling. My eyes snap to his arms as black tendrils sliver up them. The darkness taints him. It is desperate to take over anything he is willing to give as his hands glow brightly.
“Eziah?” I whisper.
I know what he is about to do. It’s not only what the mother feels, it’s not the instinct to read my child – I am the Moon Goddess, I see. And yet, I can’t bring myself to stop him.
“I can feel her dying; I can feel it,” Eziah gasps as the light in his palms becomes brighter. His anger and pain mix in a vortex of emotions so strong, I fear he won’t be able to stop himself. With or without my help.
“I know,” I whisper as I try to step closer.
His head snaps to the side, and he looks at me. Tears stream down his cheeks. “I am bringing her back,” he grits out. Eziah is hurting badly, and though he sounds angry, I know it is his desperation and pain that is speaking to me now.
Gemini Twins can’t live without each other. Eziah could never handle her darkness only knowing light, and she wouldn’t be able to handle the light having only known darkness. They are entwined in ways I will never truly understand. But now it makes sense as to why Marabella’s future was so dark, yet Eziah had remained. Once again, a vision twisted, the information given without the facts.
As my eyes look at his arms again, I swallow. I have seen this before, but I never realized that this type of darkness is linked to Marabella. I always thought his mate brought out the darkness in him, that he pulled it from Temperance, or maybe her wolf Shadow. Now seeing it here, I wonder how much of it he pulls from his mate, but also from himself. What is Eziah truly capable of if, by chance, he mastered both? What would that make him if he broke the curse of being a Gemini?
I don’t get enough time to react as Eziah shoves me and reaches for the dagger on my gold desk. I watch him move as my eyebrows pinch. “Eziah, what are you doing?” I ask.
“Making sure he fucking feels it,” Eziah snarls and disappears.
I turn to the fountain to peer inside it and move it to the present. I watch how my son portals into the room.
“Hang on, Kora, he will bring you back to her,” I whisper to her wolf, who I know is in as much pain as Eziah is now.
My eyes focus on the scene. Eziah stalks toward Kyan and Jonah.
In this very moment, the true meaning of the Gemini twins is revealed. Power shared between my twins can’t be balanced out with one of them gone. Eziah is absorbing it all.
I feel sick. The rage that emanates out of the fountain, the very rage of my son, is so powerful it washes over me in waves. However, I never could have expected what he would do next.
“I will make him feel it,” Eziah snarls through gritted teeth and my eyes widen as he steps over Marabella’s lifeless body. She’s in Kyan’s arms. As soon as Kyan realizes there’s someone else in the room, he looks up at Eziah. At first, he looks confused, but then his eyes widen.
Everything happens so quickly, I almost miss it, let alone believe my eyes. I feel sick to my stomach when Eziah plunges the knife into Lucas’s neck and places his hand behind Lucas’s neck to pull him in for a kiss.
As soon as their lips part, Eziah turns his back on Lucas, drops to his knees, and kisses his sister, while Lucas sways in shock and desperately clutches his neck. Eziah gasps and falls backward on his hands when Lucas crashes to the floor.
Marabella lurches upright with a loud gasp and looks around, while Jonah just stands aside, frozen, watching the scene in pure, unmistakable horror.
I watch how the darkness backs up and leaves Eziah. It looks like mist in the air as it flows back to Marabella and seeps into her. The very moment, a cold rush runs through me, a new life that returns to the fountain. I peer over the rim to see Kora is already gone, and in her place stands Lucas’s wolf.
“He killed him,” my voice breaks as I gasp out the words. Unable to look away, I turn back to the fountain just in time to see Kyan explode in rage and attack my son.
Tears stream down my cheeks. I have no idea how I am going to break the news to my brother. Andrei has just lost his best friend. Whoever thinks being the Moon Goddess is easy has no idea of the crap I witness, the choices I get wrong every day. This is one of them. But also without his death I would have lost my daughter, break my brother, or break my son? An impossible decision. Sometimes it is better not to choose, sometimes it’s better for fate to take its course no matter how much damage it causes.
I can’t forget my responsibility even despite the hurt and shock I feel. I wander over to the fountain of life. Carefully, I move Lucas’s wolf into the fountain to re-home him when an appropriate vessel comes through.
It is sad to think I have become desensitized to death at this point. Gripping the fountain, I stare down at Dominic’s wolf. His dark, mystical aura swirls around in limbo.
No matter how much I have tried, I can’t pull him from this state – stuck between shadows and light, forever lost in the sea of mist. For sixteen years, he has been trapped here. He refuses to go home and stares back at me, and honestly, sometimes I feel like he is waiting for something.
“You wanna come up with a plan, Dominic? Because I can’t see a future out of this,” I tell his wolf. “I trust you do,” I tell the mystical aura floating in the mist.
I have kept this secret for sixteen years, and I am sick of carrying it. No wonder she gave up, no wonder she wanted to rest. I have barely done a smidgen of the time she did, and I am exhausted of the choices, exhausted of being the Moon Goddess.