Tory looked at me for a long moment and I couldn’t help but stare at the dark rings in her eyes. I was seriously hoping that my hunch was wrong but as my Atlas started ringing again, I got the strongest sense that I wasn’t.
I swallowed against a thick lump in my throat and took a step back.
She still hadn’t answered my question, but I found that I didn’t want her to.
“You should go to your friends,” she said, raising her chin in an attempt to hide just how much she was hurting.
“I don’t want to just leave you here like this…”
“I told you, I shouldn’t have let you come. I was just trying to forget, but it was wrong, especially with you... I really am sorry, but I just want you to go now.”
“Are you sure you’re alright?” I asked slowly, unsure if I should really leave her while she looked so fucking broken.
“I’m a big girl, Caleb. And I have to own my choices so you shouldn’t feel any pity for me,” she said, pulling the blankets up to cover her as she sat back against the pillows. But I didn’t get the impression she was really going to sleep.
“Okay. I’ll see you later then.” I hesitated for a moment but she didn’t say anything to stop me so I kicked on my sneakers, grabbed my sweatshirt and headed out into the corridor.
My Atlas had stopped ringing so I sped out of Ignis House with my Vampire speed and raced straight through The Wailing Wood to King’s Hollow.
I skidded to a halt at the base of the enormous tree and took a deep breath as I psyched myself up to go inside. I chewed on the inside of my cheek then blew the breath out again. If I’d fucked up, I had to just own it. I had to deal with it.
I pushed the door open and stepped inside but before I could set foot on the stairs, Max appeared at the bottom of them. I felt his silencing bubble crash over me half a second before his fist collided with my jaw. Pain flared through me and I staggered back a step from the force of the blow.
“What the fuck, Cal?” he roared, closing in on me and crowding me back against the wall as he seemed to be fighting the temptation to hit me again. “Where the hell have you been?”
“What was that for?” I cursed, my fangs snapping out as tension coiled through my body from the attack and I snarled at him, squaring my shoulders.
“I could smell the fucking lust on you from half a mile away,” Max growled. “You’ve been with Tory Vega, haven’t you?”
I swallowed a thick lump in my throat because there was only one reason why that would be making him this angry and the thought of it made me sick.
“It was Darius?” I asked in a hollow voice, the fight going out of me in a heartbeat. I deserved anything he wanted to throw at me.
“Of course it was! Who the fuck else would it have been?” Max bellowed and his anger crashed into me as his emotions danced on the air as his Siren gifts flared.
I had to work at reinforcing my mental shield to stop myself from succumbing to the potency of his rage and I knocked my head back against the wall behind me, groaning as I took on the full implications of what he was saying.
“I’m sorry, man,” I breathed. “I just…I don’t even know how I ended up going over there tonight. I was drunk out of my skull when I went to bed but then I just woke up, stone cold sober and thinking about her…more like obsessing over her really. And I couldn’t settle at all until I acted on it-”
“It was the stars,” Max growled suddenly, dropping down to sit on the bottom step and pushing his hands through his hair. “They’re already working to force them apart…”
I frowned as the rage in the air fizzled out and slipped into despair which licked keenly against my mental walls. Max’s heart was breaking for Darius and the chasm of grief opening up in my chest told me plainly enough that mine was too.
I thought about the way I’d been drawn towards Tory tonight, how I hadn’t been able to resist the urge to go to her and how devastated she’d seemed when she apologised to me for letting me come over. She’d been pushed at me too. The stars were already playing their games in payment for her choice.
“Fuck,” I breathed, dropping down beside Max. “What do we do?”
“This is my fault,” he groaned. “I could feel the pull between Darius and Tory. He even tried to ask me for help with it and I…I just shut him down. I pushed him to keep on working against her. If I’d just listened to him, made myself consider the bond I could feel between them properly then maybe I could have given him better advice.”
“I just slept with the girl he was destined to love and you’re blaming yourself?” I asked incredulously.
“I could feel it, Cal,” Max insisted. “I just didn’t want to. I’m the only one who could have seen this coming. I’m the one who should have realised that the pull he felt towards her was more than just lust and infatuation. If I’d just spent the time listening to him when he tried to talk to me-”
“This isn’t on you, Max,” I growled, wrapping my arm around him and pulling him close. He drew me into an embrace so tight it was bruising and I could feel his agony trickling into me as his skin was pressed to mine and the contact enhanced the power of his gifts.
“It’s not on you, either,” he replied roughly. “The fucking stars…a Vega. Shit, who could have come up with something so fucked up? It’s like they wanted this to happen to him. I’m starting to think he’s fucking cursed. He’s had to deal with so much shit in his life and then he’s finally offered something good and pure and light and it has to be with the one person he could never offer the world to.”
“We should go to him,” I said, though my gut twisted uncomfortably with the feeling that I’d betrayed him.
“Don’t tell him where you’ve been,” Max breathed and I stilled at that suggestion. I’d never lied to one of the other Heirs like that.
“I have to,” I replied, shaking my head as we both stood and started up the stairs. “He deserves more from me than lies.”
“I’ve never felt emotions like the despair he’s feeling right now,” Max breathed. “I don’t know what he might do if he finds out.”
“He can do what he likes to me,” I replied darkly. “I deserve it.”
Max frowned like he wasn’t sure if he agreed with that. “It’s the stars that deserve it.”
“They might have pushed me at her, but I’m my own man. I’m responsible for my actions.”
“I don’t know about that,” Max muttered before dropping his silencing bubble.
We headed up the stairs and the tightness grew in my chest as we made it to the door at the top. Max clapped a hand to my shoulder, pushing a sense of calm at me to soothe my anxiety but for once I didn’t let his power influence me. I had to own this. No excuses.
Darius was sitting in the large, wing backed chair beside the fire, his gaze distant as he looked into the flames but as Max closed the door behind us, he looked our way. I inhaled sharply as I spotted the ring of black circling his irises. The difference in Tory’s eyes had been confronting, but I’d seen Darius practically every day for most of my life and despite the fact that his eyes had been dark before this, the change in them was profound.