“You said it was impossible for her to regain control,” Vance states on a shaky breath, his voice nearly hoarse, as he stares on at Violet, who is dealing with a genuinely turned on vampire. “Ten minutes later, you shrug and flippantly reverse everything you’ve been adamantly preaching.”
“In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve done a shite job of predicting anything about Ms. Carmine,” Talbot fires back, sounding more fatigued and exhausted than anything else.
“The vampire isn’t intimidated by powerful women, but the Van Helsing certainly is,” Anna chides, grinning as she gets in Vance’s face. “Tell him what I did to him, Violet. Tell him how I tricked him.”
Violet’s face turns white, and regret shades her eyes, as she looks at Vance.
“Wh-what is she talking about?” Vance asks, completely off-kilter, as he sidesteps Anna.
Violet darts a gaze around, and I lean forward, idly waiting on Idun to glue herself together, encase us all in her fancy new silver-curse, and bury us. Setting us up with false hope is the norm.
Violet’s too casual.
Arion’s already accepted the world is a brave new place.
Vance is on the verge of needing a reboot.
Emit’s so clearly confused that his brain must hurt.
Me? I still have no idea what I feel. I don’t know what to trust.
Chapter 49
VANCE
Violet stares at me and releases a shaky, hesitant breath.
“Anna stole the identity of a real person. I found a newspaper clipping in my grandma’s old things, while looking through my storage buildings for some of my old research,” Violet states, not giving me any indication about where this is going. “I forgot about researching that woman, simply because she had such a crazy life story. She wasn’t famous enough for anyone to care, though. The second I saw that clipping, I started remembering.”
Violet starts toward me, but then takes a step back.
“Anna has access to all my memories, even the ones I forget. She came to me as a person who had already interested me once. After she suppressed all my memories of the real Anna, she came to me as a horny fucking apparition with no grip on reality, and she passed as a decaying ghost suffering from extreme delusions.”
“Sorry, I know you’re trying to explain very important things. But I’m just now sort of processing the part where Anna has been an extension of you,” Emit cuts in, ruining wherever Violet was trying to go.
It must be bad if she’s spending this much time to start at the beginning.
“I mean, you’re saying Anna’s like reading your private journal of your collective thoughts and aspirations?” Emit adds, slicing through the tension with an off-the-wall question that in no way suggests he’s paying attention to the current conversation.
Violet groans, scrubs a hand over her face as though she’s mildly embarrassed, and then she shoots him that aw-shucks look I’ve grown warier of than ever tonight.
She…she…she can’t be serious with this careless, dismissive attitude toward all of this. As though it’s supposed to be nothing special that she can destroy Idun and have this rather huge secret she’s kept.
“How long have you known?” I ask her, getting back to the important part.
“I think my question is just as valid,” Emit argues, looking over at me.
I punch the fucking wolf’s face, and it makes me feel better about life when he staggers backwards. As my hand throbs, and Emit pops his jaw back into socket—all while growling at me, of course—I return my attention to Violet, expecting an answer to my question.
“About Anna? Or about the really fucked up thing I helped Anna do to you?” Violet asks, wringing her hands with some nervousness.
She is literally standing between Idun’s severed body, and is nervous about speaking to me?
I…now know what it’s like to be Violet when we’re all standing around discussing the world as we know it, even though she just got here and has no idea how anything works or why it’s just something she’s supposed to find acceptable.
More especially, since she’s a whole new level of powerful. There’s the reason she never felt the need to lower her eyes or back down.
No one could have convinced me of such. It took seeing it with my own eyes. I’m still struggling to believe what I’ve seen. I almost don’t trust this is more than some elaborate illusion.
Violet is just so…not alpha.
I genuinely believe Damien to be more capable of betraying us, siding with Idun, and is somehow in my head, crafting this elaborate, unnatural, impossible reality. It makes far more sense than this actually being reality.
She can’t be a whole new level of powerful with an aw-shucks form of contrition for being powerful.
I don’t like this.
I don’t ever want to feel this way again.
I prefer to know everything at all times. I need more order in my life than this, and apparently, I need to pay more attention to the anomalies I face in the field.
My brain is so tired that it is actually thinking of work in order to take a break.
“What did Anna do?” I ask, only because it seems that’s what she’s waiting for.
Also, I really do want to know every-fucking-thing, just so I’ll know how much I’ve been oblivious to.
I don’t like being oblivious. It’s damn infuriating.
Marta stands, and she grabs Edmond’s arm.
“You wanted help to save Caroline. You have it in spades now,” Marta tells him softly. “And it’s coming at a great sacrifice to my daughter, because she’s not ready to be alpha. Certainly not a Neopry alpha.”
“I’m not going to be alpha, but we’ll discuss that later,” Violet cuts in, holding her finger up.
Fuck’s sake. I hadn’t even considered that part.
If she’s defeated Idun, the Neopry blood will demand her on Idun’s throne.
“Violet, I warned you if you did this—”
“I said we’d talk about it later,” Violet cuts in, interrupting Marta, before smiling tightly. “I don’t trust myself not to get angry. The shifters have spent centuries hunting our people. I can’t rule over them. It’s going to take a long time to make them understand the world is changing. I’m afraid my monster will overtake me in a weak moment of anger, and I’ll kill them all.”
She says it so casually.
Just as casually as she’s said most everything.
It’s as though she’s speaking simple facts she’s already reasoned inside her own head. Meanwhile, the rest of us aren’t ready to be so bloody casual about this.
Because this is not casual. Or normal. Or…or…
I can’t even think right now.
“Weren’t you about to give us some privacy? I need to explain something to Vance,” Violet states.
Marta seems in the dark about whatever is going on, but she also doesn’t seem to be nosy. She nods, turns, and steers Edmond away. Father’s been standing in the shadows this whole time, eyes shrewdly assessing every moment of this.
“Zuela, can you not tell the whole world I’m a big bad monster? I’m not ready for everyone to know just yet,” Violet states without looking behind her.