Daughters of Askara, Tome 2 : Evermine

Tick. Tick. Tick. A machine at Harper’s shoulder spat out a curlicue of paper with his vitals. As I stared at the peaked sketches, I was transported back to the mountainous city of Rihos, to the night of Maddie’s ascendancy ceremony, the night that changed all our lives.

I squeezed my eyes shut and matched my frantic breaths to his measured ones.

The heat of his palm cradling my cheek snapped my eyes open.

“Don’t cry.” His words slurred. Doc must have given him something for the pain.

I leaned into his touch. “I’m not.” Sniffling, I added, “You scared me.”

“Didn’t mean to.” His thumb swiped beneath my eye.

“You went back there.” I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from raising my voice.

“Had to.” His forehead puckered. “No choice.”

“There’s always a choice,” I said on a near-hysterical laugh. “You just make poor ones.”

His voice turned gruff. “Not true.”

I wanted to drive home my point, but the old argument wasn’t worth rehashing.

He knew about choices. He had made several on the night he crashed Maddie’s ceremony, and we both had to live with the repercussions of my father’s death and Harper’s choice to bring Maddie and me to Earth. He’d spared us a most intimate violation, rape at the hands of aFirst Court priest, then he’d returned to Askara, to warn his father and brother of what he’d done, and flown into an ambush.

His father, Marcus, had died. Clayton had been good as dead. Harper…he didn’t return.

All because of his choice to spare me and my sister from the lives we would have led.

For five years, I mourned his death. I made him a grave. I erected a marker, for God’s sake. Then last month, Clayton had found him. He’d been imprisoned, by Eliya, all this time.

Learning Harper was alive tilted my world’s axis. I’d been running backwards ever since.

“Have news,” he said. “About Nesvia.”

I swept my arm down his side to indicate his wounds. “Nesvia was there for this?”

He made a sound of agreement as his eyes fluttered closed.

Nesvia was the closest blood tie Maddie and I had. She was our half-sister, the only child born to her mother and my father. She was a reformist who craved change and Eliya’s crown.

Harper’s arm went limp, and his fingers slid down my face. I caught his hand and held it.

A knock at the door drew my head around. Maddie stood there, her face drawn and pale. Blood streaked her cheeks, vivid scores marring her alabaster complexion. “I’m sorry.”

“You knew he was going.” Of course she knew. Mates shared everything, and Harper couldn’t have gone without clearing the trip through Clayton first. “And you didn’t tell me.”

The worst part was, as much as her betrayal stung, I’d done the same or worse to her where Clayton was concerned.Forgiven and forgotten. We always hurt those we loved the most.