Two girls. Two secrets.
Only one can survive.
Years before Nelle Wychthorn plans her escape, Tabitha Catt may unearth something in a Horned God's lair that is the key to freedom.
Desperate to save her beloved aunt from a dark curse, Tabitha is out t...
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I stared at Irma, wondering who this stranger was, sitting beside me.
Irma's bottom lip glistened with tears, which she wiped away with the tips of her fingers. Even tearful with her dark eyebrows slashed over big mascara-panda eyes, and a blotchy nose and cheeks, she was still gorgeous. Yet, who the fuck was she? Who the fuck had I been dating all that time?
I couldn't believe that she blamed her miscarriage on me. Yet, I could.
I gripped the steering wheel tight. My voice was low and strained. "Before Gratian died he told me you were pregnant. He seemed to believe the baby was his."
Irma's eyes instantly went round and she froze like a startled deer. Stupidly, she had no fucking idea that while there was a lot of yelling and fighting going on out there in the Hemmlok Forest between Gratian and myself, a few hurtful truths had come out. Relationship obliterating truths.
She shook her head, her sleek hair ruffling with the movement. "No...no..."
I continued coldly, dropping down a gear as I advanced on a hairpin bend, "I'm guessing when he'd told you earlier that he didn't want anything further with you but a fuck, you decided to get pregnant with his child on purpose."
"I-I..."
"That's what you wanted all along, to be the matriarch of a House," I spat out callously, spinning the steering wheel and speeding out of the bend. "I'll give it to you, Irma, it was a clever way to trap one of us. And when Gratian died and I inherited the position of heir, you spun it around and suddenly the baby was mine." I tried to stop everything from spitting out of my mouth, but it was all coming out because I was done with her. I countered her attack with one of my own. "Which is it, Irma? Was the baby my brother's or mine?"
Her light brown skin seemed to lose its healthy luster. "Yours," she answered weakly.
I slapped the steering wheel. "Stop lying!"
"Yours!" she cried again, the word rasped out on a sob.
"Stop embarrassing yourself, Irma," I bit back. "You forget I can do math. And there is no fucking way that baby was mine. Because I was away, and even before then, things weren't right between us. You'd discovered that I wasn't going to inherit the position as Head of our House, and interestingly, at the same time that Gratian was named as heir, you went cold on me."
"No baby, you got it wrong, I was busy helping my sister with her wedding plans—"
But I bulldozed over top of her. "After I caught you two fucking, it all made sense why you suddenly didn't want my company before I'd even left for Horned God business. You were busy seducing my brother behind my back."
But it was worse than that, a deeper fear I'd always suspected, one that utterly appalled me. If she could fool Gratian into thinking she was pregnant, why not me? My gaze was iron and resolute when I turned it upon her. "The baby didn't even exist, did it, Irma?"
