Sewn & Scarred (The Fated Creations Trilogy #3)

Chapter Twenty-ThreeEvaline

Chapter Twenty-Three

Evaline

N ot a moment after I shoved the armoire back in front of the door was there another knock, and I immediately unbarricaded and opened it, assuming Maeve had forgotten something, but the smile fell from my face when my eyes fell on Sage.

Before I could slam the door on her, she lifted her bag between us.

“I came to draw your blood for Maddox.”

I didn’t respond, only turned on my heel and strode to sit at the dining table.

I watched her remove the dagger—truly I didn’t think it deserved the title. The blade alone was no longer than my thumb.

She set it on the table and then pulled out a small red vial, and I could’ve gagged at the sight of the Vasi blood.

The memory of Vasier’s blood in my mouth surged forward, nearly as fast as the bile in my throat.

I swallowed it back and coughed in the process, and Sage froze what she was doing, and looked up at me, hope in her eyes.

“Yes?” But then her face fell, as soon as she realized it was only a cough, and that I wasn’t trying to start a conversation with her.

Sage turned back to her task and pulled a jar out of her satchel. She angled herself toward me in her seat, grabbed the blade, and held out her hand.

“I can do it myself,” I said, my tone curt, as I pulled the knife from her hand.

Sage pursed her lips, curled her hands into her lap, and looked down at them.

I clamped my jaw down as I slid the blade over my palm. Blood pooled on my skin before I squeezed my hand together and held it over the open jar, letting it drip down to fill the small glass.

I kept my gaze on the stream of my blood, ignoring the tug of Sage’s gaze. Once the jar had enough in it, I started to pull my hand away and realized I hadn’t brought a piece of cloth or towel over to wrap around it.

Sage popped the cork on the vial and handed it to me.

“No,” I said, shoving it away with my free hand.

“But your hand—”

“Is the least of my concerns,” I interrupted as I cupped my other hand around it and stood to go get a towel.

“Either drink from the vial or from my wrist, Vasier ordered that you remain healthy.” The guard’s voice drifted through the closed door and I ground my jaw at how easily he could overhear.

I yanked the vial from Sage, downing it and dropping it back on the table.

“You can go now,” I said to her as I walked away.

Instead of leaving, I heard her stand and turned to see her move toward me.

“Evaline, I—”

I took a step back. “You were here to complete a task, that is all. Please don’t waste time by trying to reason your way out of what you’ve done.”

My voice was harsh and I watched as her hopeful eyes fell. She pursed her lips, looked to the ground, but didn’t give up.

“I wasn’t going to reason my way out of it. I…” She turned toward the door, and I realized that she didn’t want the guard outside to hear this, too.

I wasn’t sure why, maybe I wanted to hear what she had to say even though I hated her for what she’d done, a part of me did want to understand why. As if hearing her excuses would convince me that I wasn’t completely fooled, that perhaps she did care for me. For Maddox. Once.

“Just take the stuff, Sage,” I said, but immediately after saying it I threw a shield around our heads so the Vasi outside wouldn’t hear.

She turned to get the supplies, but I spoke.

“Stop. I put up a shield, he can’t hear us.”

Sage turned to face me and slowly lifted her eyes to meet mine.

“I wasn’t going to reason away what I did. I know it was wrong. In the end, I tried to stop it, but I wasn’t able to.” She shook her head as her brows furrowed. “I’m so, so sorry, Evaline.”

My jaw tightened.

“I’m so sorry that it isn’t even possible for me to tell you how sorry I am because the words don’t exist.” Her fingers knit together in front of her. “I truly care for you all. You and Maddox, Wyott and Cora, Rasa, Dean,” she said, listing us all off. “You are all the nicest people I’ve ever met. You welcomed me with open arms and I—”

“Betrayed us,” I finished for her, though I was quite sure it was not what she was about to say.

Her face fell and I watched her swallow.

“Yes.”

I took a deep breath, though it struggled to pass the lump forming in my throat.

“Did you come to Rominia with the intent to abduct me?” I asked, trying to keep my voice and face as dull and uninterested as I could. I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of seeing how she’d hurt me.

She wagged her head. “At first it was only to gather information on the Kova. It’s why Lauden lied about being Ankin’s grandson. We were meant to get close to Kovarrin. But when you showed up, our orders changed.”

I straightened and crossed my arms.

“I assume that you didn’t mail letters back and forth to Vasier, that’s too likely to be discovered. Which means that you portaled here, Gods know how often, to give reports back to Vasier.”

She winced at that. “Yes.”

“And you killed Ankin.” I didn’t need to pose the accusations as questions. I knew I was right. I’d spent the last few days locked in my room going over every moment I’d spent hearing about the two Sorcerers, or interacting with them. And their crimes went far beyond abduction.

“That was Lauden.”

I cocked my head. “But you were an accomplice. You knew what he was going to do, and you didn’t stop him.”

She only nodded.

“So not only are you abductors, you’re murderers.”

I’d never met Ankin, but from the way Maddox and Wyott talked about him, and reacted to his death, the way Rasa and Kovarrin had seemed genuinely saddened by it, he was a good man. He was Arch Sorcerer of Rominia for I don’t even know how long, and he seemed loved.

He was an innocent man, and they had killed him, for their own use. For Vasier’s. And that made them, made Sage, far worse than just a traitor.

She stayed silent, eyes cast down.

“How many times?” I asked, and the rage within me started to wake. It started to slither to the surface at how complacent she was acting. At how regretful. If she was going to betray me, if she was going to be working for the other side, Gods I wanted her to at least act like it. Because this pitiful facade made it so difficult to hate her.

She looked up, confused. “How many times, what?”

“How many times did you pretend to be our friend? How many times did you pretend to care? How many times did you watch us, what we were doing, and portal back here to your father and tell him absolutely every detail?”

My anger was roaring now, and I couldn’t control it as I took a step toward her, my chest heaving with rapid breaths.

“I mean, Gods, Sage. You brought them all here, didn’t you? You brought Maddox and Dean and Grant, Nash, and Fredrik. You brought them here with your portal, didn’t you?”

I’d saved this accusation for last. Because it was the hardest one to ask. It was the hardest one to bear, if true.

Tears filled her eyes and her lower lip trembled as she nodded.

My breaths came quick as I took another step toward her.

“You lied to us. You betrayed us. You hurt us. You killed an innocent man.”

I rattled off every crime and watched as she cringed at each of them. I hoped it hurt her a fraction as badly as she had hurt me.

“You hurt Saxon and killed his crew. You killed those people in Merwinan. You threatened my best friends.”

She interjected then, shaking her head rapidly.

“No, those were all Vasier or the Vasi he sent for it!” she urged but I only loosed a deranged, incredulous, laugh, throwing my head back, before looking back down at her.

“No! It was you, Sage,” I hissed out, taking another step toward her. “You did this. As you’ve done it all. None of Vasier’s plans could have been carried out had you not brought all the information back to him. And now, to act innocent, to act regretful, is only to laugh in the face of everything you’ve done!” I was screaming as she cried in front of me.

She was a mess of tears and sniffles, but her tears couldn’t deter me, they couldn’t derail my rage, because she didn’t deserve an ounce of my mercy.

“You were my friend!” I cried out and clasped my hands to my chest. “I cared about you. I loved you. I stood up for you when your own partner didn’t! Even when you weren’t there to see.”

Tears of my own had started to fall. Tears of love and hate, of anger and dismay.

“I would’ve done anything for you, Sage, and all you repaid me with was betrayal. By taking the one person I loved most in this Gods-damned world.”

I was screaming and crying and she was sniffling and hugging herself.

“You watched me mourn him!” I sobbed, and she shook her head but I only continued. “You watched me break from losing him. You watched me try over and over and over to find a cure for him, and the entire time, you knew what you’d done. You knew what Vasier was going to do the moment you portaled him here.”

She took a step toward me now, her head shaking violently.

“No, I swear to the Gods Evaline, I didn’t know what my father was planning for Maddox. He told me he wasn’t going to kill any of them.”

I laughed and the sound of it came out garbled from the tears in my voice.

“You didn’t want them killed, but tortured was okay?”

“I didn’t—You don’t understand!” she pleaded, but that was it. That sentence, that claim, was what settled me. It was what allowed me to reel in my sorrow and my rage. It helped the tears dry and my voice to not shake.

I took a deep breath and settled my glare on her.

“I understand that you are the worst person I’ve ever met,” I spit out and took a step toward her, so she was forced to take a step back. “And Gods, Sage. I have met some truly deplorable people in my life.” I shook my head and forced her another step back. “Men who attacked me.”

She cringed.

“Family who used me. Bandits who wanted to sell me,” I said as I continued toward her. “But all of them, and Lauden, and Vasier, were always honest about exactly what they were. Even when Lauden hid his true intentions, he was always awful. None of them deceived me half as successfully as you did. Because what none of those people dared—that you did so effortlessly—was look me in the eye and tell me that they cared while they destroyed my mate and plotted my demise behind closed doors.”

I took another step until her back was a pace from the door.

“I’ve done awful things in my life,” I confessed. “I’ve made mistakes and survived the worst men have to offer. But I regret none of it, more than I regret you.”

I lifted a hand to the door.

“Go, and do not ever come back to my room. Send anyone else to gather my blood from now on.”

Her cries quieted as she hastily threw all the supplies she’d brought with her into her bag, and spun for the door.

But she stopped with her hand on the knob, and tilted her head back toward me, her eyes cast down.

I opened my mouth to scream at her, to tell her to stop trying to talk to me, that we were done, but before I could, she whispered. “Happy Birthday, Evaline.”

She slipped from the room and shut the door behind her.

It was my birthday, I knew that. The days since we’d been in Neomaeros, since I’d found the note from my father, had passed by as if they were months, but it had only been a week.

I’d been able to maintain my hatred for her while we fought, but that moment, where she recalled a small detail about me, from a time when she was my friend, shattered my composure—if it could’ve even been called that.

My face crumpled. I let the tears fall, let myself scream, but refrained from throwing anything to spare Maeve a return trip.

I cried and I sobbed and I tried to breathe through it all.

That fight with Sage had taken it out of me. To confront the extent of what she did, to really accept everything that she had done, ripped me raw.

None of it more than what she’d done to Maddox. And how she’d watched me suffer after it.

I crouched to sit on my knees, my cries rocking my body so violently I was afraid I’d fall.

I sat and I thought about it all. About everything that had happened.

About that birthday note my father left me. I thought about the silver sword he’d gifted me, and how it sat in Rominia. How I’d probably never get to use it.

I thought about turning twenty-five.

And about how Maddox didn’t even know when my birthday was because we didn’t have enough time together for me to tell him.