Page 23 of Heartless Enemy

And as I watched release crash over her gorgeous features and felt her body shatter around me, I swore that I would never let her go now. No matter what happened, she would always be mine.

Chapter10

As I looked at the cute little house made of white stone, complete with an artful garden and topped with a roof made of pale green tiles, I had the overwhelming urge to set it on fire and watch it burn to the ground. But there was an innocent person in there, and she didn’t deserve to die, so instead of summoning my fire magic, I straightened from where I had been crouching by the flowerbed and walked around the house. Then I raised my hand and knocked on the front door.

About half a minute passed.

Then the door was opened, and a pair of surprised brown eyes blinked back at me from across the threshold.

“Eve,” Ulric Smith said, sounding as baffled as he looked. He glanced up and down the deserted street, as if expecting the entire constable force to be there too. “What are you doing here, kiddo?”

Kiddo. I used to like it when he called me that. It had made me feel like I still had a family. Like I was a part ofhisfamily. Now, the word grated against my eardrums like iron nails.

Keeping all of those emotions firmly off my face, I asked in a pleasant voice, “Can I come in?”

“Of course.” He gave his head a quick shake as if remembering himself, and then stepped aside and motioned for me to enter. “Come on in.”

I moved across the threshold and into the pale wooden hallway inside. After taking off my boots, I continued into the living room. It looked the way it had every time I had been in this house. Which was a lot.

Cozy armchairs in a pale green color, and a comfortable couch in the same material, bookshelves made of pale wood along the walls, and vibrant flowers and potted plants in the windowsills.

“How are you holding up?” Ulric asked from behind as I came to a halt on the fluffy white carpet in the middle of the room. “With… what happened to Wright?”

It had been two days since Captain Wright had been found stabbed to death in his home. The entire constable force had been in an uproar when the news broke. After all, they didn’t take kindly to someone killing one of their own. And I should know, because I used to be one of them.

Emergency meetings had been called one after the other. But there were no signs of who had killed Wright, so all they had been able to do was to write their reports, blame it on dark mages, and then scramble to figure out what to do now. The solution they had come up with was the reason why I was currently in this house at the crack of dawn.

“To be honest, I’m still in shock,” I said, turning to face Ulric. “I didn’t know him that long, but I still can’t believe that he’s just… gone.”

Ulric’s features softened.

I almost laughed.

In truth, I felt great. Murdering Wright hadn’t been nearly as hard as I had thought it would be. Since I used to loathe people who did what I had just done, I had expected to feel a stronger sense of guilt and regret.

But I felt nothing.

It was a rather strange experience.

When I found out that my father had been a dark mage sympathizer, and that Ulric was the one who had killed him and then lied to me about it my whole life, it was as if something had snapped inside of me. I felt like someone had not just pulled the rug out from underneath me, but had removed the entire floor from beneath my feet, leaving me in free fall.

Ever since that day, I had felt both free and out of control at the same time. Like I was spinning wildly while plummeting into a bottomless black hole.

Logically, I knew that the feeling should terrify me. Because at this point, I didn’t even know what I was capable of anymore. But as I looked into the eyes of the man who had ruined my life, I couldn’t bring myself to care about that.

“I know, kiddo,” Ulric said as he closed the distance between us. Reaching out, he squeezed my arm. “I know that death is difficult for you.”

It felt as if maggots were crawling over my skin where his hand was touching me, but I managed an appropriately sad smile and a nod. “It made me think about my father, and I… I just wish that I knew more about him. I was so young back then. I can barely remember anything.”

“That is unfortunately how time works. It steals our memories one by one.”

“Did you know him? Had you met him? Before that night?

He squeezed my arm again. “All I know about Dan Sterling is that he was an upstanding citizen and a good man.”

Lies, lies, and more lies. Why couldn’t he just have told me the truth from the very beginning instead of spending sixteen years trying to mold me into someone else? Then we wouldn’t be here right now.

But we were.