At the cemetery, we had barely stepped out of the vehicle when his communicator buzzed. He glanced at the caller, gestured for us to go ahead, and stayed behind.
I carried the flowers to the grave and set them down gently.
The portrait etched into the headstone looked exactly like Alaric.
There had been a time when seeing that face would have made me cry until I couldn't breathe, as though my whole body were being torn apart. But now I only stared, and my mind was blank. No grief. No ripple at all. Even my wolf lay still inside me, curled in on herself, offering nothing.
That was when Ivy pulled a letter from her bag and waved it in front of my face, her smugness completely undisguised.
"Dear sister, you really are hard to kill. You fell into the storm-tide, the whole family left you to drown, and somehow you still crawled out alive."
She laughed softly, but every word dripped with malice.
"I've been in a foul mood lately, but then I discovered something truly entertaining. Care to guess what it was?"
She paused deliberately, waiting for a response.
I said nothing.
She didn't care. She kept going.
"I was wrong before. I actually thought that even if no one else loved you, at least Alaric did."
She waved the letter again, her smile deepening.
"Then I happened to find a love letter he wrote to me. Turns out the one he's been secretly in love with all along was me."
Her voice grew softer, yet each syllable cut sharper than the last.
"The one who brought me breakfast when we were young? That was him. Every time I was hurt or upset, he always appeared first. That wasn't coincidence either. Even mating you was just to keep you from blocking the path between me and Caelan."
She laughed out loud, the sound shrill and piercing.
"Sister, your entire existence is a joke."
I listened to every word. Slowly, I closed my eyes.
There was no breakdown. No anguish of the kind she had been expecting.
The smugness on her face stiffened, inch by inch, as though the game had lost its thrill. Irritation replaced triumph. She started to raise her hand, but her gaze caught movement in the distance: Alaric, walking toward us. Something calculated flickered behind her eyes.
Her hand stopped mid-air.
The next second, she threw herself backward.
It happened too fast. Before I could react, she was already shrieking as she tumbled down the stone steps.
I stood frozen, looking down on instinct.