Traitor (28 page)

“One hundred years,” he said wryly. “But I think you’ll fit in just fine. I’ll help you as much as I can, and there’s a lot for you to think about, but you seem like the kind of person that can make it through anything.”

I thought of all the things I had experienced in my life, all of the pain and death and fear, all of the friends I had managed to make despite that, and I nodded. “Yeah, I think I can, too.”

I went home to explain without giving too much away, happier knowing the rest of my friends would always have some kind of protection on their homes. Most of the rebels had moved on, but some still remained, and I could give them gifts: homes, protection, safety. I would lie to them, of course. I would never let anyone know what I was really doing for them, and if people looked at me as a monster,
I
would know the truth.

Mrs. Yaga had died thinking she didn’t help me find my way, but she had given me a place in the world, something nobody could take from me. I would never have glory or power, but I knew that it wasn’t all about the darkness or light or what anybody else thought of me or expected me to be. I had finally made a choice that sat well on my shoulders, one that didn’t make me feel as though I was letting anyone down.

Leaving the politics behind to help a random person every now and then suddenly sounded like a bit of a holiday. We were safe. I wasn’t going to accidentally blow up the earth, and I had a real—albeit strange—purpose to my life. Nobody had to know what I’d agreed to, and some kind of peace accompanied that.

I was starting over, and that meant leaving all my mistakes behind. I could definitely handle that.

I opened my front door to see Peter standing there with a bunch of flowers.

“What the…?”

He squinted at the flowers. “Too much?”

“Too much? Are you drunk or something?”

“Emmett said—”

“Emmett? You’re taking advice from a ten-year-old who grew up in Hell?”

He grinned. “Can I come in or what?”

“Yeah, if you tell me where Emmett is.”

He strode past me and into the living room. He laid the flowers on the coffee table. “He’ll be over later. He wanted to give us some time alone first.”

“Time alone for what? Peter, this is
my
day with Emmett. Stop fucking around.”

“Stop being so angry at me then.” He turned to face me, his eyes earnest. “I know I’ve made a million mistakes, but so did you, and it’s all over now.”

“You’re a gigantic prick,” I said. “That’s not over.”

“It is. I swear, it is.”

“You hurt Emmett. Do you not understand that Yvonne was important to him? You took him away from me and used her as a replacement, and then you ripped her from him again. Can you not see how that might be damaging?”

He closed his eyes for a few seconds before answering. “I didn’t kill her, Ava.”

“You put my knife in her hands. You might as well have slit her throat with it.”

“She was like me,” he said in a low voice. “But I found something else to focus on. All she had was her bitterness. It ate her up. She didn’t know how to feel anything except hate. I think some part of her wanted to die just so she could be with her family again. She cared about Emmett. I’ll never take that away from her, but she wasn’t satisfied with him coming back. She wanted more, and she couldn’t have it. She made her choice, and I couldn’t take that from her.”

“There’s not much difference between you and her,” I said in as scathing a tone as I could manage. Truthfully, my anger had gone, but I hadn’t figured out what was left behind.

“I’m better now,” he insisted. “Most of the time I’m completely different. I’m… I don’t need to be that way anymore.”

“So you miraculously changed overnight? You irresponsible little—”

“Okay! I’m a terrible person. I get it already. But we all do what we have to do, Ava. Knowing Fionnuala died, knowing Reuben and Gideon and all of the people I hated most are dead, I can just…
be
. And now that Emmett’s protected, I don’t have to worry.”

“Until someone pisses you off or you get bored. I spent all of that time wanting to help you get over everything that happened to you, but I need to work on me first. I need to put myself first.” Wesley’s face flashed before my eyes. The way I felt when Peter left with Emmett without so much as looking back ran through me. “I’m not ready to put my heart in somebody else’s hands.”

He smiled. “You still care about me, though.”

“I care about Emmett.”

“You gave us a house.”

“I gave everybody a house! And technically, Mrs. Yaga gave everyone a house.”

He closed the space between us, and I panicked. It would have been easy to step into his arms and forget everything that had happened between us, but it still existed. We had come together for the wrong reasons, and I knew we couldn’t ever build a real relationship on top of that. My fresh start wasn’t about finding a man. It was about finding peace in my own head, strength, and clarity on what I really wanted in my future. I needed more space and time to get over the people I had lost and left behind. My heart just wasn’t ready for anything else, especially not Peter, who had only ever been honest about the fact he would lie to me to get what he wanted.

“Ava, we met at a bad time, but everything’s changed. We’re all in different headspaces now.”

“I’m in the exact same headspace. I’m angry with you for being such a fucking arsehole.”

He laughed. “The things that happened before won’t happen a second time. Look around you. We can see the sun again. The elections went better than anyone could have predicted, and people are working together to make this work. We proved the doubters wrong, and it couldn’t have turned out better.”

“Less people could have died,” I snapped.

He held on to my arms. “I know you’re upset about Gabe and Mrs. Yaga and all the rest, but they chose to—”

“Gabe didn’t have much of a choice. We made a deal, remember? He had to help Carl.”

“Ava, no. He was going over there anyway. Carl said so.”

I shook my head. “He wouldn’t have done that if he didn’t have to.”

“Neither of you had to,” he said softly. “You still did it. People do what’s right, and sometimes we lose them. That doesn’t take away from what they did. I won’t pretend to have been a fan of Gabe. I know that deep down you cared about him, that you’re a little angry with him for giving up his life, but he did a great thing in the end. And look at you now, taking over Mrs. Yaga’s properties just to keep her old magic in place. Nobody made you do that.”

I remembered Gabe’s last words. Somebody had to do it, and maybe I would find my own replacement and free myself from the contract someday. Maybe I wouldn’t want to.

I hadn’t told my friends the truth of what I was really doing to protect them, but it didn’t matter. I could never push my own agenda again. Mostly, I looked forward to a peaceful life.

Peter held out his hand and shook mine. “Hi, I’m Peter. I’m a single dad, and I’m in the process of starting up my own business with this half-hellhound I know.”

“Seriously, new Peter is freaking me out. What are you even doing here?”

“Starting over. We’re not the same people we were when we first met, Ava. We didn’t get a chance to figure anything out. We have time now.”

Everyone was busy rebuilding their lives. Carl was going back to college because he wanted to be able to make a difference in the school
Phoenix
had made the new government promise to build.
Phoenix
was reorganising his mother’s land for the werewolves to live on unmolested, as long as the pups were sent to the school to integrate with other species for a time.

The bookshop was being converted into a kind of library aimed at helping people understand the new world. Esther was in recovery, but she was doing better than anyone expected. Aiden wasn’t alpha anymore, but his replacement seemed tough and able. The twins were still getting to know their father, while Anka and Margie had become semi-famous amongst the humans for their safe and natural herbal remedies.

Some of the younger children were already visiting their families in an attempt to re-establish the relationships. The “home” was changing, and the children, including Emmett and Leah, were being reintroduced to the real world. Nancy and Wes were healthy and oblivious, but
Cam
and Kate hadn’t resurfaced, which was probably a good thing. No matter what Peter said, I could see him throwing new Peter out a window if faced with a fallen angel who had interfered in his life.

The fae had mostly decided to follow
Phoenix
, and many half-blooded fae were discovered, but acceptance of them was a long way off. Exiles were returning in their droves, and families were reunited. The new government had ordered all “slaves” to be released, and every day, beings of all races were calling for help so they could escape their owners.

Elathan was in his element as
Phoenix
’s new best friend, but the funny part was that they weren’t even faking it anymore. Elathan was heavily involved in the new government and re-establishing a new version of the Guardians.
Phoenix
had taken back the Sanctuary, but he still wasn’t sure what it would be used for. The Headquarters were slowly being transformed. Moses’s flats were still free, and a large section of the city had been forced to seek drugs elsewhere. Change was everywhere.

Although I was happy to help with the children, organising new laws and quotas and rules was not part of my life. Aside from the restrictions set down by the rest of the Eleven, I had come to realise that my way was not always the best way, and I couldn’t judge fairly. Eddie had been right about one thing: it wasn’t my job to enforce my brand of morality on anyone else. There was so much going on, so much to do, and I didn’t know if I would ever be ready for a real relationship with anyone, least of all Peter.

“I just… I don’t want to keep having to separate people in my head,” I said, attempting to make him understand. “I don’t have the energy anymore.”

His eyebrows came together. “I literally have no idea what that means.”

“Okay, the only way I could stomach my grandmother was to separate her personality in my head. She was two people: the frail old lady who wanted to help me and that horrible person who terrified me as a kid. I couldn’t put the two together because they didn’t fit. I imagined her to be the way I needed her to be, but given half the chance, she would just remind me of that other person, the person I
didn’t
need. That’s because they were the same person.”

He stared at me blankly.

“The good comes with the bad. Just like you.”

“Hold on a sec—”

“Listen to me. I’ve been separating you in my head, too. You were the judgemental prick who wanted to kill me, the one who walked all over me to get what he wanted, and then there was the other you, the one I wanted to save from the dark side, the one I thought cared about me. But you were wearing his skin when you betrayed me, and even he’s able to switch off his feelings. Even he’s not good for me.”

“Ava, come on. We all made hard choices.”

He didn’t get it. He might never get it. “I’m not sure if I can do this, Peter,” I said. “I have a lot on my plate right now.”

“Jesus, Ava, I’m not proposing. I’m just asking for a fresh start.”

“Maybe I don’t want one! I’m not a victim anymore. I’m not a fighter, either. I’m not a rebel or a daughter or a granddaughter. I’m just me, and I’m still figuring that out, but I like it this way. I can be anybody right now. I can go anywhere I like, and I don’t
need
anybody else right now.”

“So that’s it? Your answer is never?”

I sighed. “My answer is—”

A knock on the door startled both of us. Somebody kept banging, over and over again.

“I smell blood,” I whispered.

Both of us reached for our weapons, despite the insistence that we were living in a time of peace. I opened the front door warily, only to see a tall teenage girl standing there. She was pretty, but her striking green eyes were terrified.

“You,” she said, her voice hoarse. “Are we safe here? Is it safe?”

“Yeah, you’re fine,” I said, catching her as she fell. I knelt on the floor with a stranger in my arms, her long blond hair streaked with blood and a badly healing burn marking her shoulder and bicep. A man lay against the front gate, unconscious and bleeding.

Peter stared down at me in concern. “What the hell is this?”

I laughed a little hysterically, feeling something shift within, like an empty space being filled. “I think this might be my first lost soul.”

###

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Traitor is the final book in the Ava Delaney series, but as Breslin said, the end is but a beginning. There are many stories to tell in this world, and Ava may show up again.