Swiftcurrent Creek lucretia, my reflection

Her words caused his ears to pull back—his lip finally curling up as his fiery eyes sought her diminutive form. He could counter many of her points—that his children didn’t know her, that she practically had already left him in her avoidance. But there were only two points he could truly focus on, and the shadowstalker slowly rose to his full height, looking at her as everything he had suppressed within the past surfaced, and with a vengeance.


“You’re not what tore my family apart. You don’t own that, and if you try to put that on your shoulders, Aria, then goddammit, you need some sense.”

Never before had he spoke so harshly to her—and he slithered toward her now, his nostrils flaring as he looked at her, willing her defiance to push itself to her own brutal honesty. “Is that what you want? To leave?”