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I'm an unworthy asshole. I've never felt that more acutely than I have for the last two days.
My father cuts his eyes at Samson. "Can I have a minute with my son?"
"You can have two," Samson says, climbing to his feet. "Maybe you can convince him to stop threatening every leader of the free world he speaks to." My best friend shakes his head, weary, just as exhausted as the rest of us. He's been out there too, helping search. He only just got back from Fable Forest a few hours ago.
"Again?" King Phillip arches a brow, dark amusement in his sapphire eyes—eyes so much like his daughter's I can't even stand to look at him for long.
"He is who he is," my father says.
"I'll be in your study, drinking your fancy alcohol." Samson ducks out into the hall.
"The Orcs are taking too long," I tell my father and Phillip.
"The Orcs don't have her, son."
"They're still searching."
"They don't have her," my father says again.
"You don't know that."
He and Phillip share a look that draws me up short.
"You know something," I growl. "Tell me."
"Who else knew where you were keeping Thalia?" Phillip asks.
"No one."
"No one?"
"Just me and Samson."
"Motherfucker." Phillip's face turns red, anger flashing in his eyes as his gaze flickers toward the door Samson just left out of.
"What?"
"Son." My father sighs, running a hand down his face. "Samson went missing during the search today. He was gone for over an hour."
"What are you saying?"
"He's saying Samson Bucia took my daughter," Phillip growls.
Samson took Thalia?
"Impossible," I mutter, staring at Phillip as if he's lost his mind. Samson is the one fucking person in this world who would never betray me—my brother in everything but blood.
"Listen to him, Troy," my father urges.
"When the search team finally caught up to him, he refused to let them continue the search in the area. He said he'd already done it."
"Okay, so he searched ahead."
Phillip reaches into his pocket, pulling something out. He holds it out toward me. "If he searched, why did one of them find this clinging to a branch in plain sight?"
I stalk forward, snatching a scrap of yellow fabric from his hands. My heart slams against my ribcage, tears stinging at the corners of my eyes. I recognize it. It's from one of her dresses—the same one she wore the day I chased her through the woods, the day she fell into the pond.
A thousand emotions rage within me, each one fighting for dominion as fury threatens to consume me. Hope, hatred, and betrayal crash together in my chest, threatening to rip me apart.
