Moonfall | Book Two

CHAPTER 19

Other than the soft whistle of wind outside his window, Michael's room was eerily silent. He tried to refrain himself from moving from his spot next to the fireplace, but the moment Zanna picked up Ellette's red cloak laying on top of his bed, he dropped his crossed arms to his sides and moved in her direction. When he reached her, he snatched the cloak out of her hands.

"It seems you have a habit of touching what does not belong to you, Zanna."

She had only been there for a few minutes, the hood of her black cloak still on top of her head, and she was already taking liberties.

He walked around his bed and towards his bedside table with the cloak clutched tightly in his hand. He opened the top drawer of the table and pulled out the grey moonstone—its presence and significance no longer a mystery—and tossed it on the bed close to where she was standing.

"Were my memories not enough?"

Confronting her was not his initial intention, but it seemed he had underestimated just how deep his anger ran.

Zanna glanced down at the moonstone then back up at him. "You remember." She said, a statement rather than a question. "How?"

"Does it matter? All that matters is all the memories my mother made you lock away have been restored."

"Does Reina know?"

He nodded.

"Does Ellette?"

He tightened his grip on the cloak upon hearing Ellette's name slip past her lips because how dare she say her name now after all this time of pretending.

"No, and I have no plans of telling her, either. You all went to great lengths to make sure I remembered nothing, so I figured I might as well continue the ruse."

She slid the hood from her head before reaching out and picking up the moonstone on his bed. She held it in her palm while staring down at it. "That is what you call keeping secrets. In doing so, does that make you any different than us?"

"Do not dare compare my choice to yours. What you and my mother did harmed her. Me not telling Ellette only harms me. Because no matter how much I want to be with her, I lost that right when I took everything away from her. All I can do now is make it right."

"You made it right when you chose her over Gabriel."

"A choice that forced my mother to put down her own son."

"To save her other son. It does not make it right, nor does not make it wrong, Michael. Her choice saved you and the Fae. It saved Ellette. But you know this, so the one you are truly upset with is yourself, is it not? Because you did not save her. Is that not the real reason you have not told her? Because of your shame? Because you cannot face the girl you professed to love and swore to protect?"

Michael clenched his jaw as he stared at Zanna. Mad as he was, he could not argue because she was right. He had chosen Ellette over Gabriel but could not see that choice through to the end, and as a result, his mother had been forced to do what he could not. But accepting he was most at fault did not make them blameless.

"You should have taken care of her. When I could no longer protect her, you should have, Zanna. You should have done everything in your power to get her to her people."

"Do you think your mother and I have not been doing just that this entire time? Is that truly what you believe?"

"I do not know. But what I do know is my mother will always put me above all else, which means I cannot trust her. Not when it comes to Ellette. And you? Is it a lie to say your loyalties will always be to the Witches?"