But a thorough search for him there soon assured us that he had not.

My father helped us scour the whole island for him for the rest of the day, but he was nowhere to be found.

Nobody seemed to have seen him.

It wasn’t until we returned to the apartment late that evening and Derek noticed the note left on the desk in his study that we realized what had happened.

I took the note from Derek, desperate to read it for myself—as if Derek had somehow misinterpreted it.

But the message was clear.

Our son had left The Shade.

Derek gripped the edges of his desk so hard the wood groaned beneath his hands.

I stared at him, my mouth agape.

I wondered if Ben had somehow gotten wind of the suspicion some humans held that he’d been responsible for the murders.

“He must have taken one of the subs,” I whispered, the full horror of the situation sinking in.

“How will he even survive?” “I don’t know what he was thinking,” Derek said.

I read the note once again, focusing on the last few words of his letter: “Don’t come looking for me.” Of course, my first reaction was to want to leave the island and scour the seven seas for him, if that was what it took to find him.

“We need to look for him,” I gasped.

I turned my gaze on my husband again.

A stoic expression had set in on his face and he was looking at me steadily.

He shook his head slowly.

“When Ben left,” he said, his voice deep, “he was self-aware enough to leave us this letter.

He was aware enough to know what he was doing.

He made a decision.” Derek’s words were the last thing I wanted to hear, and yet I couldn’t help but find truth in them.

When I remained standing there, my mouth open, Derek stood up and clutched my hands.

“Our son is no longer a child, Sofia.” “I know, but… he could die out there,” I choked.

Derek furrowed his brows, taking a deep breath.

I could see that it was just as difficult for him to speak the words as it was for me to hear them.

“Do you remember what you said to me, just before I turned him?” My mind was too alight with worry.

I couldn’t think of anything right now other than Ben adrift in the middle of the ocean, starving to death.

I shook my head, avoiding Derek’s gaze.

He reached for my face and forced me to look at him.

“You said that there’s one thing even vampirism can never take away from a person… Choice.” When I still didn’t respond, he drew me closer to him, cradling the back of my head as he whispered into my ear.

“As Prince of The Shade, Benjamin chose to take this risk to protect his people.

That’s a choice that we shouldn’t take away from him.” My hands tightened around Derek’s waist as his words burned me.

How could I argue with him when ever since Derek’s and my first meeting, I’d been the one preaching the very thing he was repeating to me now? Lowering his mouth to mine, he kissed me slowly and tenderly.

I wasn’t sure that I’d ever loved my husband more when he brushed my cheeks with his thumbs and whispered: “We need to have more faith in both of our twins.

Remember, they’re Novaks… They’ll survive.”

Chapter 14: Rhys

The burden of my failure to recapture the Novak girl weighed heavily on my shoulders.

Had my sisters not been alert to the rings glowing on their fingers that day I’d lain injured and trapped beneath the deck of that ship, with all those circus animals running about, I might have perished there.

Despite the agony bursting from my palms and wreaking havoc on my nervous system, I’d managed to climb atop one of the containers to stay clear of the stampede.

There, I’d rubbed the copper ring around my index finger until it glowed orange.

After that, all I could do was wait.

My sisters, Julisse and Arielle, had appeared beside me a few hours later and brought me back to the island Caleb Achilles used to manage—now managed temporarily by my aunt, Isolde.

After my sisters had returned me to safety, they’d left immediately to complete the task I’d failed at.

Then, when they’d also returned unsuccessful, it was all I could do to keep myself from screaming.

The days that followed were agony—not so much from the physical pain of recovery, but from the shame and the absence of my powers.

It felt like I’d been stripped of my identity, rendered some pathetic shadow of my former self.

Worst of all, it had been a puny human girl I’d allowed to do this to me.

The situation couldn’t have been more humiliating.

I remained at the top of the castle—Annora’s old quarters—and kept myself locked there as Isolde and my sisters assisted me in my recovery.

We witches didn’t have many vulnerabilities, but our palms were one of them.

They were both our greatest strength and our greatest weakness.

Somehow, Caleb and the girl had figured that out.

My blood boiled as I suspected that it might have been the wolf who’d told them.

What I’ll do to that dog if I ever meet him again… I’d promised Lilith that I would bring the girl back to her within a few days.

A few days had long passed.

Now, as I lay in the bed still recovering, I felt too ashamed to go before Lilith and admit to our failure.

But I couldn’t delay it any longer, or she would start stressing.