A Demon's Wrath: Part II (Peachville High Demons) Read Free

since Aerden disappeared. You can’t ask me to walk away
from that.”
    She sighed and leaned against the pillar, looking
out onto the streets of the king’s city. After a moment, she
finally turned back to me, her green eyes dark and stormy. “Promise
me you’ll go into this with your eyes open.”
    “My eyes are wide open,” I said.
    “Open to the past,” she whispered. She
took my hand in hers and pressed it against her lips. “But what
about the future?”
    The look in her eyes made my stomach tense. I
turned away, unable to meet her gaze. I knew she wanted me to comfort
her and tell her that our future was something I dreamed about, but I
didn’t have the energy to lie to her right now.
    The truth was that a future without Aerden meant
nothing to me.

They Already Knew
    A voice stopped me in the hallway of the castle.
    My mother.
    I hesitated, then turned back toward her. We used
to be so close as a family, but I knew she was hiding something from
me. Every time she lied and said she knew nothing more about Aerden’s
disappearance, I felt us moving farther apart.
    “Where are you headed in such a rush? And at
this hour?” she asked.
    “I’m meeting a friend.”
    “It’s nearly nightfall,” she
said, her face wrinkled.
    I didn’t offer any more information and she
didn’t ask again. Over the past few years, I’d learned it
was better to be vague and give very few details about my life. I
already knew she didn’t approve of the way I’d continued
to search for answers.
    In the early days after Aerden had disappeared, I
went to my parents with every single tiny shred of evidence about who
might have wanted to hurt him. Even the tiniest clue was something I
wanted to discuss with them. I wanted to hear their feedback and see
what they had to say or if they’d heard anything. I didn’t
understand why they weren’t out there searching with me. Why
didn’t they need answers like I did?
    After a few years, it started to sink in that my
parents had no interest in finding out the truth.
    In fact, they began to get upset with me for
continuing to ask questions.
    “Let him go,” they’d said a
thousand times. “Your life is with Lea now.”
    Their words burned me to the core. How could they
ask me to let him go? And how could they forget him so easily?
    Any time I tried to question my father’s
lack of emotion over losing his son, he said he only wanted to be
strong for my mother. He said that she had been unable to grieve and
move on because of my constant questions. He’d said we all
needed to let Aerden live on in our hearts and memory but to move on
with our lives. He told me that’s what Aerden would have
wanted.
    But instead of quieting my search and letting my
brother’s memory rest, my father’s blindness only made me
angry.
    He should have been by my side searching for the
demon who had killed Aerden. They both should have.
    It had always bothered me that my parents kept
pushing me to put Aerden’s disappearance behind us.
    But after hearing what Andros had to say, I
wondered how I could have been so blind all this time.
    The reason they weren’t searching for the
truth was that they already knew the truth.
    Their questions and anger had nothing to do with
my mother’s ability to grieve and everything to do with the
fact that they did not want me to find the real truth. There was
something important they didn’t want me to know, and they would
stop at nothing to make sure I never found out.
    “Who are you meeting?” she asked.
    “Lea,” I said, which was true.
    Her eyes narrowed into dark slits. “And who
else?”
    I swallowed. “Why do you need to know?
    I was tired of her questions. Her constant lies. I
would never forgive her if I discovered Aerden was still alive and
she knew about it. My anger would know no limits. I could feel it
growing inside me even now.
    “Denaer, there are those out there who would
see you fall into madness,” she said. She moved toward me and
put