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“Jase?”
I shuffled back, slipping out of her. “Yeah?”
“This won't make it okay. ”
My gut sunk. “What do you mean?”
“I mean…I love him. I really do, and I…I can see his face. I can see the way he’ll look at me when I tell him the baby’s yours. ” She shut her eyes around that thought.
“Shh. ” I kissed her eye, running my thumb over her lashes. “It’s okay. We’ll tell him together. ”
“No. ” She looked up at me. “We can't. He needs to be free to have an emotional reaction. He can't do that with you there—with anyone else there. ”
I sat back a little more. “It’s his emotional reaction I'm worried about, Ara. ”
“He won't hurt me, Jase. ”
“Then you don't know him very well. ”
“Or maybe you don't. ”
I moved back when she shoved me and slid out of bed.
“Stop always thinking the worst of him. ”
“Ara, I’ve seen it. I've goddamn well seen him hit a girl before. ” I stood beside her, wishing I could touch her, make her see reason. “Why won't you listen to me?”
“Because it’s irrelevant, Jason. ”
“Why?”
“Look what we did. ” She pointed at the bed. “We betrayed him. We loved each other in his bed. He’d be right to hurt me for that, Jason. ”
I ran forward and gently grabbed her arm. “No, Ara. He wouldn't. ”
“Just get off me. ” She shrugged away. “I don't want this anymore. I don't want the confusion. ”
“It’s not confusing, Ara. You love me. You said it yourself. ” I tired to touch her again, but she pushed me away.
“No. I don't want this! I don't want to love you!” she screamed.
Her words moved across space and time, coming to rest in the deepest, most tender part of my heart; she meant that.
I stood taller, scanning her thoughts, feeling the ache go deeper, appearing in salty pools in my eyes when the confirmation only stared back at me again and again.
She meant that.
She may have loved me, but it wasn’t what she wanted.
She sent the thought to me, standing strong, looking so beautiful and perfectly pale there, completely naked in front of me, that I refused to believe it. “Ara, I can't read you right now,” my voice shook. “I need you to tell me you don't really mean that. ”
Her lip quivered as she looked into my eyes, and I felt her soul break free of her heart—felt this icy rush of agony tear through her. She sunk to her knees and covered her head. She looked so small and fragile and …hurt. I hurt her. Again. And again. And again.
“I don't know what I feel,” she said. “I just need you to go. I just need to be alone. ”
“Sure. Okay. ” I grabbed my jeans and slipped my legs into them, my heart breaking so deep I grabbed a pillow off the floor instead of my shirt. “I’ll uh—” I wanted to say I’ll see you later, but I wasn’t sure I would. I wasn’t sure she would ever look at me again, nor was I sure I could hang around to see her hate me tomorrow.
I opened the door and took one last look at that broken, beautiful girl, and closed it behind me, checking the corridor for onlookers.
The halls, the rooms, every corner of the manor was more isolated, more unbearably empty that morning than any day I’d ever spent alone or in pain. I walked slowly back to my room, holding my breath and her pillow to my chest, my jeans hanging low down my hips, the rest of my clothes tucked under my arm.
I’d just spent the most wonderful night of my life in the arms of the only girl I would ever love, and today, I would mourn that mistake.
I stood outside the dream, watching Jason through my own eyes again, and when I blinked, saw myself sitting on the floor in my room. My naked body flickered with blue light each time I heaved the sadness from my lungs. But I didn’t stay there. I rose, covered my body with a thin nightdress, and tiptoed from the room.
“Where are you going?” I asked myself, but she didn’t hear. And I no longer felt like this was just a dream. It was too real. I felt the air, the chill, the tears fall from her eyes and down my own cheeks—felt the wind whip my hair out then, coming off the ocean in a violent swirl. A storm raged above us, making the lighthouse we were suddenly standing on feel rocky and unstable. I bent at the knees, reaching both hands out as if to grab on to something, but she didn’t. She stood at the cusp of the roof, her toes hanging over the abyss, her heart-shaped locket in an outstretch hand.
“What are you doing?” I yelled over the wind.
She didn’t answer. She didn’t need to. Both this girl of the past and the one of the future knew what came next.
Her hand opened, releasing the locket a second before she threw herself over the edge.
“No!” I jumped for her, but I missed, and her thick dark hair slipped through my fingers, following her to the rocky depths beneath. “What have you done, Ara? Please—please let this just be a bad dream. ”
But it wasn’t a dream. I knew, as I looked over the edge and saw David lift her in his arms, fall to his knees and cradle her mangled body to his chest, that all this had already happened. I slept with Jason, loved him as I’d never loved any man before, and I threw myself off this lighthouse because I didn’t want to face that pain. I didn’t want to love him.
Months had gone by since that day, and things had changed so much that everything David and I once were had now become something new—built on something entirely different to what our love had been built on before. I didn’t want to lose that. I didn’t want to be that girl who died for the pain of loving two men equally. I wasn’t her anymore.
“Let her die. ” I stood in the field as David carried her toward the manor. “David, you won’t love her anymore. Please don’t cry for her. ”
I wanted to reach out and make him okay. I wanted to touch him and let him see what she’d become—show him what she’d done with his brother while he was searching for a way to save their future child.
“And now you see,” she said, standing beside me in the air of the stilled morning—the trees in the field unmoving, the breeze having retreated with the storm almost as quickly as it came. “This is why I jumped. ”
“It wasn’t enough,” I said. “You can’t die. ”
“I know. ” She clutched the bloodied edges of her nightgown. “But, I’m not going back to my body. ”
“They’ll make you,” I said.
“How do you know?”
“Because it already happened. ” We both looked off to the manor then, and everything went pitch black.
I opened my eyes to the dawn touching my room—my fingers tangled around the sheets under me, and took a few heavy breaths, trying to compose myself. But I couldn’t. I’d slept with Jason. That feeling—the empty feeling like I’d forgotten something—that was it. All this time, my heart was trying to tell me what I’d done.
I sat up and hugged my knees, folding myself into a small ball at the head of my bed.
It was all just too late. My love for David had changed, and far outweighed what I felt for Jason now. But the damage had been done, and couldn’t be repaired or clouded by a stolen memory. I was a monster—not fit for this world, not fit to be queen, and certainly not fit to be David’s wife.
The sun rose and fell again. My door opened, faces came and went, stared at me, touched me, talked at me, but I ignored them all, even Jason, who squatted by my side, brushed his fingertips over my hairline then stiffened all over. He knew. He saw that I’d had the dream—saw that the block he’d put in place wasn’t strong enough to keep my inquisitive mind out if it was searching for something. Problem was before was, I just didn’t know I needed to be searching for something. But he should have guarded his own dreams with more care, knowing I could sometimes enter them. And then again, maybe he meant for me to find that o
ne. Maybe he was just tired of carrying that burden on his own.
He sat down beside me and said nothing for the longest time, and I didn’t mind his company. In a few days, we’d be separated for good. It had to be that way. In this short time David and I were allowed to be together, free of restrictions, I’d grown to love him greater than I ever imagined possible. And if I was going to lose that now, I never wanted to see another man, or feel another happy feeling, as long as I lived.
“I wanted to tell him, Ara,” Jason said. “I just didn’t want to destroy your last few months together. ”
“You wouldn’t have,” I whispered, and he was so shocked I spoke that he gasped, coming up on his knees. “Once he finds out,” I added, “he won’t have a reason to die for me anymore. ”
I heard him sigh my name out, but when I looked up, the sun was suddenly gone and so was Jason.
***
“Ara, please?” Morg stood in front of me like some sour-faced old hag at a nursing home, jamming a plate in my face. “You haven’t eaten for two days. Just. . . ”
“Go away,” I said numbly, my face dry and sore from tears.
“Fine. I will. But you can’t keep this up. David’s called three times. He’s—”
“Call him. ” My eyes met hers, and the blackness of her pupils expanded. “Call him, tell him to come home. ”
“Okay, but. . . ” She looked down at her phone. “Why?”
The tears spilled out over my cheeks then, without having filed a request. “Just tell him to come home. ”
“Tell him yourself. ” She held the phone to my ear.
I heard his breath, heard him ask Morgaine several times what was wrong with Ara, but I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t tell him over the phone. I wasn’t even sure I could actually find the words to say it.
He let out a long, soft sigh. “My love? Is that you?”
“Please come home,” I whispered.
“Ara, I can’t. Look, if this is about the dagger, I swear I’m not planning t—”
“Just come home!” I screamed down the line, hearing David's short gasp before I threw the phone at Morgaine. She caught it, her eyes white with shock, and gently stuffed it in her pocket, taking backward steps until she closed my bedroom door behind her.
***
I heard his voice down the hall. I heard Falcon brief him on the ‘situation’ as they stood outside my door. My heart beat in my throat, knowing what would come next—knowing how my world would come undone like a loose thread, and there would never be any way to wind it back together again.
The door opened and David just stood there for a second, taking in this form on the mattress—all cuddled up to the bed-head, her face probably red and swollen.
He squatted down by the bed, reaching out for my leg.