It shouldn’t hurt as much as it does, given I’m anticipating it, but preparing my heart protects me about as much as tensing before a hundred-foot fall.
“I’ve caused enough suffering on my own,” he says, staring up at the ceiling of the cave. “I’ve ripped too many people away from their families. It…it has to stop. I thought it had stopped.”
There’s something there behind his words, I realize, as his throat bobs.
“It was my choices that hurt them. Not yours,” I say.
He rubs at his temples. Now that his and Farin’s spirits are separate, I wonder if it’s just habit now. “Queen Asha. I saw that man take her. Watched him drag her away. I could scent the fear rolling off of her, but I’d just woken up, and the scent of her blood was so strong…I should have saved her.”
My entire being is numb. “I meant to save her, in the end. Before we arrived at the Rip, I mean. I caught the way Az was looking at Asha, the way he touched her. I told myself I wouldn’t let anything happen to her. That we’d get the Rip open, separate you from Farin, and then I’d protect Asha from him. Instead, I practically handed her over.”
I wonder what’s happening to her now, and my gut clenches.
And then I’m back in a pantry, and Derek’s hands are all over me, and…
“Nox, I’ve really messed up,” I whisper.
He says nothing, only furrows his brow in concern. For a moment, I think it’s because he can’t fix it. It takes me a moment to realize it’s because there’s something he’s not telling me.
“I know,” he finally settles on.
My voice is barely a whisper. “What happened, over on the other side of the Fabric?”
Nox examines me with those piercing ice-blue eyes of his. His jaw ticks. “Zora…she helped me find a way back.”
My head spins. “A way back.”
I hardly have the energy to make it a question.
He pauses, pressing his lips together.
“A way back, but one that would have had you and Farin stuck in the same body, you mean.”
Nox stares at me a moment, then slowly shakes his head. “No. Zora led me to an eyelet in the Fabric. I left Farin behind in the other realm.”
His voice echoes off the cave walls.
“You mean…” I take in a strangled breath. Tears sting at my eyes, and I wipe them quickly away with my sleeve. “You mean you found a way back on your own? A way that would have worked without the Rip?”
Nox doesn’t spare me from having to look him in the eye. “Yes.”
My palm finds my mouth, and I retch. When I pull my hand away, it’s covered in blood. Asha’s blood.
Asha’s blood in my mouth, Ellie’s blood on my hands, so much blood…
Blood that wasn’t necessary to shed.
My lips form the word “no,” but it gets suffocated in my sobs as I bury my face in my hands.
Nothing. I’ve ripped my soul in two, placed Evander’s baby upon the altar of my own happiness, handed Asha over to her greatest nightmare, betrayed my friends.
For no reason whatsoever.
Nox tore his way through worlds to get back to me.
And now the girl he thought he was returning to no longer exists.
Footsteps pad against the stone floor of the cave, and soon Nox’s side presses into mine. He digs his fingers through my hair and pulls my head into his chest. I’m reminded of the first time he read to me aloud, how I almost fell asleep with my head in his lap, thinking that maybe Nox’s embrace was what peace feels like.
Now I know better. Now I know there is no peace for me. There never will be.
And though the agony still ripples through my chest, I find myself melting into him. Find myself wanting him, wishing to drown myself in him. Aching to sear away the pain in the heat of his kiss, numb myself in his love.
It’s temporary, and it’s vain, and it won’t last, because no happiness, no relief of mine, is meant to last. I know that now.
It makes me burn for him all the more, knowing that one day, one day sooner than I can bear to think about, I’ll lose him too.
I crane my neck upward to stare into the beautiful face I know I’m destined to lose, as if somewhere, in some other world, my story is being woven into a tapestry just like Zora’s, just like Nox’s. But instead of my death being rewritten and rewritten, it’s losing every piece of happiness I’ve ever tasted, all at my own hand, over and over again.
His warmth envelops me, and I find I’m alight with desire, a craving stronger than any bloodlust I’ve ever experienced. Nox stares down at me, his ice-blue eyes melting me with such beautiful sorrow.
I lift myself upward and press my lips to his, intent on drowning myself in him.
But something is wrong.
His mouth, once so hungry for mine, is hesitant against my lips, almost immobile. And when he kisses me back, there’s something in the kiss that’s sterile, like he’s trying to…
Like he’s trying to…
