Chapter 7 #2
My gaze shifts, finding Nicholas sitting in an armchair beside Levi, his forest green eyes already fixed on me. A sob escapes me before I even realize it. He really did it. Despite everything, he kept his word and got Levi out—for me.
All the exhaustion, the fear, the anxiety, everything crashes over me at once. My legs move, and I find myself rushing toward Nicholas before I almost collapse into his lap, throwing my arms around his neck in a fierce hug.
He tenses at first, his arms hovering uncertainly, but when I murmur, “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” he slowly wraps them around me, hugging me back. I wince as his arm brushes my injured one, and he immediately pulls back.
“Are you okay?” he asks as he leans back, searching my eyes.
“I will be,” I manage, but fuck it hurts.
Let’s hope Alaric is able to fix me up.
With lots of painkillers.
But damn, it will be awkward seeing him for the first time after we spilled our guts over text.
Before I have a chance to settle, Sylus is there, lifting me off Nicholas’s lap with his hands under my armpits.
Sylus sits down in the armchair opposite Nicholas, positioning me on his lap instead, his arms winding protectively around me.
Right. He doesn’t like Nicholas.
He presses a kiss to the side of my throat, then rests his chin on my uninjured shoulder. I lean back into him, letting his warmth calm the tremors running through my body.
Nicholas’s gaze moves between us, and I see the flicker of hurt that crosses his eyes. “So, you two are… together?”
Sylus doesn’t hesitate. “Yep,” he says, popping the p before leaning in to kiss my temple, daring Nicholas to react.
I give Nicholas a small nod, watching as his face hardens, his lips pressing into a thin line.
“I’m with Koen too,” I add, ensuring everything is out in the open, and I don’t have to hurt him with that knowledge anew later.
Koen…
It’s new, raw, something I’m not entirely sure about yet, but it feels right.
I could have died today. But I didn’t.
I still could sometime soon while maneuvering through this mess, so why hold back any longer? Being theirs feels surprisingly right, and they don’t make me choose. Not between them, not between anything. They want me, and I let myself want this now.
Nicholas’s eyes widen. “Your cousin?”
“Shit, Harrington.” Sylus bursts into laughter, shaking his head. “She’s not Koen’s cousin.”
“Of course not.” Nicholas huffs bitterly while his ears turn adorably red. His gaze drops to his hands. “Why would anything you said be true?”
“It wasn’t all a lie.” The words feel hollow, but I mean them.
Not everything I told him was deceitful.
Most parts were real, painfully real. I understand why he doesn’t believe me, why he can’t see that messy truth.
But it doesn’t make it any less true or hurtful, knowing I’m the one who did this to him.
I’m the one who lied.
“Yeah, sure.” He pushes himself up to stand and probably leave. “Fuck all of this.”
I try to stand, too, to keep him from leaving, but putting weight on my arm to push off of Sylus’s lap sends a sharp, searing pain through me. A hiss slips out as I fall back against Sylus.
God, it hurts, and I’m feeling so damn woozy.
“You okay, Sparkle?” Sylus murmurs. He lifts his hand to my cheek, stroking it softly with the knuckle of his forefinger.
“He calls you Sparkle, Koen calls you Glitter…” Nicholas’s gaze snaps back to us. “You told me your name was Rosie, but Alaric didn’t know it at all. What is it now? Does anyone even know your real name?”
The question cuts deep.
No one knows all of me.
And that’s on me. Maybe I’ve kept those pieces buried so long that I’ve even forgotten how to share them. It’s easier to hide, to keep the world at arm’s length. To lie, even when I wish I could tell the truth.
But before I can answer Nicholas, a voice cuts through the tension. A voice so clear, so achingly familiar, that it freezes me in place. It’s as if a ghost has come to life, resurrected from the depths of my nightmares and dreams, the ones I carry around with my scars.
“I know her name.”
My heart stops, time itself seeming to still.
That voice.
I’ve heard it in my head a thousand times, whispered in my sleep, echoing in moments I could barely stand to remember. And now, it sends a cold, electric shock through my veins. I turn, my breath catching somewhere in my throat, my body numb.
No. It can’t be.
And yet, there he is.
Standing in the doorway next to Koen, holding a black suitcase. He looks different— older, worn, but still like home. Like the boy I loved, like every whispered promise of a future that never came.
Because I know him in a way that defies reason or explanation. I know every line, every dip, every dimple. I know what his smile used to look like when it was for me, what his laughter felt like on my skin.
His ice-blue eyes pierce into mine, the same eyes that have haunted me for eight long years. Eyes I thought I’d never see again. My whole body trembles, and I see that he’s trembling, too, as if neither of us can believe this is real.
Oh my God.
My world shatters, and the pieces fall in slow motion. Everything I thought I knew, the years of grief, the endless cycles of guilt, it all comes crashing down, scattering around me like glitter.
How?
I feel weak, but I can’t look away from him.
This can’t be real. It can’t be…
“Ace?” I don’t even know if I said it out loud or if it’s simply the echo of my heart screaming for him.
Everything seems to slow down. The rush of voices, the sounds around me, even the beating of my heart.
He looks at me, eyes filled with something I can’t place.
But it’s not love, and it’s certainly not joy.
It’s an emotion I haven’t seen on his face before.
And then he says it.
A single word that leaves my breath caught in my chest.
One name.
“Rosalee.”
My stomach plummets. What?