CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’ve never been this ... insatiable. This needy. I can’t even find the will to care about anything, but this beautiful monster ... this demiurge. It makes sense now why I want to be on my knees for him.
And not because he can destroy me in a hundred different ways with just his finger, but because I need to be with him. I need him. Need to feel him.
“I love you,” my mouth begs to whisper with an overwhelming wave so intense I start to cry.
He kisses me, licks the tears from my lips. He doesn’t ask why, but simply holds me until there are no more tears.
“Okay?” he asks when I sniffle and raise my face to his.
I nod. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’m so happy and scared and ... I’m feeling so much and...”
He cups my face between his hands. “You’re remembering. It’s going to be a lot. Humans think remembering is just images and moments. But there are emotions to those moments. Thoughts. Sadness and happiness. When you remember an entire life, it’s going to be overwhelming.”
I wipe my eyes, grateful that I don’t have to explain what I don’t even understand.
“I didn’t want to leave,” I confess, fingertips touching the aching pang between my breasts. “It hurts so bad.”
He holds me while I’m pulled under the weight of that singular realization.
He stands rooted, solid and still as if he’s planted to the spot.
A solid blanket of security keeping me grounded.
He doesn’t tell me it’s okay. He doesn’t try to assure me that it will pass.
He just digs roots into the earth and lets me feel it all.
“Father,” Searon murmurs softly from somewhere over Vaelith’s shoulder.
“It can wait,” he bites back.
“No.” I straighten, hands scrubbing at my face. “I’m okay.”
His large hand strokes over my hair. “Only when you’re ready.”
Doing my best to pull myself together, I suck in a breath and face Searon. “Thank you.”
The creature lowers his head once in a bow and carefully edges away, and for the first time, I see where he’s brought us.
I assumed we would be returning to Aunt Laura’s. I had already created a whole scenario in my head of tumbling down the stairs and breaking my neck. I even convinced myself the thing in Aunt Laura’s bedroom got me.
But we’re standing alongside the open highway. The world, a shaken snow globe swirling around us but never making contact. There’s a vacuum of darkness that encompasses everything, but the spot we’re standing in.
I don’t recognize it, but then, it could be any highway I’ve driven a hundred times in my life. I glance down at my feet, ankle deep in snow and think it’s odder that they’re not black with frostbite.
“How come I don’t...?” I turn and trail off to find Vaelith several yards away, buried in the shadows. A stiff figure with his back to me. “Vaelith?”
I start towards him and get the slight tilt of his head peering at me over his shoulder.
“I can’t,” he says quietly. “I can’t watch you die ... again.”
My chest tightens, but I go to him. I slip my hand in his and wince when he presses too hard. Still, I hang on, saying nothing as I watch the road.
Searon stands on the opposite end, unbothered. Tail drifting lazily from side to side. But I still don’t...
It turns around the bend. Twin headlights that blaze too bright. I recognize the rusted, gray Toyota bouncing into view. My heart leaps a little at the sight of my own face staring through the windshield, eyes narrowed with focus.
A blur, fast and white sprints past the hood and even the second time, I miss what it is when it dives over the edge. The same edge I twist the wheel towards.
“What was that?” I cry, but don’t wait to hear the answer when the me in the car overcompensates on righting myself. The backend catches ice and the entire vehicle skids. It fishtails
I gasp, hand flying up to cover my mouth as the nose end bounces off a snowbank and propels over into the yawning expanse of darkness on the other side.
I catch a glimpse of the streak of horror on my own face before I and my car tumble over the edge.
My taillights disappear from sight a second later and then silence.
“No...!”
Abandoning Vaelith’s hand, I sprint to where the snow is already covering up my tracks. My toes catch on the edge and I stare down into the ravine.
Even from this distance, I know I didn’t make it.
The car is nose down, wrapped around a tree. The driver’s side door has sprung open and I can see my face. The unnatural twist in my neck. The bone gashes deep across my brow.
I touch the spot with trembling fingers, remembering the piercing headache. I thought it was from the crash — and I guess that’s still true.
My gaze drops to the bent wrist caught between the dash and my body. The sickening bend that has bones splintering through the skin of my wrist.
I finger the ache I’d felt.
“I’m dead,” I say to no one.
Maybe to myself. To the world.
Katerina Harrington is dead. She turned too hard on the wheel and sent her car over into a tree.
I rub a shaky hand under my nose and turn to the figure still refusing to face the wreckage.
“Did ... did you know?”
His dark eyes lift and find mine. “The moment you hit.”
He turns and reaches for me. Long fingers extended, but not touching. Waiting for me to meet him.
I take it. I slip my hand into his palm and let his curl until I can no longer see mine.
“I didn’t want this,” he murmurs. “Not like this. I would have waited, but...” He pulls me to him. “I...”
I get it. Even without another word said, I get it; it may not have been the way he wanted me back, but he got me back.
“I’m not angry,” I tell him, honestly. “I’m sad that I won’t see my parents again, but...” I bring his knuckles to my cheek.
His free arm slides around my middle and I’m pulled against him. Folded into the layers of his cloak. His head lowers and I lift my face, expecting his lips and getting his brow against mine.
“I will make it up to you. I will spend my remaining existence making you happy.”
I brush the smooth curve of his cheek with my fingers and breathe in his familiar, warm scent.
“Can we move my car?” I ask, stealing a single peek at the red stain splashing across the snow from the taillight. “No one will find it down there and my parents will never know—”
“A couple on their way to a wedding will see the lights and stop. Your parents will be notified in a few hours,” he promises quietly.
“They will be heartbroken and they will mourn, but,” he tips my face away from the sight so I’m trapped in his eyes instead, “your father will live for a long time. They will lean on each other and they will get through the loss together.”
It’s some comfort, I suppose.
“How do you know?”
The rough pads of his fingers brush my tears away.
“Because I would never let you suffer, Rina.”
I exhale something between a sob and sigh that only comes through tangled and weak.
“This is all so much,” I rasp. “It hasn’t been a full day and...”
“I know, but you are taking it all so well.”
I don’t have a choice, I want to tell him.
I’m dead. Screaming and yelling at the heavens isn’t going to change that.
Falling apart isn’t going to help. Being angry at him and making him feel helpless isn’t going to make me feel better.
The only thing left is to take a deep breath and keep moving forward. Absorb each blow as it comes.
“Anything else?” I ask quietly, but with a tinge of dry humor when I add, “I’m not secretly an alien princess, am I?”
Vaelith chuckles. “Not yet, but you are my queen. The queen of Paludaris.”
I blow out a breath. “As long as we don’t go around probing people in the butt hole.”
His grin is slow and dirty. “Oh, we definitely do that.”
Against my will, I burst out laughing. Vaelith smirks and presses a kiss to my brow.
He captures my fingers and moves us away from the wreck.
Searon follows quietly behind us. His massive body is oddly nimble and graceful.
I think how peculiar we must look to anyone driving past. Me in a filthy gown, a giant man made entirely of roots and vines, and an enormous wolf-cat taking an evening stroll through a blizzard.
I can only imagine the kind of cryptid report we would make, especially given we’re at the feet of the Appalachian Mountains.
And, just like the first time, I spot the dull glow in the distance. The beckoning shimmer against the backdrop of darkness.
“Hey, that’s Aunt Laura’s house,” I blurt, pointing. “I thought it was so weird that I suddenly found it.”
“There’s nothing sudden about it. That house wanted you to find it. Wanted you trapped inside with all the other things living there now.”
I shudder and Vaelith gathers me up. I’m placed on Searon’s saddle with Vaelith climbing up behind me. His cloak is twisted around me in a secure cocoon, and I don’t bother telling him I’m not cold.
“What will happen to the house?” I ask, leaning into the solid comfort of his chest.
“As long as it remains, it will continue to fester and rot from the inside. Humans will buy it and terrible things will happen.”
“Can we do anything?” I tilt my head back on his shoulder. “We can’t let people get hurt because one person was an idiot.”
“Unfortunately, this world is no longer in our hands, my love. We are forbidden to meddle in the lives of mortals. Also, that,” he nods towards the dull outline of the house in the distance, “isn’t real.
This entire place isn’t. I can’t leave Chthonia.
This is only a mirror reflection of the events. ”
The curse, I realize.
“It’s all true,” he presses, mistaking my silence for anger. “Everything I showed you is accurate. I would not lie to you.”
I brush a kiss to his chin. “I know. I should have realized. It’s my fault you had to do all this.”
His fingers catch my jaw before I can turn away. He looks on the verge of speaking but seems to change his mind.
“Let’s go home,” he says instead.