Chapter Fourteen
I push through the revel until I emerge on the moonlit terrace, gasping for air. The air is crisp and clear, but it doesn’t
stop my head from spinning.
It’s too cold for anyone else to be out here, and I take a moment to savor the peace, even though I can still hear the muffled
sounds of the party from inside. A bit of golden light spills from the windows of the castle, but out here, it’s just me and
the expansive, dark blue sky. The strange stars and double moons of the Otherworld sparkle above me.
A door creaks open behind me and I turn. Emmett walks out onto the terrace. His hair hangs down across his forehead and he’s
got an unreadable look on his face. His footfalls are silent as he strides across the mosaic tile and joins me along the stone
railing.
His hands are near enough to mine that I can feel the heat of them, but he’s not touching me, as if on principle. We’re standing
side by side, both gazing into the garden like we can see anything but inky darkness.
“Who was that?” I ask.
“Who?” He sounds genuinely confused.
“The girl you were kissing.”
“We weren’t kissing.”
“We’re going to argue semantics?” I can still feel the heat of Bram all over me.
A muscle in his jaw jumps. “She was no one.”
“Is that what I was, too? No one?” My voice is thick with venom.
He sighs and it comes from a place deep within him. I steal a glance at his perfect profile. He’s holding so much tension
in the sharp line of his jaw, but his eyes are sad. “You could never be no one to me.”
“Then what am I?”
I’m begging for him to say something gallant like you’re the love of my life or you’re the only person I’ve ever truly wanted, but he disappoints me.
“You’re . . . Ivy.”
“I don’t know what that means anymore.” Moonlight has leached the color from the gardens, leaving Emmett and me looking like
ghosts of ourselves.
I turn to walk away, but he captures my wrist in his hand and spins me to face him. The space under his eyes is dark with
bruise-like circles; there’s something about him that looks as wounded as I feel.
I hear the unicorn’s death knell like an echo in my ears.
“Don’t go,” he says softly.
I tear my arm from his grasp. “I hate this place.”
Devastation makes his shoulders sink lower. “Don’t say that.”
“Why not?” I ask. “It’s awful. I used to dream of coming here, did you know that?
It was all I wished for as a child. Every night I’d close my eyes and lull myself to sleep, picturing streams running over with starlight, faerie cakes that tasted of sunshine, and a noble, handsome suitor who would love me as I am.
But it’s nothing like that, is it? It’s rotten to the core and it’s rotted all of you with it.
I don’t know who Lydia is anymore and you—” I stop.
Emmett’s eyes meet mine with bruising force.
“You used to love me and now you can barely look at me.” My voice cracks.
“That’s not—” He struggles to find the words. “This place isn’t all bad.”
“How could you of all people possibly say that?”
“Me of all people?”
I gesture to him, to the bags under his eyes, to his too-long hair, to his pallid skin.
“It looks like you’re being devoured from the inside out. Whatever is happening here . . . it’s eating you alive.”
He physically recoils, but I don’t relent.
“The Emmett I knew would have fought. He never would have left me alone in that forest to kill a helpless creature while he got drunk with Bram.” Now that I’m yelling at
him, it feels as if I can’t stop. Heat races across my collarbones, down my arms, and into the tips of my fingers.
“I trust you to fight your own battles!” he shoots back. “And did it ever occur to you that me staying behind with Bram, making
him think I am complacent, is protecting you?”
I laugh sarcastically. “You used to be filled with fire and now you’re just a husk. You used to be better than this. You used
to be good.”
His eyes narrow. “I used to be a lot of things. The day I thought you died, I died along with you.”
“But I’m not dead.” My voice is strained. “I’m here and I need you.”
“Do you? Do you really, Ivy?” He doesn’t raise his voice, but I still resist the urge to flinch. He’s never been angry at
me like this before. We’ve bickered, but never truly fought.
A gust of icy wind blows a lock of dark hair across his forehead. “You’re the one who left me first, I’ll remind you. I was
willing to run away with you. I was ready to leave everything I ever knew, burn my life down, just as long as I could have
you in the ashes. But you walked across the hall to my brother’s room like it was easy.”
Here it is, all out in the air.
I think back to the night that he’s referencing. Queen Mor had just told me that I had lost the competition for Bram’s hand
and so I knew if I still wanted to break her bargains and save England, I had to convince Bram to run away with me. But first,
I stopped by Emmett’s room. Things spun out of control, a spark that turned into an inferno. He took me into his bed and I
let him. I wanted him to be the first to touch me like that, because, in a way, it made me his. If I was going to be ruined,
I wanted Emmett to be the one to do it. But it didn’t feel like ruination. Not even a little bit.
I can’t believe he’s throwing that night back in my face. “I was only doing what we’d planned for all along. You knew that I loved you. How can you possibly think that was easy for me?”
“Because you bargained to forget me!” His voice bounces off the frost-cloaked trees.
My breath comes out in a puff of vapor. I deserve every ounce of his ire and I’m foolish for believing I could outrun it.
I’ve spent every moment of the past four months hoping that if I loved him hard enough, if I worked hard enough to keep things together in his absence, I could rewrite how things ended.
But staring at him, all wide open and wounded, I know that I am not absolved.
I can’t just keep moving. Emmett is going to make me face what I did.
His knuckles are white where he grips the stone railing of the terrace. “I could never have done that to you, never. Even in my darkest days, when I thought I was going to die in that dungeon, when all the bones in my hand were shattered
and both eyes were swollen shut, when I was delirious with starvation, never would I have chosen to forget you. You were my single light in the darkness. The memory of you was the only thing that kept
me warm at night. The pain reminded me you were real.”
His voice softens. “Sometimes it’s hard to remember a time before this place. I would have lost my old self completely if
I wasn’t tethered to you. When I think of my life before, it’s like a dream, like something that happened to someone else.
But not with you. The memories with you are vivid, awake. You make me exist.”
I want to close the distance between us. It’s only a matter of inches, but it feels uncrossable. “And you wanted me gone,”
he finishes gravely.
“I wanted the pain gone,” I say, no louder than a whisper.
“Then that is where we differ. I relished my broken heart because you were the one who broke it. I would have endured one thousand years bearing the loss of you if it meant I got to hold on to
the memories of what we had.”
I wipe away a freezing tear from my cheek, unsure of when I began to cry.
Maybe that’s all love is. Just something you endure.
“I was only doing what I thought you wanted of me. I thought you’d move on.”
Emmett shakes his head. “Then you don’t know me very well at all.” It’s exactly the right thing to say to wound me.
“You know what hurt me the most?” he continues “That you didn’t really believe in me. Our plan was that by marrying Bram,
the bargains would be broken. I still can’t figure out why you bargained to forget me if you actually believed the plan would
work.”
“It’s because I knew I’d never be able to walk down the aisle and vow to be his wife feeling how I felt—feel—for you. I figured when the bargains were broken and all of a sudden I remembered you again, it would be too late and I’d
be Bram’s wife and it was something I could learn to live with while you went off and fell in love with some other girl. And
if we were wrong . . . well, then, I would have been numb forever. It’s not that I didn’t believe in you. I didn’t believe
in myself.” I’ve been shrinking into myself, but I can’t help these words from coming out in a frantic burst.
“You really think my love is that fickle?”
I look to the ground, my eyes stinging. “I suppose I did. I’m sorry.” For so many things.
“I’m sorry, too,” Emmett says. “Today, I promise, I was doing my best to protect you. It made me sick to see you walk into
that forest. But there are things here you don’t understand, plans already in motion. I can’t make Bram think I’m his enemy,
not now.”
“Then let me in,” I plead. “We were partners once, we could be again.”
Emmett sighs but doesn’t argue with me. “Meet me tomorrow morning and I’ll show you more.”
“Tomorrow morning?”
He nods, a hopeful light returning to his eyes. I’ve never been good at saying no to him. This reminds me of all the nights last spring, agreeing to meet him in the dark of his room or in the sunken garden.
“All right.”
I watch his shadow dip back into the castle and there’s something horrible in the slope of his shoulders. Right before ducking
inside, he turns back.
His eyes meet mine and his gaze is as tender as a bruise.
It looks like You’re two years too late.
I watch the stars until my face goes numb. I’m about to go inside when movement in the corner of the garden catches my eye.
It’s an animal, no larger than a dog, but with silver-white fur that glows the exact same shade as the moon. It’s far away
and cloaked in shadow, but I swear it’s got a jagged little stump in the center of its forehead. It’s only then that I crack
open and start to sob.