Chapter 29 #3
She’d been suspicious of Colt from the start, but I’d thought she hated the idea of me leaving home and starting a life of my own.
Both my parents had had reservations about me getting married, given my gift, but they didn’t want to keep me at home forever, and my father had come around once he’d met Colt.
I should have listened to my mother, taken her doubts seriously.
She’d done nothing but try to protect me my whole life, and all I’d done was fight her.
Colt was probably stealing my father’s merchant ring at this very moment.
I froze, my hands holding the stack of plates.
Was that the reason this memory had been chosen for my first trial, the last happiness I’d known before everything went wrong?
Trust what has been. Except I didn’t understand.
What was there to trust? I knew what happened next.
I’d already relived the day they died multiple times with Fen’s help.
Unless there was something that I was meant to see that I hadn’t seen the first time.
The idea of checking my father’s safe to see if Colt had taken the ring yet seized me. It exerted a different kind of pull on me, one that was insistent. I’d been able to break from the memory in small ways. Would I be able to wander completely off track?
“I’m going to get a book from my room,” I said, giving into the impulse.
My mother waved at me from the couch without looking up.
With my heart in my throat, I slipped out the door.
As I made my way down the hall to my father’s study for the key to his office, down the stairs, out the back door and across the lawn, I expected the memory to dissolve around me, but it didn’t.
Everything stayed clear and solid and real right down to the dew on the grass.
The gravel in front of the backdoor to my father’s office crunched under my slippers.
I stopped with a wince. If Colt was inside, he might hear me.
What would happen if our confrontation happened here instead of the next day?
The warehouse was dark. No light or flickering candle shone through the windows.
There was no noise beyond the rustling of the trees.
Everyone had left hours ago. I thought it most likely that Colt had stolen the ring at the end of his shift, that if I went to the safe, I’d find it already gone.
I could go back to the house and forget about it, wait to see how things unfolded.
It was the safe, smarter course of action, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something here I was meant to see.
Tiptoeing to the door, I unlocked it and slipped inside. My father’s desk was in the far corner, facing a door to the warehouse. The safe was on the wall directly behind it, concealed behind a painting. It wasn’t until I’d removed the painting that I realized I didn’t know the combination.
Frowning, I thought for a moment. I knew my father changed the combination frequently to prevent break-ins, but I didn’t know how he remembered them all.
On a whim, I tried my mother’s birthday.
Then my brother’s. When I tried mine, the lock mechanism clicked and the door swung open.
I wondered if Colt had guessed and gotten lucky like me, or if he’d found out a different way. Shaking my head, I looked inside.
My father’s ring sat on a stack of papers in the middle of the safe. Colt hadn’t gotten to it yet. I let out a shaky breath. Time seemed to warp and still. The urge to reach out and remove the ring so Colt couldn’t was overwhelming.
If I took it, I could prevent everything that happened next.
My family wouldn’t die. I wouldn’t go to prison.
I wouldn’t need to go to the In Between.
Except all of that had already happened.
This was a memory, not real life. But if that were true, I shouldn’t have been able to change things.
The fact that I could suggested that my actions would make a difference.
Otherwise, what was the point of allowing me the chance to intervene?
Hope swelled in my chest. The idea that I could undo what had happened, the worst day of my life, was seductive.
Saving my family’s life, even if Colt still managed to frame me for murder, was something I yearned for with every fiber of my being.
They didn’t deserve to get caught up in Death’s schemes, to have their lives cut short.
It was me she was after, not them. They’d just been collateral damage.
Maybe it would make no difference. Maybe if I took the ring, they would still end up dead, but there was a chance they wouldn’t, and I couldn’t let that chance go. Not after spending time with them again.
Looking over my shoulder, I peered into the darkness. Was I being watched? I didn’t see anyone. Nothing moved. There was no sound aside from my own breath and heartbeat, which pounded in my ears. I turned back to the safe and reached inside.
They’re already gone. I heard Fen’s voice in my head, the same words he’d said to me the night he told me I couldn’t revisit the memory of my family’s death anymore. My hand froze over my father’s ring.
Fen was waiting for me to complete this trial. Fen, who wanted someone to choose him. And here I was choosing something else. Choosing my past. Again.
Even if I could undo things so that my family survived, the realms would still be out of balance.
If I didn’t become Death’s Successor, someone needed to.
I tried to imagine another person in my place, bonding with Fen, working with Titus, Marcus and Daphne.
Even Bea. A sharp revulsion shuddered through me at the thought.
My chin dropped to my chest. If I picked up this ring, I would be letting my past dictate my actions.
As much as I wanted my family to live, I couldn’t go back.
They were dead. Fen wasn’t. Regardless of what had happened between us, he saw me in a way no one else had.
I wanted to work things out so we could be together.
Part of me might always be hesitant to trust him or anyone else, but if I wanted to learn I had to start somewhere.
To do things differently, I had to walk away from my past.
Trust what has been.
I looked over my shoulder towards the house.
It was visible through a window in the back wall.
The drawing room was on the second floor in one corner.
I could see the shadows of my family moving around through the windows.
Swallowing heavily, I withdrew my hand, leaving the ring in place, and closed the door to the safe.
With a sickening lurch, the office dissolved.
* * *
Surrounded by gray, I opened my mouth to take a breath and choked as it filled with water.