Chapter 19 The Only Way to Rebuild Is to Destroy #3
“You have a little blood.” He wipes it away, red staining his thumb, matching the rest of him, but he doesn’t step back once it’s gone. “When I’m around you,” Lucian murmurs, “I can’t get past this feeling that I know you, somehow.”
I swallow my heart. He must be mistaken.
“Maybe you just read my journal one too many times,” I mutter.
“No.” Lucian shakes his head, caressing my cheek now—like he used to.
“It’s more than that.” He pauses, looking from my eyes to my lips and back again.
“When I told you to run, I knew you wouldn’t.
Then I knew that I wouldn’t, either. I’d never leave you.
But there’s no reason for me to feel that way, is there? ”
I think of the last time he knew me—how dearly he fought to save me.
I remember what I thought then: he wouldn’t fight for me if he didn’t know me.
Am I making a mistake now, keeping the truth from him?
I want the Soul Ruby for him, for us, for everything.
I want it so I can get my old life back—and he is a part of that.
“That’s why I want the Soul Ruby,” I say, voice low. “It’ll bring back your memories. You’ll know why you feel that way.”
“I want to know now,” he whispers, stepping in even closer, impossibly close. Closer than I thought anyone would get again. “I want to remember you. I want to…” His finger runs down my cheek, over my lips.
I catch his wrist in my hand, stopping him. Shaking my head against his palm.
“I don’t understand,” I say, cursing myself for bringing up my concerns instead of just kissing him. Then cursing myself again for even thinking about kissing him. Him forgetting my existence is, in the cruelest way, a gift—he doesn’t know that he has to kill me.
“When I saw Queen Leiana standing over you, I just knew,” Lucian says, my hand still tight around his wrist.
My hand.
Leiana.
I glance down. My shattered fingers, the swelling—everything looks normal. It all feels mended.
Subtle signs reveal themselves.
I release Lucian, stepping back and wiggling my hand. It moves perfectly, without pain. I press a finger to my ribs. They’re not broken.
And Lucian isn’t Lucian.
None of that was real. He doesn’t feel like he knows me or that he would never leave me. And why would he? He doesn’t know me. But this ghost—or demon, or monster, or whatever Zola sent to haunt me—thinks it does.
I pull Lucian’s—not Lucian’s—hand back, twisting his wrist.
“I should have used this image sooner.” The hallucination still sounds like Lucian. “Everyone knows unrequited love is more tortuous than,” it points to my hand, “broken bones.”
I don’t love him, I want to say, but I stop myself.
Whatever this is, no matter how deep it is in my mind, doesn’t seem to be able to read it.
My only edge is keeping my thoughts to myself.
Lucky for me, the daggers along my waist are still there.
I pull one out and lunge for the creature, remembering what Mial said.
I stop it by killing it.
I swipe at Not Lucian’s body, across his chest, down his torso, and manage to draw blood at his shoulder.
He grabs the knife by the blade, and it grows flimsy in my hand, the hilt melting through my fingers.
It slips from my grasp, like dripping water.
But Not Lucian lunges for it, and when he grabs it, the blade is solid again.
With a swift movement, he sends the knife flying toward me. I duck, but as I look up, I see the knife hasn’t left his palm. Not Lucian smiles. He doesn’t fight. The knife sits in his hand, free for the taking.
“You want to be rid of me?” he questions. “Go ahead.” Then he opens his arms, the movement very Lucian. “Stab me.”
It’s not even a thought. I grab the knife, aim for his heart, and strike.
“Desdemona!” he shouts, grabbing my wrist, the blade a mere breath from sinking into his chest. “What are you doing?”
All at once, pain shatters through my fingers, into my wrist, and up my arm. The intensity forces me to my knees, the dagger clattering to the ground.
Is this real? The pain is the only thing that tells me it is—if I can even trust that.
Lucian falls in front of me. I scoot back, shaking, scared—is this him or another trick of the mind?
I study him, looking for a sign. The lighter blue around his pupils is there, the slanted nose and the… “Smile,” I say, thinking about the way Not Lucian smiled at me—the tormenting leer versus his real, lopsided grin.
Lucian’s eyes roam the room for a moment, confused, before he looks at me again.
“I have to know,” I breathe. “If it’s you.”
“If it’s me?” he asks, an incredulous, lopsided grin shaping his lips, dimples and all. “Am I someone else in your fantasies?” he mutters. “Perhaps a blonde?”
I’m so relieved I could cry. I don’t. I just fall to my back, collapsing into the pain.
The next thing I know, Lucian is lying beside me on the floor. I can’t see him, but I feel him—the warmth of him, the familiar hum of power. I’m drawn to his presence like a breath of fresh air in my lungs.
“You know,” he says slowly, “that’s the second time I was nearly killed by one of these hallucinations.”
“Considering you stabbed me in the heart once, I think you deserve it.” I turn to face him. My gaze slides to his chest, lingering on the tear in his shirt and the blood stain.
He shifts slightly closer, the distance between us narrowing. Heat radiates from his skin. “Would you call us even?”
I let my eyes drag up from the wound to his face. “There’s still the neck and the spine to make up for.”
“Then, for matters of the heart only?”
I don’t know what he means by it. The last time we went through this, he did the same—flirted with me and danced with me because he needed me to get to The Void. This time I know what he needs—Azaire—and he’s almost as brazen.
I imagine he’s holding back because of what I am. And that hurts. So I don’t answer.
We’re not even, and we never will be.
The quiet stretches. Right now, I need something to take the edge off my pain, but I don’t have anything to say to him.
“Thank you,” he murmurs at last.
“For?”
He leans in just enough that I feel the brush of his breath on my cheek. “Fighting… Staying.”
I sit up slowly, wincing as I turn toward him. He follows suit, and now we’re face-to-face.
Holding out my arm, I say, “If you want to thank me, do something about my hand.”