Chapter 35
Amaris
Amaris opened her eyes, feeling a small throb in her head. A warm light emanated through the room from the glowing fire beside her. She shifted her eyes, squinting. She was in the mystique tower.
What the hell! She sat up, feeling the immediate effects of a hangover. Her hands at her sides felt sticky, and through the foggy sleep lining her eyes, she made out red vomit stained into her dress. She dropped her head in her hands. Did I seriously black out?
A shrill scream alerted her she wasn’t alone. Amaris rubbed at her sleep-filled eyes and pulled back to spot Pricilla running from one of the chairs beside the fireplace. With tears in her eyes, she curled up on the cot and embraced Amaris.
“You’re alive,” Pricilla cried.
“Of course, I’m alive.” Amaris assessed the vomit stain ruining her gorgeous dress. “What happened? Did I do shots?”
“You don’t remember?” She drew back.
“Getting ready with Adelaide, but that’s about it.” Amaris groaned. “I haven’t blacked out in years.”
Pricilla shook her head. “No, it wasn’t the alcohol. You were poisoned.”
Amaris’s eyes widened. “I was what?”
“Poisoned.” The smack of her head into her palms echoed through the tower. “The captain came rushing into the library with you.”
“Wait, Theodoric? What about Esaias?”
“I’m not sure. Everything was chaotic. You weren’t breathing. I don’t even know how he kept you alive.”
Rescue breathing. It had to be. Pride swelled in her chest, but the reason for the lifesaving maneuver swam to the forefront of Amaris’s mind. “Who?”
“We don’t know. Is it because someone is crazy enough to believe you’re responsible for the soldier who died from scrying fever? Or is it because you tried to escape?”
A dark shiver settled over her, and Amaris wrapped her arms around herself. “Wait? How do you know?”
“That’s what you’re worried about?” Pricilla asked, confused. “I told you someone poisoned you, and you’re wondering how I knew you were being kept under guard?”
Amaris only shrugged, contemplating whether she was growing accustomed to the idea of someone wanting her dead or if she was numb. It was an unsettling thought. “When did you find out?”
“I’ve known for a while. It doesn’t take a lot of brains to decipher why you had a guard trailing you everywhere. I consulted my own sources and learned the truth. I also attempted to visit you in your room one night and found your door locked.”
“You still wanted to be my friend after you found out?”
Pricilla wiped the tears from her cheeks and took Amaris’s hands in her own. Her platinum hair was mussed, but old ringlets curled around the ends, and a few flowers were woven through the strands. At least her lavender tulle dress remained unscathed. “You’ve been kind to me.”
Amaris only wished others thought the way she did, but her line of thinking was also naive. Pricilla was lucky she remained within the safety of the manor walls. The outside world was a cruel place, at least in her world.
“Do you think it was the chief?” Pricilla asked.
Amaris was pulled from her thoughts and shoved back into reality. She rubbed at her neck, not that it would aid the dryness of her windpipe. Someone had tried to kill her, but why? She was already about to be sent to Elric.
Amaris froze. “What if it’s something else?” Her voice was frail. Pricilla would believe her; she’d be about the only person who would. What if someone had learned she was from a different world and that was why they tried to kill her?
“Why else would someone want you dead?”
She swallowed hard. “Do you remember what was in that journal you lent me?”
Pricilla tilted her head, studying her. “Yes…why?”
“What if I told you that it was true, all of it.”
Pricilla’s silence settled through the air like an ominous fog rolling through the dark on a humid morning. Immediately, Amaris wanted to hide within the ruffles of her dress.
“Are you saying it’s possible to travel between realms?”
Amaris bit her lip, stopping herself from taking it all back. “I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t.”
Pricilla’s gasp rung through the tower.
“I know you may not believe me,” Amaris continued.
“I can barely believe it myself most days. I come from the world Wineman described, a different part of it, but the same one.” She swallowed a shaky breath.
“The night they found me in the woods was when I fell through whatever portal he described. It’s why I’ve been trying to escape, not only to get back to my life, but to my world. ”
Pricilla didn’t reply. She sat with her lips parted and her eyes wide.
“Please say something.”
“Do you still plan to go back?” Her whisper carried through the tower in a loud echo.
Amaris dreaded her words, fighting the sting they brought to her chest. She hadn’t told Theodoric what his words meant to her. He’d offered her the choice of a different life. Not that it mattered now. The duke wanted her sent to Elric, and someone wanted her dead.
“I don’t belong here.” The words felt like a lie. She may not have remembered the Conjugation, but she remembered the question she’d asked herself while getting ready with Adelaide. What if I stayed?
“But what if you do? Maybe this is all supposed to happen. What if it wasn’t a coincidence?”
Amaris felt as if the world was dropping onto her shoulders.
“Is it a coincidence that, for a whole year, I’ve been verbally abused and berated at night to wake up to a completely different man who wants nothing more than to love me?
” She coughed, attempting to keep her composure. “I only ran because he hit me.”
“Amaris,” she breathed, “I didn’t know—”
“No one did, because I hid it. I was too afraid of what it would mean if I gave it true meaning. I faded away until all I had was healing people. I stopped drawing. I stopped living. I lived for others, risking my life, my friends’ lives.
I haven’t been able to stop it. My life has spun out of control, and every time I look in the mirror, I fear the coward I’m becoming. ”
Pricilla took her hands in hers, not even knowing it was everything Amaris needed. She didn’t have her mother to hold her after her fights with Derek or to tell her it was going to be all right.
“I may not know what your realm is like, but I understand pain. You may feel the burden of the realm on your shoulders, but it isn’t yours to bear alone. You were brought here for a reason,” Pricilla said, squeezing her hands tighter. “Everything happens for a reason.”
“I don’t know what to do.” The fear lingering in her heart screamed to run, but something else tugged and whispered for her to stay.
“Do you truly want to go back?”
“I don’t know what I want anymore.” The truth liberated her, and she sighed.
Who was she? All her life she’d wanted to become the next firefighter legacy.
She wanted to help people and enjoyed being a paramedic, but what was she living for?
For a year, she’d been lying to herself that she could fix her relationship with Derek, and now she’d pulled back the veil.
She saw Derek for who he’d become, and it frightened her.
“Then stay,” Pricilla said.
Amaris’s eyes drift through the tower. The worktable was cluttered with opened jars of herbs, and a pipe sat on the corner.
The sheet beneath her was no longer a foreign fabric, instead soft and warming.
The tower was hers. Derek couldn’t walk up the steps and demand she unlock the door or use the key he kept hidden.
All the signs had been there. For how long had she believed her relationship was normal when everyone around her had seen something different?
“But what about Viv? Is it selfish to leave her?”
“Only you can answer that.” Pricilla rubbed a hand over Amaris’s back. “But fight for the life you deserve.”
Amaris wiped the snot from her face. “But the duke—”
“The captain and Esaias want to help you escape and build a new life. Allow them to do that for you here.”
But what if the life she was beginning to envision for herself wasn’t possible?
What if she stayed and was caught? A life on the run was no life at all, but trapped in her own house was no different than being the duke’s prisoner.
Getting her fix for freedom by risking her safety at work was a different kind of reckless.
It was suicidal and one she no longer wanted a part of.
Amaris hugged her legs to her chest, battling the tear ripping a hole in her chest.