Chapter 39 #3
Later, when Reid gets home and slips into bed beside me, I am determined to bridge the gap.
I don’t want to be alone in this cottage anymore.
I don’t want to spend any of my final conscious moments bitter with Reid and with myself and with the fate that stuck this spell in me.
When he tells me, miserably, that he still hasn’t found anything, I quiet him by pressing my mouth to his.
His lips are soft, eager, but his body is rigid. “Are you sure? I thought you needed more time…”
All I do is nod feverishly.
His hands move across my chest, his mouth below my ear. I close my eyes and try to remember a version of myself who wanted this more than I wanted my own heart to beat. He slips off his pants. He’s hard and wanting.
Reid slides my sweats down and his fingers trace slowly over my thighs. “You feel so good…” he mutters, more to himself than to me.
But when he brings his mouth back to mine, and I see the dim light reflected in his tumultuous blue eyes—
“They killed him at the docks. He’d hid me somewhere safe so they wouldn’t find me. But I saw everything.” The words still hurt all these years later. “I was ten.”
My father’s screams echo in my ears. I pound my fists against a steel crate, but I’m not strong enough. I can’t breathe.
Reid’s eyes widen at the realization, the moonlight gilding his mused hair, the destroyed exhibit a cocoon around us.
Something new has hit him. Something horrifying. But what?
“I remember hearing about that…About a decade ago,” he says. But his wheels are turning. What has he figured out?
I shove Reid off me with all of my hunter strength like he’s a vampire come for my blood, and he goes flying into the wall across from us, shaking plaster from the ceiling. “What the—”
“Sorry,” I gasp, sitting up. “I’m so sorry.”
But I’m not alone. There’s another version of me in the cottage corner. One in a miniskirt and a big sweater. And Reid, another version of him. We’re talking. After the Windsor attack. Before we sleep together for the first time. I’m telling him about the night my father died.
“A pack of Broods took out one of the best hunters in Astera,” he says. “You were there?”
It twists my stomach to think of how they might have bragged to him about the kill. I only nod.
“Viv…” He’s really reeling. Not just from my story. He’s learned something. Some piece has slid into place. “I’m so sorry—”
“Viv…” Reid sounds somewhere between annoyed and empathetic, but I can’t see his face because I’m already darting from the bed.
“I just need some fresh air,” I say, willing the fragments of my memory and the pounding need for blood to subside. Willing the syrabraxa to slow its destruction of my mind. Willing my voice not to wobble as I throw on the first pants I can find.
I have no recollection of getting to the front door of Reid’s cottage.
Leaving my memories back in his room. Can barely register the flagstones beneath my feet as I walk with no direction in mind.
It’s been days since I’ve inhaled night air.
Tears pull at my eyes. The lanterns surrounding the professors’ quad glow like eyes in dark bushes.
I tell myself nobody is watching me. Try with all I’ve got to believe it.
I dart toward the trees, where I can’t be seen, just in case. My heart pulses. So does my scar.
When I pull out my phone, my hands are shaking. I dial without thinking.
Deacon picks up on the first ring. “What’s wrong?”
I can’t think of anything to say. Just hearing his voice slows my heartbeat. I take a breath. “Nothing.” But my voice sounds paper-thin.
On the other end of the line, Deacon sucks in a drag from a cigarette.
The gentle whoosh of smoke funnels from his nostrils, and the sound soothes my racing thoughts.
I think he’s alone, but I can’t tell. I picture him on his balcony, looking out at the sea.
Take another breath. “Bored with my brother already?”
“Of course not.” But my tunnel vision has let up, and I can actually see the soft glow of the dining hall in the distance and the Citadel hunters wandering in and out, eyes peeled for me. My jaw aches from clenching. A rabbit hops across the new spring grass at my feet.
After a long moment, Deacon says, not unkindly, “Are you going to tell me why you’re calling?”
“Sorry,” I sigh. “I’m fine.”
Another drag. More silence. I wonder if he’s debating something—the realization that I’ve come to decipher the nuance of Deacon’s varied pauses is more than a little unsettling.
“Any dreams?” he asks.
I shake my head even though I know he can’t see me. I wish I had better news to give him.
“You watch La Douleur Exquise yet?”
I almost laugh. “Today, actually.” My heart twists in melancholic memory. I stub my bare toe into wet blades of grass. “I cried like a baby.”
“Congratulations, you’re not a robot.”
“You cry?” I ask, gripping the phone a little tighter. “When you watch it?”
Deacon inhales. “Every damn time.”
The fierceness with which I want to see that side of him surprises me. A soft wind whines across my shoulder, and I shiver. This is too risky. I’m half clothed in the professors’ quad, in Reid’s sweatpants and a threadbare tank top, well after dinner hour. If anyone were to see me—
“I gotta go,” I say in the end. “Thanks.”
Deacon doesn’t ask what for. “See ya ’round, Vivienne.”