Chapter 50 The Truth
The Truth
I spent the next fifteen minutes telling Esmer and Isaac about my last few days.
I felt a little crazy, at first, describing some of the things out loud—the portal of golden light, the world of Therador on the other side, the power I now knew I possessed—but neither Esmer nor Isaac questioned my sanity or suggested that I was making any of it up.
Naturally, I left out some of the more personal bits—the bath with Octavian, and my many adventures with Radven and his tongue—and I was grateful Esmer didn’t press for all the tawdry details, even though I was sure she could read between the lines.
The two of them just let me talk, without question or comment, taking me at my word.
It was…reassuring. And I was grateful, not for the first time, to have these two in my life.
“So we were right to freak out when you stopped responding to us a few days ago,” Esmer said when I was done. Her expression was guarded but thoughtful. “Half of Therador was trying to kill you. It’s a miracle you made it out of that alive.”
She was right, of course. But no matter how many times I told myself that it was better that I was home again, that this would keep more people from dying on my behalf, I couldn’t shake my guilt at how I’d left the brothers.
“This isn’t over,” I said softly.
“Of course it isn’t.” Isaac had been taking notes on his laptop as I told my story.
Aside from the clacking of his fingers on the keys, he’d been silent the whole time—but the way he’d nodded along as I spoke made me think he wasn’t especially surprised by some of the things I’d shared.
Now he looked up at me, a lock of his hair flopping across his forehead.
“You have the ability to open a portal between worlds, Goldie. Do you realize how huge this is? This is only the beginning.”
He slid closer to me on the couch, turning his laptop so I could see the screen.
“See this map? The guys and I have been collecting data about people who’ve claimed to have traveled between worlds within the last couple of centuries.
Some of their reports are less reliable than others, but we didn’t want to rule out anything.
Each red dot on this map indicates a potential traveler, and if you click on them, you can see all the information we’ve gathered. ”
This was all a little overwhelming, and I took another sip of my coffee as I gathered my thoughts.
“I don’t want this to be the beginning of anything,” I said finally.
“If these last few days have taught me anything, it’s that creating a bridge between our world and Therador is bound to cause as many problems as it solves.
” Still… I looked toward the corner, to the empty spot in the air where I’d tumbled through, and my heart panged.
My eyes fell to the mug in my hands. “But I feel terrible for how I left them. If they get hurt or killed because of me…” I squeezed my eyes shut.
“I feel like a coward, coming back here and leaving them to deal with that mess alone.”
For a moment, we sat in unmoving silence, and then Isaac reached out and gave me a comforting pat on the arm. It was so awkward it was endearing, and it temporarily broke my bubble of self-pity.
“I’m sorry,” I said, setting my mug on the table once more. “You guys came here to help me, not listen to me whine. I just don’t know what I’m supposed to do now.”
Isaac stopped patting me. “You go back, of course.”
I looked over at him. “I know you and your friends probably want me to collect more data or whatever, but—”
“This isn’t about that. Or them. This is about what’s right for you.” Isaac’s cheeks went pink again. “You wanted to help these Crestwood brothers even when you hardly knew them. Of course you’d want to help them now after everything you’ve been through together.”
“I do want to help them,” I said. “The question is whether I help them more by going back or by staying here.” I shook my head.
“I was so useless there. Even though I had this great power inside me, I had no idea what to do with it. I was just in the way. I don’t want to put myself in the way again just to assuage my own guilt. ”
“You weren’t completely useless,” Isaac countered. “Marigold, you opened a freaking portal! From both directions! And you blew up that basilisk—”
“That was dumb luck. I had no idea what I was doing.”
“It still counts. You think all those comic book heroes do everything right the first time they get their powers? No—they accidentally blow up all sorts of shit. But that’s how they learn.”
“I’m not a comic book character, Isaac.”
“No, you’re better.” His eyes were bright.
“Marigold, what you have is real. Real-life magic. You’re so special that all the most powerful people in Therador want you.
Your great-great-great-grandparent or whatever literally came here from another world.
None of this is a coincidence, Marigold.
This is destiny. You can’t just ignore destiny. ”
My doubt must have been plain on my face, because he glanced across the room and said, ”Esmer agrees with me, right?”
I looked over at her, too. She’d been uncharacteristically quiet during this part of the discussion.
She was leaning back in the chair, toying with one of the many rings on her fingers. Her eyes were distant and her lips were curled into a frown, almost as if she wasn’t listening to us at all and instead stuck in some unpleasant daydream.
“Esmer?” I said.
Her head jerked up, her eyes meeting mine. “I think…maybe you’re right, Goldie. Maybe it’s better for everyone if you just stay here and never go back.”
“You can’t mean that,” Isaac said.
“Of course I mean it!” She stood up abruptly. “Goldie’s right—more people are going to get hurt if she goes back. This isn’t a comic book, Isaac. And it isn’t a game. We’re talking about real people’s lives.”
“She can’t just ignore it, either,” Isaac said. “If the Circle is as powerful as she says, they’ll find a way to get to her anyway.”
“The Circle has no idea what they’re doing,” Esmer said, starting to pace. “I don’t even think they realized their curse would send the brothers here in the first place.”
“We don’t know what the Circle’s thinking,” Isaac countered. “But from what Goldie’s said, I don’t think we want to underestimate them.”
“I’m not underestimating them!” Esmer snapped. “Don’t you think I understand the danger? Hell, I’m probably the only one who understands the danger here.”
This was getting weird and confrontational.
I stood—wobbling a little on my still-unsteady legs—and reached out toward Esmer.
“I agree with you. I think it’s dangerous for me to rush back there.
I just… If there’s any chance for me to make this right, to help them in some way, I want to do it.
No matter the risk to me. It’s the risk to them that concerns me. ”
Esmer relaxed a little, though she was clearly still agitated.
“This isn’t a decision we should take lightly,” she said.
“I know,” I assured her, exhaustion settling over me again. “Believe me.”
Esmer’s dark eyes met mine, and a hint of a smile tugged at her lips. But there was still something off about her, something that didn’t line up with the Esmer I’d known through our chats over the years. She was clearly holding something back.
“I never said we should take this decision lightly,” Isaac said from the couch behind me. “If we go back, we need to have a solid plan.”
I turned. ”We?”
“Well, yeah. If you open the portal again—I said if, Esmer—we’re not going to let you go alone. Or at least I’m not.”
“I already told you this isn’t a game,” Esmer said. “This isn’t some silly RPG adventure.”
“Don’t you think I know that? But what kind of friends would we be if we let her do this on her own? Why did we even come here if we weren’t going to help her?”
“To stop her,” Esmer said quietly.
I looked at her again. “Stop me from what?”
She didn’t answer me immediately, and she refused to look me in the eye.
“Stop me from what?” I repeated. “You were the one who convinced me I should go to that masquerade in the first place, Esmer. You were the one who said I should live a little.”
“And the next morning when you were freaking out I was the one who tried to talk you out of getting involved in this,” she pointed out.
I’d had enough of this. I was too exhausted, too worried, too overwhelmed by everything to beat around the bush any longer. “What aren’t you telling me?”
She blinked, startled. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“No—when you first came in here, you said you understood more about all of this than I realized,” I said. “So tell me. I want the full story.”
Her mouth pressed into a line, her eyes closing off.
“Why come all this way if you’re just going to lie to me?
” I demanded. “You’ve never been afraid to tell me the truth before—what’s different now?
” But my mind was already putting the pieces together—her odd, anxious mood, her claims that she ‘understood’…
My eyes fell to her hand. To her missing fingers.
It was too much of a coincidence. Her name was too much of a coincidence, though I hadn’t let myself even consider it before.
“Esmerine,” I said softly.
Her eyes widened. “How do you know that name?”
“How do you think I know it?” I snapped back. My mind was whirring, my stomach twisting and turning again. If Esmer was Esmerine, the love of Octavian’s life… It was all sliding into place. Octavian had thought her dead. But what if she hadn’t died—what if she’d just be sent here, somehow?
“Tell me the truth,” I said, because I needed to hear her say it—needed to know, with absolute certainty, if this was the woman who held Octavian’s heart.
Who'd destroyed him when she'd disappeared.
Who'd made him the passionate but broken man who held himself back from me. “Are you…her? Are you Esmerine?”
Her eyes slid away from me, toward the empty corner of the room where the circle of golden light had been.
Did she know that’s where I’d come through?
Could she sense how close Octavian was—that moments before she’d stepped inside this room, she could have leaped through that portal and been in his arms again?
When she looked back at me, her expression was guarded, controlled—but I could also see the effort it took to keep it that way.
“Yes,” she whispered. “My full name is Esmerine. And I was born in Therador.”
The adventure is just beginning...