Chapter 19
Agamut of expressions flickered across Finn’s face, one right after another, and with each, the pit in her stomach grew. Finally, his brow smoothed and he seemed to settle, the set of his jaw resolute. His eyes, the way he was looking at her…
She was such an idiot. A breathtakingly oblivious fool for not taking one look at him and being able to see what was so obvious it hurt.
Finn didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to, his silence enough of an answer.
“For how long?” The question came out flat, but at least her voice didn’t tremble or crack.
He blinked twice. “What?”
“For how long have you remembered, Finn?” she asked, voice tight, strained.
He took a deep breath in and held it, and her ire spiked at the thought that he might have been considering responding with something other than the truth. “Yesterday.”
The air left her lungs. She’d been expecting minutes, hours maybe, but yesterday? She did the math, throat narrowing. “Was it…was it during…?”
“No.” Finn shook his head. “It was after. When I…” He held up his hand, the one still bandaged, the one he’d cut.
“It was odd. It was…You know how sometimes you’ll flip a light on, and it’ll flicker for a minute before it goes steady?
As soon as I did this, I had this—this awareness, like I knew the memories were there, but I couldn’t access them.
I didn’t actually remember until this morning.
REM sleep, I don’t know.” He gave a wry laugh.
“I guess almost five hundred years’ worth of memories was a lot for my brain to process. ”
She slid off the dresser, landing on legs that threatened to give way, and slipped past Finn to the other side of the bedroom, which felt suddenly too small, the way her lungs felt too small, her chest too tight. She stopped in front of the window, staring unseeingly through the glass.
“You didn’t say anything. You told me it didn’t work.”
She didn’t know if it was a question or an accusation or a plea or maybe all three.
He followed, footsteps slow and measured, and stopped behind her, close enough that she could feel his warmth at her back. The temptation to lean back, to curve her body against his, was fierce, but she refrained. “Effie.”
She didn’t turn. Maybe it was cowardly of her, weak, but whatever he needed to say, she couldn’t look at him while he said it. She couldn’t.
“Baby, look at me.”
She shook her head, eyes burning, chest, too.
A hand closed around her right shoulder. She skittered forward, pressing her fingertips against the glass in front of her, and clenched her eyes shut against the tears that threatened to fall.
“Mo chridhe.” His voice cracked, and it felt as if something inside her did, too. “Please.”
Scraping together what little courage she had, she turned, keeping her head down, a small concession to the fear that threatened to choke her.
“Do you hate me?”
Finn made a soft, doleful noise that sent a stab through her heart, and reached for her, cupping her face in his hands and gently but firmly tipping her head back until she was left with no choice but to look at him.
It was a mistake. Maybe? Anguish lined his face as if he were suffering, in a great deal of pain. A muscle feathered in his jaw and his eyes were wet, his stare disarming her.
“You broke my heart.”
She flinched, the words more painful than any blow. She tried to squirm away, but Finn wouldn’t let her.
“I never got over it, losing you. I cursed God for taking you from me, for robbing us of a long and happy life together. I hate that we didn’t get that.
I hate that you felt like you couldn’t tell me—” His voice broke and he clamped his eyes shut, turning his head to the side, breath shuddering between his lips.
“I hate that you felt that you couldn’t share with me your fears and your sorrows.
” His eyes opened, his gaze somber and fierce as it bored into hers.
“That our burdens were yours to bear alone. I hate that you didn’t talk to me, that I lost you because of it.
I hate that it took me so long to find my way back to you.
But hate you?” His thumbs swept away the tears that had spilled down her cheeks. “No. Never. Effie, I love you.”
Her breath hitched, a small sob catching in her throat. “Still?”
“Oh, mo ghaol.” His face crumpled. “Gu sìorraidh is gu bràth. Always.”
Another sob escaped her, and Finn flinched a little at the sound. He crushed her to his chest, cradling her head beneath his chin, shushing her softly, whispering words that washed away 478 years of fear and doubt, granting her absolution.
Finn remembered. He knew all the awful choices she’d made, and he loved her in spite of them. No secrets, no missing memories, no more uncertainty, nothing stood between them—nothing except one thing. A task that was hers and hers alone.
It was only with the promise of returning to Finn’s arms as soon as possible that she was able to convince herself to brush a parting kiss against his jaw and slip from his embrace.
She dressed swiftly, leaving on his borrowed shirt and donning the jeans that sat neatly folded in the laundry basket next to the closet, the ones she’d worn the day before when they’d gone hiking, now clean.
Finn hadn’t moved an inch since she’d left his arms, watching her dress with a dour expression on his face. “What are you doing?”
“I have to talk to Belphegor.”
She wasn’t about to marry him anymore—she’d known that since before she’d slept with Finn—and what sense did it make staying engaged to a man she had no desire nor plan to wed? She needed to call off the wedding, and she needed to do it now.
Finn frowned, his expression, if possible, growing more dour, and she couldn’t help but smile. Silly, stubborn, perfect man. She didn’t relish the thought of leaving any more than she relished the conversation she was about to have, but needs must. The sooner she left, the sooner she could return.
“Effie—”
“I’ll be back. You and I, we’ll talk later, okay?”
She left before he could convince her to stay, making the walk back to the inn, steeling her resolve with her desire to put this chapter of her life to bed so that she could start the next.
Belphegor was waiting outside, perched stiffly on the porch swing he made look child-sized, scowling at the garden.
“You are aware this dwelling is besieged by a gnome infestation, are you not?”
“Gnorman and I have an understanding,” she said, leaning against the porch railing beside him.
Belphegor sniffed once, wrinkled his nose, then shot her a reproving look. “I do not begrudge you your amusements, Effie. This you know. But you have had your fun here. It is time to come home. You know this, too.”
It was time for him to stop telling her what to do as if he were so much wiser, as if he knew her mind better than she knew it herself. The way he spoke to her…“What do you like about me?”
He frowned. “I do not understand.”
“It’s not a trick question, Belphegor. It’s a simple one. What do you like about me?”
She’d never broken up with anyone before, but she could only hope that appealing to logic would get her further with him than starting an argument would.
“If you are asking why I want to marry you—”
“I’m not. You already explained that when you proposed. I’m asking what you like about me.”
She could list out a dozen things she liked about Finn, a dozen things she loved, off the top of her head. She wasn’t asking that of Belphegor, only that he name one thing he liked about her. Just one.
“That doesn’t have anything to do with sex,” she clarified, and for good reason, considering how his face fell.
“Hmm. You are…Usually you are very agreeable.”
“Agreeable?”
“Yes, agreeable.” Belphegor smiled, apparently pleased now that he’d pulled an answer out of his ass.
It was either that or they had very different definitions of the word agreeable.
“We never quarrel. Occasionally, you require assistance in seeing reason, but once that assistance has been rendered, you are quite sensible. You seldom disagree with me. I like that.”
“That’s what you like about me? That I don’t disagree with you?”
“Mm, yes. Very much.”
She sighed. “Belphegor, I disagree with you all the time.”
The inner corners of his brows squished together and rose. This was very evidently news to him. “Oh?”
“Yes. I just don’t say it because you’re so—so by the book. You never give. It’s your way or the highway.”
It was pointless arguing with a brick wall who only ever deployed facts and reason and refused to even see her side, let alone consider it.
Belphegor rubbed his chin. “Are you telling me you would like to quarrel with me? Does this…excite you?”
“No, I— That’s not what I’m saying.”
He let out an impatient huff. “What are you saying?”
“I’m breaking up with you, Belphegor,” she blurted. “That’s what I’m saying.”
If possible, he managed to look more confused. “Because we do not fight?”
“No, because I don’t love you.”
He reared back, the chain mounting the swing to the porch ceiling creaking ominously under his weight. “I do not love you, either,” he said, eyes wide, as if the mere idea was alien and horrifying. “Love does not matter to us, Effie.”
She shrugged. “I thought it didn’t. I told myself it didn’t.
I don’t know. Maybe there’s something wrong with me.
Or maybe it’s a lie we’ve been fed to keep us in line.
A lie that we keep telling ourselves. But I can’t keep lying to myself, Belphegor.
I don’t want to. It does matter. It matters to me. ”
Belphegor scoffed. “This is because of him. The human. You care for him.”
She didn’t appreciate the way he made it sound like an accusation, as if she were suffering from some affliction of which she ought to be ashamed. “I do. But it’s not because of him. The way I’ve been feeling, it’s not new. I’ve been questioning a lot of things for a while now. Ever since Daphne—”
He growled. “Effie—”