Chapter 40
Chapter Forty
I was falling.
Wind whipped my skirts up around my thighs, the beads in my hair cutting my cheeks as the crashing sea grew closer. Something heavy was on top of me, its scream piercing my ears over the wailing of the wind, but I paid it no heed.
All I could see was the absolute terror on Silas's face as he grew smaller and smaller.
Water closed around me like a fist, cold punching the air from my lungs as pressure crushed my chest. The light above the surface fractured into glittering shards before the darkness swallowed me whole.
There was nothing but the suffocating feeling in my lungs and resounding pain lancing through my ribs. Was this the end? Had I felt this across a hundred lifetimes, this agonizing death?
Don’t you dare leave me—
I bolted upright with a wet, ragged gasp that turned into a violent cough. Water and blood spilled from my mouth onto rough wood and my ribs screamed in protest. My temple throbbed in time with my racing heart and when I went to touch it, my hand came away bloody.
For several wild, disoriented heartbeats I could not tell which lifetime I was drowning in, only that I was still under, still screaming, still watching him fall away while the sea finished what I had started.
My surroundings resolved around me slowly, my mind taking too long to catch on to where I was.
The cottage.
A collapsed roof opened above me to the grey sky. A cold hearth that had once held fire and produced fresh baked cookies sat empty in front of me. And kneeling next to the table was Silas, a sheen of tears softening his gaze.
For a long shaking heartbeat he only stared at me as if I were a ghost, a memory of the past that he couldn't shake from the present.
When his hands came up and framed my face, a tremor wracked my spine.
His thumbs brushed my cheeks, pressing harder and harder to convince himself that he was holding flesh and bone.
“You’re—” His voice broke on the word. Silas swallowed hard, mouth opening to try again. “I thought you were dead,” he cried.
“I think I was,” I admitted. As I stared into his eyes, my hands roved over his chest and neck. “I remember everything. I’ve cursed you to forget, Silas Draven, but I remember everything.”
He stayed quiet as I spoke, tenderly caressing my hands as the words left me in a broken rush, muffled against the wet wool of his coat.
“I remember us as husband and wife, and the home we built in this cottage. I know you were a merchant and I read the stars so that you could reach glory. I remember you promising just one more voyage while I begged you to choose the life we built on this cliff. I will never forget watching your sails grow smaller, you never once turning around to long for the life you were leaving behind. And in every lifetime since, I remember dying alone in the darkness while you chose a life that didn’t include me in it. ”
My hands came up and framed his face, thumbs pressing into the stubble along his jaw.
“And then I cursed you.” Every time he woke up, all of those times I died, he lost a little piece of himself.
I’d done that to him. “I am the Stella Mortis,” I whispered.
“I have always been your dying star. Everything we’ve been through has led us back to this place, our home, and the woman who cursed you because she loved you too much to ever let you go. ”
Silas stood and slid his hands to my waist, pulling me closer until there was no space left between us. The heat of him bled through the wet layers of cloth as his forehead dropped to mine, breath ragged and warm against my mouth.
He swallowed thickly, one hand drawing circles around my back. “I thought leaving was the only way to give you a life you deserved.”
“From now on, wherever you go, I will sail with you.”
Silas wiped a tear from my cheek as one fell from his own. “And if you stay, we stay together. Those are the only endings I will accept.”
He made a sound that was half groan, half sob, and crushed his mouth to mine. The kiss was not gentle. It was a hundred lifetimes worth of despair being rewritten by our love. His hands fisted in the ruined fabric at my back, as he hugged me tight. I kissed him back with equal desperation.
When we finally broke apart, we stayed forehead to forehead, our heavy breaths mingling as our hands continued to rove over one another.
The old, relentless pull of the curse lifted its impossible weight from my chest, a feeling of freedom that I’d never known as it dissipated.
Something fundamental had shifted the moment he decided to stay.
I searched his face, the blue-grey of his eyes exhausted and more vulnerable than I’d ever seen them, even in our first lifetime together.
“Tell me I’m yours,” I pleaded.
“Oh, Beastie,” he whispered. “There is not a curse in existence that could keep me from you. You are the star I gravitate toward. Through any lifetime, across any sky, you are mine. And I will always belong to you.”
Want another spicy enemies-to-lovers romantasy with angsty yearning? Check out the next book in the Fated to the Enemy series, FATED TO THE FROZEN PRINCE by CIARA HARTFORD! Keep reading for a sneak peek…
Every winter must have a summer.