Chapter 8
Sylvia
Our sanctuary. What a sick joke that turned out to be.
I gazed around the swirling, surreal expanse of the spectral realm. My grief had turned the pinks and gold of the misty sky here into bruised purple hues, darkening further with each passing moment.
Squeezing my eyes shut against the sight, I couldn’t shake the knowledge that Jon would never have influence on our sanctuary again.
He would never paint the sky as his own.
He would never even see it again. The realm felt utterly empty without him beside me, running his fingers through my hair and murmuring his dreams about our future.
A weight sat upon my chest, leaving me without air.
The sensation had been unbearable in the real world, where my hand trembled its way through tracing the rune in the scattered dirt from a potted plant.
The others gave me space in the guest room to venture to the spectral realm—alone, this time.
There had been no time to process everything out there, not with the heist barreling toward us.
But here, where time flowed differently, I could wallow in peace without ruining the plan.
I wouldn’t cost everyone more than a few minutes.
But I’ve been costing Jon his life.
The unfairness rattled me. Another sob clawed its way past my throat. I thought I’d be cried out by now, but the suffocating loop between shock and hopelessness wouldn’t stop dragging me along.
And the fucking guilt.
I had saved his life those months ago, only to make him pay for it bit by bit.
A fresh, feverish urgency sank its claws into me. If I didn’t become human, would it have all been for nothing? Our time falling in love, our time hurting him, all a waste. Rather than inspire me, my hopes sank to a new low.
If this wonderful dreamscape had gone so wrong, what terrible news might come with the addition of a gemstone and a transformation spell? If it did work, what if it wasn’t permanent? We wouldn’t even have our sanctuary to retreat to if that happened.
The stars didn’t grant me luck. They seemed to take joy in dangling happiness in front of me, only to snatch it away when it was within reach.
“Jon wasn’t kidding when he said this place was fucking trippy.”
Startled, I whirled.
Cliff.
Cliff!
Wiping my face, I urgently climbed to my feet. “You shouldn’t be here!” The sky sharpened into harsher hues as my grief was replaced with a far more present fear. “It’s dangerous for humans, you idiot!”
“Yeah, I heard.”
My breath caught as I looked up at him, drinking in the surreality of our shared scale. I’d gotten used to Jon, but that didn’t make looking into Cliff’s familiar yet unfamiliar face any less astonishing. He was only a head taller than me here, and I found myself hypnotized by the sight.
He was drinking me in the same way, cocky smile nowhere to be seen. Cliff’s eyes widened slightly as he looked me up and down, and his lips parted in a gentle line.
I sniffed, wiping my tears on the sleeve of my blouse. “You’re looking at me like you’ve never seen me before.”
“Kinda feel like I haven’t,” he said. He looked at my wings fanned out at my back, my flats laced up to my calves, the traitor mark on my cheek. Everywhere.
A part of me wanted to squirm, feeling so studied. Another, more molten part of me, wanted him to see me. I wanted him to remember.
“How did you even get here?” I asked.
“Come on, I’m not an idiot. I’ve seen you and Jon come to this place a dozen times, at least,” Cliff scoffed, but his eyes softened on me. “All I had to do was touch the rune you made.”
He was still wearing his tuxedo pants and the crisp white formal shirt that matched it—a far cry from his usual stonewashed blue jeans and cotton tees.
He must have slipped into the guest room of the suite to check on me.
My heart squeezed at the image of our prone bodies on the carpet of the room, each with a hand brushing the sigil of soil.
Cliff craned his neck to look at the impossible landscape stretching around us.
I followed his gaze, finding that my swell of affection had made a gold mist enter the swirling purples that my brooding thoughts had conjured earlier.
The horizon perfectly mirrored the sky, making it appear like we were standing on nothing but shimmering, immaterial clouds.
“Are you doing that?” he asked, pointing at a movement that coincided with my sharp breathing.
Observant as ever. I nodded.
“Wow,” Cliff muttered, twisting to look around the other way. “Psychedelic stuff. Incredible, though. Very Yellow Submarine.”
My legs refused to move as he closed the space between us. He still watched my every move like I was something he couldn’t quite believe. Cliff moved to reach for me, then stopped, like he was wrestling with the instinct.
“You can touch me,” I said softly. “I won’t break.”
Cliff gave a breathless chuckle, expelled in a shaky burst. He lifted a hand, tangling his fingers through the fiery locks that hung just over my shoulders.
The contact was hesitant at first, then more certain.
I let my eyes flutter shut as he cupped my face—and though the warmth of him was numbed like so many sensations were in this realm, it was still Cliff, and he’d never been able to hold me like this.
“Goddamn, you’re still so short,” he murmured.
The tension in my chest unraveled with a burst of indignant laughter. I shoved his chest, eliciting a wicked smirk from him, too.
“Shut up, I’m perfectly normal,” I snapped, still fighting a smile.
“Up for debate.”
I lingered close to him, letting my hands slide up his chest to squeeze his shoulders.
No—there was no time to indulge this comfort. I stopped short, fresh horror rippling through me.
Cliff was human, so this place was hurting him.
“You have to go,” I croaked, my urgency renewed. “Please, I don’t want—”
I tried to push him back, but Cliff caught my wrists. “Jon’s been here a million times, and he’s still kicking. One visit to comatose land isn’t gonna make my brain explode.”
“That’s not funny!”
“Sylv, you didn’t know.” His voice was surprisingly calm, and it only twisted the guilty knife in my heart.
I couldn’t bear the patient look he was giving me.
His anger would have been more fitting, more deserved.
When I growled and tried to step back, his grip moved to my shoulders and forced me to stay still.
“Are you listening to me? You didn’t know this place was hurting him. ”
I had the power to force Cliff away from me.
I could merely wish it to happen, and the radiant gusts that swirled overhead would sweep him away from me like a hurricane’s gale.
In this realm, I held all the cards. But that wouldn’t change a thing in the real world, where every consequence still awaited.
Tears wavered in my vision again, and I turned my face away from Cliff’s.
“This isn’t how my life was supposed to turn out.” The words spilled out hollowly, my voice wobbling dangerously.
“Welcome to the club, sweetheart.”
“No, this wasn’t supposed to happen.” A thread snapped in my voice.
“Just when I thought that things might work out, it…it’s gone.
Everything I’ve been through, for what?” A laugh with jagged edges shook through me.
“I’m not a nomad. I’m not anything I was supposed to be.
I’m a banished fairy with a traitor mark and bigger dreams than I deserve, and the one man who loves me despite that, I can’t have him. ”
“You haven’t lost everything,” Cliff said, softer. “We can still find your family.”
Riotous anger flooded me as it occurred to me why Cliff could be so calm in the face of my undoing. I lifted my chin, searching his face. Those intense jade-green eyes that could be so kind—and on occasion, so very cruel.
“This is exactly how you hoped it would work out, isn’t it?” I snapped.
He recoiled. “What?”
“It’s been no secret that you never wanted Jon to be with me. Well, congratulations! Finally, you’ll be rid of me now that he and I have one less thing holding us together.”
Silence stretched as Cliff stared down at me with a familiar, somber look surfacing behind his eyes. “I just didn’t want to lose him. Either of you. After being banished from your own family, I thought you’d understand that, of all people.”
I tore my hands from him and shoved his chest. “Don’t even talk about my family! It’s your fault that I don’t have them in the first place.”
He didn’t retaliate, not even when I shoved a second time to goad him into doing something besides staring at me like the pathetic sight I was.
“I don’t care how many times you’ve apologized,” I hissed.
“That doesn’t change what you did. You shot me in that damn house.
All I’ve been trying to do is pick up the pieces and make a life worth living after you took it away from me!
” Heavy breaths rattled through me, the wisps of the dark sky drifting down like fog around us.
“But I’m as much to blame, aren’t I? I was stupid enough to make friends with the people who tried to kill me. ”
Although Cliff’s expression remained fixed and unreadable, something flickered in his eyes—unbearably, beautifully green up close. Compassionate eyes. But I wanted to scratch them out.
“I wish I had never met him,” I breathed. “I wish I had never met either of you.”
Finally, there it was: a fissure in his stony expression. Pain that I could be proud of inflicting. I wondered what was going through his mind—that he regretted coming here now? He couldn’t leave until I allowed him to, after all.
When he lurched closer to me, I held my ground, ready for—what? Cruel words shouted in my face? A physical blow?
Fresh tears built in my eyes as I clenched my fists at my sides, hoping the realm might allow me to feel a new pain to mask the clawing at my heart.
The space between Cliff and me closed into nothing. I braced myself as his arms seized me, but the next instant, I found myself held against him in a tight hug.
I stood there stiffly, understanding the gesture, yet unable to fathom it.
He bowed his head closer to my ear. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. Then he pressed a long kiss to the top of my head, and my tears finally spilled over.
As I breathed him in, my arms desperately latched around him. His body was like a firm, reassuring wall around me, grounding my shaky feet. I wept into his shirt, painfully aware that he was the only thing keeping me upright.