Chapter 2 #3
The words landed like a punch to the ribs.
She staggered back a step, as if they’d knocked the wind out of her.
For a heartbeat, the world tilted. It was a possibility she hadn’t let herself to ponder.
Couldn’t let herself ponder. Because Archer was wrong.
So wrong. She’d seen Cade fighting when she went through the gate. He wouldn’t give up.
“You don’t know that.” She hated that her voice cracked. “Cade…”
“Let you go.”
Bridget’s heart stuttered. She could barely hear over the ringing in her ears.
The kitchen blurred around the edges. Every atom in her body wanted to protest his statement, but she couldn’t deny the growing doubt traveling up her spine.
No matter how much she wanted to. It had already been slowly forming inside her months.
Bridget closed her eyes and willed his logic away. “You’re wrong. You don’t understand…”
Archer let out a hollow laugh. “I understand better than you think.”
“I doubt that,” Bridget snarled, despite immediately regretting the cruel words. There was an honesty in Archer’s eyes she couldn’t deny, but the truth he’d effectively seeped into her had left her reeling and spinning for a feeling other than misery.
“Did you know everyone in the Gemini coven has a twin?” Archer asked, effectively shutting her up and cooling the acid burning in her throat.
Bridget did know. From Cora. She closed her eyes, willing the Witch to disappear from behind her eyes.
“That’s why I decided to work with her.”
It took Bridget a moment to process his words, to get past the pounding of her heart. “Quinn?” she asked.
“A few years ago, my brother died of cancer. I was just a bartender living in Philadelphia when Quinn found me. I don’t know why or how, but she told me what I was and said she wanted to work with me.
Wanted to train me. She told me enough about Vassuryn and Elyria, that it was easy for me to cross back and forth, and officially become part of the Gemini coven. ”
Bridget’s throat tightened as a prickle of guilt wormed its way into her heart.
For months, he had helped her take care of Nylah.
He’d even been the one to find her in New York for her.
And not once had she ever asked him about his past, or why he worked with Quinn, or ask why he even bothered to stay with her at all.
“She promised things,” he continued, eyes darkening. “Dangerous things. Things the Sanguis could do with the right runes… like bring him back.”
Her breath caught. Bridget could almost feel the promise of that kind of power. Tangible, seductive, cruel.
“The more I worked with her, though,” Archer continued, voice thickening, “the more I began to see the true cost of their magic. I watched her shrivel away to please someone whose name she wouldn’t even dare utter.
I watched countless people die just so she could get the Bloodstone.
That’s when I understood… some things aren’t worth the cost. Some things are supposed to stay dead and buried. ”
Bridget flinched. “It’s different,” she whispered.
She wasn’t like him. Or Quinn. She wouldn’t get so wrapped in blood magic, any magic, that she destroyed lives around her.
She knew what it cost. Magic had already taken her memories, carved through her body, and torn Cade from her piece by piece.
She wasn’t chasing power. She was only trying to make sure it didn’t take anything else.
“She started talking in her sleep too,” Archer said. “And seeing things. It was like her personality would switch every other day. She’d be quiet one minute, and then vindictive the next, using spells I’d never even heard of… But she kept pushing. She couldn’t let go.”
A wave of nausea swelled in Bridget’s stomach. Dreams. Visions. Voices. Was she unraveling the same way? Letting magic seep into the cracks until she didn’t recognize herself anymore?
She took a few deep breaths before answering. “And you think Cade has… let go?”
“Bridget… You died. Your heart stopped. He must have sensed it. Why else has no one come through? Why hasn’t he sent anyone?”
The truth turned her veins to ice. Did Cade really think she was dead?
Ever since she’d been released from the hospital, she’d felt like a ghost. Like someone who didn’t fit anywhere anymore.
Instead of spending time with her sister, she’d hunted for information and waited for any sign from Elyria.
She’d visited the gate to watch for someone coming through more times than she’d had dinner with Nylah.
All she had wanted in Elyria was to get back to her sister. Now that she had, she was doing everything but be with her. And she couldn’t stomach thinking about Cade mourning her. She was alive. She wished she could shout it at him from across the void.
“He knows I’m alive. You’re wrong,” she argued, but her voice wobbled, like her conviction.
“Most of the time I am, and I would gladly let you spiral.” Despite his words, he poured them both another shot and clinked her glass before he downed it. “I’m not saying this to you because I care. A little girl cares. And she wants you back.”
Bridget’s heart cracked in two. She closed her eyes to stop tears from falling. Nylah was here. Nylah needed her. She couldn’t keep trying to live in both worlds.
“If I accept no one is coming…” Bridget croaked, stunned she was able to even get the words out. “If I... let him go. It’s like everything meant nothing.”
She couldn’t accept that after everything they’d been through, this was it. They were never supposed to just… end.
“How can you say it meant nothing? Cade fought to make this happen, including making a deal with father. He wanted this for you. He wanted you to be reunited with Nylah. And now you are. That’s not nothing. He didn’t send you back to be a ghost. He wanted you to live. So live.”
Bridget couldn’t argue. This is exactly what she had wanted. The human realm. Nylah. No magic. No curses.
He’d given it to her. And the passports, IDs, and money that Archer had found stashed away in their old apartment… one last gift from him.
But every fiber of her being still yearned for him and screamed his name every waking moment.
How was she supposed to let him go? The weight of missing him pulled at her every breath.
At night, all she could see was him struggling against the binds from his father and trying to tell her one last thing.
“It’s not going to happen overnight. Just…
try,” Archer said, giving her hand a quick squeeze.
After a long moment, Bridget gazed up at him and wondered how they’d ended up like this.
When the king had ordered him to take her through the gate, she never expected him to stick around or be her friend.
Her closest one, at the moment. She had never expected he would willingly track down Nylah in Manhattan for her, or break into Cade’s old apartment to get the suitcase with their fake passports so they could start over. Together.
“Why did you do it?”
Archer didn’t have to ask to know what she meant.
He was the only reason she had survived.
Without his CPR, she would have died in the Connecticut forest. He could have left her there and moved on in the human realm…
without her trauma and insistence to stay near the Astraeus gate. No one in Elyria would have ever known.
Archer swallowed hard. “Quinn… she wasn’t the one who deserved to win.”
Bridget nodded, words of gratitude lodged painfully in her throat.
Without a word, she turned and headed to the bathroom.
The moment the door clicked shut behind her, she twisted the faucet on and braced her hands against the sink, knuckles white.
Steam rose. Too hot. She cranked the cold.
Her hot cheeks needed something to cool them down.
For the first time in months, Bridget looked at herself in the mirror. Really looked.
The face staring back didn’t belong to her.
Hollow eyes. Stiff shoulders built from relentless workouts. Hair that still flamed red at the roots, but from the shoulders down, it faded to lifeless white. Blinding white. Like life had been drained from the ends. Like magic had wanted one last price from her when she went through the gate.
In the hospital, Archer had said the moment they went through the gate, magic had exploded around them.
That the second they landed in the human realm, a fissure formed in the stone and the ends of her hair slowly lost color.
She looked down at her right hand. Even her ring hadn’t escaped unscathed.
A crack now tarnished the middle of the emerald.
Maybe it had been Cade’s father destroying the gate after them. Maybe it had been another unexpected cost of crossing the gate with a human that had been gifted back her memories by the sacrifice of a Fae.
Maybe magic was really that unpredictable.
Bridget studied her reflection and made a decision. If she was going to let go—to move on, to smother the lingering grip Elyria still had on her and put her life with Nylah first—then every reminder of that night had to go.
And she knew exactly where to start.
Bridget reached down into her boot, and pulled out a pocketknife.
Old habits did die hard. It glistened in the fluorescent lighting of the bathroom.
Her mind traitorously presented an image of Cade and Elyria before she pushed it away.
Before she tried to make sure she had every detail still memorized.
Gazing at the stranger in the mirror, Bridget lifted the knife to her shoulder blade. The ache in her throat swelled, hot and unmanageable, but she forced it down. Gripping the ends of her hair in one fist, she dragged the blade through and cut.