Chapter 26 #2
I sprint back toward the bed and grab up my sweats and tee from where they’d landed ignominiously on the floor. I tug them on, then slide my bare feet into my Birks. Then I’m out the door, terrified that I’m about to learn something I really, truly don’t want to know.
The fog is heavy tonight, turning all the streetlamps into angels with glowing, ethereal halos.
I like the imagery. And since Chase—a supernatural Hunter, doesn’t turn around and catch me tailing him—I’m thinking maybe the lamps really are magical. And maybe they’re on my side tonight.
More likely, he hasn’t noticed me because he’s too caught up in whatever is going on in his head, because something is clearly bugging him. Even from a block away, I can see the tightness in his shoulders, the way his hands are shoved into his pockets, and the firm, determined cadence of his walk.
He’s a man with something on his mind, and I desperately hope it’s not regret for sleeping with me.
The thought hits me hard, and I wince. Surely not. Surely this isn’t about me. More likely, he caught a whiff of a mare, and I’m about to find myself in the middle of a gnarly battle instead of safe in his bed.
A mare. I shiver, knowing I should turn back.
Should…but I don’t. He’s half a block ahead and walking like he knows exactly where he’s going. And though I know that Adric was probably only baiting me, I need to hear it from Chase.
I need the truth about the Brides.
He turns east down an unfamiliar street lined with houses featuring shutters closed like eyes. They’re spaced far apart, with long driveways leading back to stately, half-hidden homes.
I expect him to go into one of the houses. Instead, he continues until we reach an iron fence surrounding a park I’ve never been to, its benches and trees shrouded in fog.
We follow the fence line until we reach the arched entrance. I can’t see the plaque at first, but once Chase is safely in the park ahead of me, I move closer to see the letters that gleam in the moonlight:
brIDEWELL MEMORIAL PARK
Founded by Sir C.H. Nase
The year of our Lord 1671
Then the mist steals the shine, and the words are gone.
Bridewell Park?
In all the years I’d visited Finn as a little kid, he never brought me here. And I don’t recall a mention of this park when I was flipping through the tourist book I bought before moving here.
But here it is, and when Chase slips through the gate without looking back, I follow quietly behind.
I’m not sure what I expected, but I feel a stab of something almost like disappointment when I see that it’s just a park.
Not the kind with a playground, but a lovely place with ancient live oaks that seem to hold up the dark, their branches draped in Spanish moss that catches both the mist and the moonlight.
The path curves among trees, and I’m tempted to use the light on my phone just so that I don’t stumble.
I soon realize that this place is huge. I’d thought at first that it housed hundreds of trees.
Now, I’m thinking thousands. It seems to go on forever, and I know I should turn around and go back if I want to get any sleep at all.
I can confess my spying and ask Chase about this strange park in the morning.
That’s when he steps off the path and kneels in front of one of the trees. I stay put, but look around, only then noticing that each tree has a flat stone at the base of its trunk as well as the nub of a well-burned candle.
I watch as he strikes a match, then moves the flame to what remains of the candle.
I don’t know what he’s doing, but I do know that it’s private, and shame curdles in my belly.
I take a step backward, intending to slip silently away, so that he never has to know that I barged in on such an intimate moment.
But as I move, he shifts, too, and for just an instant, the flame of his candle illuminates the trunk—Cassandra L. And right beneath that is the date my mother died.
I realize only when he whips around to face me that I’ve gasped.
He stands, and so help me, I have to force myself not to bolt as Adric’s voice fills my head. The Brides. Ask him about the ones who came before you. Ask how he extinguished their flames.
My whole body goes cold.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he says, quietly.
“Here?” The word is like sand in my mouth. “What exactly is here?”
He looks around, as if seeing every inch of the acres upon acres that must make up this park. “A place to remember them,” he says. “All of them.”
Them.
I feel sick, and without realizing it, my knees buckle, and I’m suddenly on the ground. “The prophecy,” I say dully. “If Adric consummates a marriage to a Bride, then the barriers fall.” I meet his eyes. “You couldn’t risk that.”
Chase says nothing. He doesn’t need to. His expression tells me everything.
My throat feels thick. My head throbs. I don’t want to know this. I don’t want to know any of it.
And yet it’s like a scab. I can’t help but pick at it, even knowing that it’s going to bleed. “Who is Sir C.H. Nase?”
He looks at me. “The founder of this place.”
I swallow, my mouth unnaturally dry. The founder’s name is an anagram, of course. Chasen.
I hug myself, pushing the words out past the tears that clog my throat. “One tree for every Bride.”
He nods. “For every Bride since this place was founded. The ones before are honored only in my memory.”
I look around, equal parts freaked out and humbled. “Why? Why this place? Why 1671?”
He doesn’t pretend to misunderstand. “Because I had to do my duty. And eternity is a very long time. That was the year when I couldn’t stop the bleeding—my bleeding, albeit metaphorical.”
He looks at me, but I say nothing. After a moment, he turns away, and it’s no longer me he’s speaking to, but the ghost of every Bride here. “Without this place, I knew that I would surely lose my mind.”
I slide down to sit at the base of a tree. I draw my knees to me and hug my legs, feeling as lost as a child.
“How did you find me?”
“I woke up,” I say to the ground. “I followed you.” When I finally lift my head, I see that his is tilted, his eyes narrowed a bit, as if studying me.
“He told you.” His voice is hard-edged and ice-cold. “You saw him tonight. After we—”
“I don’t have control of my dreams,” I snap. “And right now it’s you in the doghouse.”
“Fair enough,” he says, looking duly chastened. “But you do have control over your dreams. Or you should.” He draws a deep breath. “Or did you want him to come to you?”
“Don’t you dare,” I say, my voice low and hard. “Don’t you dare make this about Adric. This is about you. All this time, and you never told me. Dammit, Chase, don’t you get it? For four years, I’ve thought of you as my protector. And now—”
That’s when it hits me.
“My mother.” I tilt my head up, looking at him through eyes flooded with tears. “You killed my mother.”
“Yes.” That single word seems to carry all the misery in the world.
I wipe away a tear. “You’ve been lying to me every minute of every day.” I climb to my feet, needing to leave. Needing to get the hell away from this man.
“Cora, please.”
I stumble backward as he reaches out for me, then trip over a stone and land on my ass. He’s beside me in an instant, and I flinch, pulling into myself and looking up at him as something hard and cold cuts through me. “Get the fuck away from me.”
“I won’t hurt you. Dammit, Cora, you know I won’t hurt you.”
I swallow the giant lump that has formed in my throat. “You said it was your duty. What is? To whom do you owe it?”
For a moment, he says nothing.
“Dammit, Chase, just fucking tell me!”
“The Emperor.” His voice is so low it’s almost inaudible.
“After the Breaking, he summoned me to his deathbed. He was in the throes of a vision, and he told me what I had to do in order to keep the barriers up and the world safe from Adric and those like him who were too foolish to understand or too malevolent to care.”
“He told you to kill off his daughters and granddaughters and nieces and all of them?”
“He said it had been his holy duty to protect the realms—to protect existence itself. And now that duty fell upon me. He told me that no marriage between the Nightmare King and any woman of Imperial lineage could ever be consummated.”
“But why? Wouldn’t he want more heirs? I thought royalty was all about the heirs.”
He drags his fingers through his hair, making the copper highlights flash in the moonlight.
“Dammit, you already know. Because consummation would bring down the barriers. And if the barriers fell, then chaos would reign. And while the Nightmare creatures and some of the denizens of other realms might survive, every living creature in the Realm of the Real would surely die.”
“I still don’t understand why consummating a marriage would destroy the world.”
He shakes his head. “I don’t know. I asked, but he was already too far gone. He just held my hand, and as life slipped from him, he told me to remember the warning.”
The words seem to hang in the air, like something from a Hollywood disaster film. It can’t be true. Except it is. I’ve seen enough now to know that it is.
“And I’m descended from the Emperor,” I say. “My mother too,” I add, not looking at him but at the writing on the tree. The proof—if I still needed it—that this man killed my mother.
Imperial blood. An impossible fate. And the man I love with a blade aimed at my heart.
How? How can this possibly be my life?
“Cora.” His voice is so soft I almost don’t hear it, but I do, and I swallow, then lift my chin, tears streaming down my cheeks.
“Promise to light a candle on my birthday,” I say.
“And tell Tia the truth. Help her get her magic back. She—she can help you.” I can barely speak, my throat too thick with my tears.
And I definitely can’t look at his face.
I close my eyes and whisper, “Make it fast.”
Then I bend my head and wait for death to take me.