Chapter Fifty-Six Happily Never After
Shock reverberates through me at his words.
I know there are royal families for each kind of paranormal—along with whole, elaborate courts for each as well. Just like I know that the reinstatement of the Gargoyle Court has swept through the paranormal world like a cyclone, shaking everyone up with its new queen. We’re isolated here at Calder Academy, but not so isolated that something like that doesn’t show up on our radar. Especially since my cousin, Carolina, died trying to help the new Gargoyle Queen in a war against the Vampire King.
But the Prince of Nightmares? The Nightmare Court? Those are things only whispered about in the scary stories kids tell each other—or by adults, late at night, after they’re sure the kids have gone to bed.
The Nightmare Court—and its ruler—is so feared that no one wants to attract their attention. Yet Jude, apparently the Prince of Nightmares—has been here at Calder Academy all along.
How is that possible? And why?
But he’s still watching me with eyes gone prismatic with pain. I know I have to say something, know I have to answer him. But I don’t have a clue how to respond right now.
So, in the end, I say the only thing that I know is true. “I don’t understand.”
“What’s there to understand?” he asks with a pained laugh. “Haven’t you ever wondered why you never had nightmares after I got to the island? Why no one has? It’s because I harvest them.”
“Harvest?”
“I still have my magic, Clementine. All of it.”
“What do you mean?” I demand as I cross to stand next to him. “The school locks down everyone’s powers.”
“Not mine,” he says quietly. “The island’s power blocking has never worked on me—I don’t know why. It’s just how it’s always been.”
His quiet explanation shakes me to my core, has me reevaluating everything my mother and aunts and uncles have ever said to me about student magic and how they control it on the island.
“I don’t understand,” I finally say. “How is that possible?”
“I don’t know,” he answers with a baffled shrug. “When I got here, no one ever mentioned anything to me about locking my powers down, and no one ever did anything to dampen them. I didn’t even know it was school policy until you and Carolina mentioned it weeks later.”
I’m still reeling, so I let that go—as well as the question about why he didn’t tell me any of this sooner. We have bigger things to worry about right now. Though I am curious about one thing. “That’s a lot of magic that you carry around with you. How did you keep anyone from noticing?”
“I use it, every night. Too exhaust my power and keep it in check—keep it from hurting anyone—I harvest nightmares from everyone on the island. I store them—”
“On your skin,” I whisper, part fascinated and part horrified. “All those twisty black things. They’re nightmares.”
He nods.
“But there aren’t enough. I mean, there are a lot,” I tell him, especially now that they’re all over his face. “But not enough to be every nightmare you’ve harvested from every person on the island for the last decade or so. Right?”
“After I harvest them, I funnel them into something else and that takes care of them.”
I want to ask him what he funnels them into—and how exactly they are taken of—but right now, that seems like the least of our problems. So I settle for something more pertinent.
“So, after you harvested them, they accidentally got loose somehow?” I look at the devastation all around us. “That’s what did this?”
“Not accidentally,” he answers. “This time I deliberately set them free.”
“Deliberately?” I’m so shocked I can’t even be angry. Because I know Jude—I know how conscientious he usually is about everything—well, everything except our relationship. This isn’t like him. At all. “Why would you—”
I break off because, suddenly, it all becomes clear. “For me. The unmeshing. You set them free to save my life.”
“I couldn’t let you die,” he answers, throat working and eyes glazed with something that looks suspiciously like tears. “Not if there was anything I could do to stop it. Even this.” Now he’s the one looking around, a deep-seated horror on his face.
“Did you know?” I whisper, heart lodged in my throat. Because I think I would rather have died than know that saving me meant all these people—meant Eva—would suffer and die the way they did.
“That this would happen?” He shakes his head. “I used the same magic that I use to pull nightmares from people to pull the poison from you. But I was so careful. I worked so hard to pull them all back. I was afraid one might have slipped away, but I never imagined this many could have.”
“That’s why you were so upset,” I say, putting things together now. “When you showed up at Mozart and Ember’s earlier. You were afraid you had let a nightmare escape. Why didn’t you ask for help then?”
“Because no one can help me with this. No one can fix the mistakes I make—not these kinds of mistakes.”
“You don’t know that—”
“I do know it!” His voice raises but ends in a whisper. “I do.”
“The only way you could know is if this happened before—” I break off as the truth dawns on me. “Is that why you were sent to the island? You were only seven!”
“That’s not what I’m talking about.” His face closes up like it always used to when I asked about what got him sent to Calder Academy to begin with, so I don’t poke at it. There’s more than enough here to unpack as it is.
“Then when?” I ask. “Because I’ve been here with you the whole time, and nothing like this has ever happened before.”
“The night I first kissed you.”
“What?” I whisper.
“I lost control.” He swallows. “I lost myself in you and I…”
And just like that, it becomes clear. Everything does. Carolina leaving has always been my worst nightmare—way worse than some ugly snake—and after Jude and I kissed… I trail off because the thought is too horrible to fully comprehend.
“That’s why you ghosted me. Not because you don’t care about me, but because—”
“I love you, Kumquat. I’ve loved you for years. But I can’t be with you. Not when there’s a chance that something like this might happen again.”
“You love me?” I repeat the words, like I’ve never heard them before. To be honest, I haven’t. Not the way he means them.
“You really have to ask me that?” He laughs, but there’s no humor in the sound. “I love you so much that I had to cut you out of my life completely because I knew I wasn’t strong enough to be around you and not want you.”
“You love me.” I say the words again, blankly. Because I’m pretty sure my brain has reached its capacity for revelations for the day. The week. The month. Possibly even the year.
“I love you,” he says for the third time tonight, reaching out and running a finger over the tiny indentation in my chin the way he used to.
The small, familiar gesture brings tears to my eyes—I didn’t know how much I’d missed it until right now.
“I love everything about you,” he whispers sadly. “The way you always do the right thing. The way you always care about other people, even when they don’t deserve it—especially here. The way you take a little coffee with your milk instead of the other way around and the way you never, ever, ever give up. Even on me.”
Tears threaten, but I hold them back with sheer willpower and a whole lot of blinking.
“But that’s why I have to do it,” he whispers. “I have to give up on us, because you never will. Unleashing nightmares, destroying people’s lives… I lose control when I’m with you, and I can’t—I won’t—let it happen again.”
I know he’s right. I do. Our happiness isn’t more important than other people’s lives. But that doesn’t make it hurt any less. Suddenly I can’t hold the tears back, no matter how hard I try.
They blur my eyes, turn Jude—and the whole world around me—fuzzy, until it looks like I’m seeing three of everything.
There’s a part of me that can’t help marveling that this is what it feels like—what it looks like—to cry when you’re not in the shower. But the rest of me can’t stop sobbing long enough to really process this. Not when the pieces of my already broken heart have crumbled into so many shattered dreams.