Chapter 38 #2
My gaze drifts to its source, and I step closer.
The water rises from a perfect hole in the rock at the foot of the hawthorn, gallons and gallons of it spurting from the earth with impressive power and velocity.
I crouch slightly, studying the way it moves, impossibly clear.
What lies beneath this?
Not a trickle or a simple vein of water, but something vast.
An underground geyser, maybe. One that defies gravity and travels through stone the way blood moves through a body. Something ancient and otherworldly presses upward to feed the heart of this garden, and a strange shiver quakes me.
The man I’ve come to call my ghost is heir to all of this. To these cliffs, this light, this city above the clouds. To a kingdom that sits above the world and looks down on everything beneath it. I turn slowly, taking it all in.
What would it be like to grow up here? To wake each day in a place where nothing is allowed to falter, where even nature bends to expectation. To be raised with this view, this height, this constant reminder that you stand higher than everyone else.
E is the crown prince of the Sun Court.
I wonder if this place ever felt like home to him, or if it was just another kind of cage.
“We need to ask your father for help,” I murmur. “Before Lillivere gets too far with Nick.
“She won’t kill him—not until she petitions the king for your return. She’ll want to use him as leverage.”
I think he’s right and nod, but that’s a small relief. “If the King of Light sends soldiers after them now, we might still—”
Stone meets the soles of my boots with a sharp, hollow echo as we round the trunk of the majestic tree, and I freeze.
I know where the path curves, where the light breaks, where the ground dips ever so slightly near the edge.
I’ve never stood here before, and yet I could map every inch of it with my eyes closed.
This is the cliff from my dreams.
I release E’s hand and examine the patch of stones overlooking the thickest clouds—the same ones that scorched my back so many nights before, where I hold so many memories I don’t fully own.
“Is everything alright?” E asks.
My trembling hand flies to the arch of my brow. “How could it be alright? You’re a prince, and Nick has been taken prisoner. Everything is a mess.”
“We’ll save him, Max.”
“What if we don’t?” I counter, the combination of fatigue, worry, and shock pushing all my buttons. “And what happens when your memories come back? What happens to me when you wake up one day and realize that you love someone else? That you still belong to her?”
He gathers my hands in his. “Then we deal with it together.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one I have.”
I shake my head. “I’m not interested in a fling, in filling the gap while you figure yourself out.”
His voice shifts—darker, deeper. Possessive in a way that makes heat curl low in my stomach despite everything.
“You think you’re a fling?” he murmurs. “I’d die for you, Max.”
His hand closes around my wrist, firm enough to stop me from pulling away.
“I know exactly what I feel when I’m with you,” he adds.
My pulse stumbles.
“That’s not the same as knowing who you are.”
“No,” he agrees. “But it makes me sure of my love for you.”
A languid ache blazes through my gut.
His breath hits my cheeks, and he squeezes the nape of my neck. I know what comes next and lean into the kiss, closing my eyes and abandoning my principles.
He owns me with his kiss. The warmth of his lips disarms me as he angles me to him with his large hand, destroying my senses and grounding me in place.
My nails sink into his shoulders, pulling death closer, and for one reckless moment, I want to disappear in his arms and meld our souls together. Everything about him feels right, down to how wrong we are for each other.
He kisses me as though he's terrified I’m about to decide he's not worth the trouble. He doesn’t say it aloud, but his hungry tongue invades my mouth, over and over again, desperate.
It feels as though he’s fishing for reassurance, terrified to find evidence I've stopped loving him.
And the awful truth is that I'm doing the same thing, searching our connection for a certainty hidden in the cracks between kisses and broken breaths.
Looking for proof that I'm worth choosing.
“Ezra?” a voice shouts.
It shocks me out of my thoughts, and my stomach clenches.
I tear my mouth away as light, hurried footsteps resonate through the gardens. E growls, his hands digging into the flesh of my waist.
“Ezra!”
This time, the greeting somehow manages to sound both sultry and vulnerable.
My ghost reluctantly lets me go as a woman approaches, and my eyes widen, my legs turning to lead beneath me.
Fuck me.
The newcomer belongs to a fairytale I was never meant to step into.
Dark hair spills around her face, falling past her hips in thick, glossy waves. It clearly has never known a bad day or a pair of dull scissors.
A single white strand cuts through the darkness and traces the line of her cheek, like death itself tried to touch her and failed, leaving only that mark behind.
Her warm brown skin is flawless in a way that shouldn’t be possible. It makes me aware of every wrinkle, every scar, every hour I’ve lived.
The sharp angles of her face should feel severe but don’t. Her irises are a clear, unsettling gray, and her shimmering cat-eye makeup and golden eye shadow are artistic and striking without looking heavy.
This terrace was made for women like her, for Fae royals to lounge and leisure without a single worry.
She moves with the kind of feminine grace I’ve never managed to master.
A diaphanous gown drapes her curves, the fabric so light it looks as though someone stitched a piece of cloud into a dress and convinced it to stay in place.
A single thread of gold zigzagging across her shoulder and waist holds the masterpiece together.
She’s incredibly beautiful. The very princess I was afraid to find.
And then there’s her bite of power. Cold. Not the sharp bite of a strong winter gust, but the deep, creeping chill of something old embalmed in eternal ice.
When she deigns to look my way, that cold deepens, slipping under my skin. My pulse stutters. The same icy, hollow edge I’ve felt near deathbeds, in hospital corridors at three in the morning—when life holds still, and death decides who stays and who goes—encircles my heart.
The scent of endings clings to her, and a knot coils at the pit of my stomach.
With my half-done braid, the dirt and blood freckling my neck, and the clothes I’ve been traveling in, I’m nothing more than a sore spot in this idyllic scenery, barely a blip of a woman stitched together by half-assed genes. Compared to them, I am unfinished.
I throw my worst nightmare made flesh an awkward wave. “Hi, I’m Max.”
She clicks her tongue as though she’s already decided exactly where I fit in this disaster story—buried in the footnotes.
Her gray eyes fly past me, searching for my ghost. They skim my left side, then my right, darting to my front and back again, and I realize that even though she senses E is with me, she can’t pinpoint his exact location. Not the way I can.
That’s a slim silver lining, but I’ll take it.
I can’t summon the courage to speak, and E remains eerily silent, too.
The gorgeous Fae finally squints at the space he occupies, “Ezra Hermes Lightbringer, stop playing games. I’ve waited decades to see you again.”
Ezra Hermes Lightbringer.
The name hits almost as hard as it did when he used it earlier.
Her eyes flick to the ground, and her hands twist around each other. “I forgive you. For everything.”
Does that make her Willow? Does that make this impossibly beautiful woman the forlorn wife he left behind?
“I’m sorry. I don’t know who you are,” E—or rather Ezra—says.
He shifts closer, standing behind me like I’m the only shield and sword he needs to slay his past.
The woman’s face slowly wrinkles in a devastated frown.
“I should give you some privacy,” I say quickly.
“No, stay.” Ezra grabs my shoulders to keep me from leaving, and I know he’s scared shitless of what he doesn’t remember.
A boulder pulses in my throat. “Are you Willow?”
Her eyes flash with anger. “I’m Iris.”
Bittersweet relief floods me. She’s not his wife. Alleluia.
Iris prances forward with her head tilted to the side. “Ezra, please. I need to see you.”
“He can’t. He’s invisible. He-he doesn’t remember anything about his life,” I stammer.
Her mouth hangs agape. “Why?”
“We don’t know,” I answer.
The word we earns me a glacial stare as Iris eyes me up and down the way you consider a weed you plan to wrestle out of your garden.
“I’m sorry,” Ezra says softly. “It must be terrible for you.”
Iris falls to one of the stone seats surrounding the hawthorn, looking both sad, shocked, and incredibly annoyed. Tears well in her cloudy eyes, but she angles her face away to mask them.
“My memory was wiped away when I died,” Ezra adds regretfully. “And I don’t think it’s ever coming back.”
Her knuckles turn white around the edge of her seat, and she sneers as she wipes a fat tear from the corner of her eye. “I don’t know what happened to you, E,” she drawls, her voice breaking despite her best efforts, the sound heartbreakingly intimate.
It especially stings that she calls him E.
“I don’t know where you were the last fifty years, or why, but I know death,” she croaks. “I’ve lived death, breathed it in, and now, I rule over it. Hells, I’m still half-dead, burrowing into life against its will.”
The satisfied curl of her mouth clashes with the salty streaks running down her cheeks as she adds, “And you, my prince, are not dead.”