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I started toward the valley, hearing my heartbeat thump loudly in my chest and my rational side scream for me to go back home.
Just go home to George. He misses you.
I chuckled to myself. George would be happy when I made it back. Dogs picked up on things that people didn’t. He would sense the weight lifted off my shoulders. The extra pep in my step from avenging my family.
The red-eyed crow cawed from a low-hanging branch over the valley. He seemed irate. Annoyed that I’d come this far.
But the crow didn’t understand—or maybe he did—that I had to do this.
My rational side hardly won anymore.
Deidamia had taken away my rationality, and my human traits and left me with a broken man who yearned to feel a sense of normality.
That was my plan. Save Josephine and win back my life, or at least the shell of it. I’d make a new one. One that didn’t remind me of my failure every day.
The irrationality kept me on my toes. This time, the irrationality would gain me the revenge that I needed to regain my dignity and kill the witch that haunted my dreams.
The crow bounced on the limb, giving me enough time to swipe my slingshot from my pocket.
Picking up a rock, I hit him square between the eyes.
He didn’t die.
He mocked me in a voice that brought tears to my eyes. It sucked the breath from my lungs and caused me to stumble backward.
“Help me,” he said, in my wife’s voice.
It wasn’t a voice that you forgot. No matter how hard it was to imagine what she looked like. Hearing it was a slap of reality.
I ground my teeth together as he flew over the valley and toward the castle.
Lightning zigzagged across the sky behind the mountain.
I would make it to the castle by nightfall. I’d kill Deidamia, kill that godforsaken crow, and deliver Josephine back to her parents.
Then shut this chapter of my life forever.
Chapter Twelve
Josie
The man in my dreams hadn’t returned.
At least, I still considered myself dreaming. After a while of not being hungry or in the room that I remembered fainting in, I assumed I was out cold.
Had she moved me?
Or was I still passed out on the cool cement floor in her little room full of witchery?
Stressing over it didn’t matter. I needed to focus on waking up. What was that dust she blew into my face?
Something magical. Evil.
I should have known she was plotting my demise. It wasn’t like I could have broken out of that grungy cell. Maybe she didn’t want to deal with me so she put a spell on me.
Either way, I was walking around in a dreamland trying to find a mythical man that had stopped my heart in its tracks. The conversation with my mother in the garden resurfaced. The things I wanted in a man ...
I stopped myself. I'd officially gone crazy. This man could be a figment of my imagination for all I knew.
