My heart broke, but I’d never wanted this life. And now that I was stuck with it in ways I’d never imagined, I had to do what was necessary, even if it hurt.
I made my choice, now I live with the consequences.
I blinked back tears, and I left.
CHAPTER 30
Marta
Time had a habit of simply…carrying on.
Waking up in bed with only Atlas fractured me more deeply than anything else ever could. I should have seen it coming. Something wasn’t right, and in retrospect, I understood it had been Wes’s shame and hesitation. He left us a note, three stupid sentences that left a chasm in their wake.
I’m sorry. I love you. Don’t look for me.
-Wes
Atlas wanted to tear out of the estate, track him down, and kick his ass. Perhaps some small part of me wanted the same. But I was broken and numb.
The emptiness inside me made going through the motions of everyday life strenuous enough. Going after him when he didn’t want to be found sounded like trying to move a mountain with a shovel—a journey of a thousand miles, indeed, but ultimately pointless.
Days passed. I got up. I ate. I visited with my abuelita, whose intelligent eyes saw far more than I’d ever want her to see.
“Come help me in the garden,” she’d say, pulling me outside as she insisted fresh air would do me good. “Tell the plants your troubles.”
“They don’t care about my troubles, Tita,” I’d reply.
“Nonsense. The plants love to gossip.” It was her way of trying to cheer me up, but it did little good.
At night, I’d crawl into bed with Atlas and try to find some small measure of relief in the feel of his skin on mine, but it was never enough. Not for either of us. Without Wes, without one third of my blood and flesh, we were a dead ship, floating in the ocean with no way of finding land.
“Wes, come home,” we’d call, reaching out through the infinite expanse of our bond to locate him. But the more distance he put between us, the harder it was to sense him. That had more consequences than we’d ever thought.
After a week apart, I sat in the library while Gullveig and Hella analyzed the ritual I’d recreated from Constance’s book. We couldn’t find the damned thing in the human realm, and I’d started to wonder if it hadn’t been created for us by the demon itself.
“You performed the blood bond with this?” Gullveig asked, raising an eyebrow. “Spells like this haven’t been practiced since the height of the witch craze.”
“I know,” I said. “We were wary of using it in the first place, but…” We didn’t have a choice. I stopped before I said the words because I’d been repeating them incessantly for days. Gullveig and Hella looked at each other, some silent communication passing between them that suggested they had concerns about my mental well-being.
Honestly, same.
“Okay, walk us through it again,” Hella said.
I did, and when I was through, they still weren’t convinced that it would have been strong enough to have the effect it did.
“We were in the liminal,” I told them. “The magic had different properties there.”
I didn’t mention that the demon had been watching and guiding the entire time. How much of what happened was because of me, and how much was because of the demon’s influence? I may never know.
When they grew tired of my sullen attitude and dismissed me, I went to the training center to let off some steam. But my workouts were mindless, just me drifting through the motions, never really committing to any one thing or the other.
I went to the woods to center and ground myself, hoping I might see the woman again, the one with the powerful advice. When I only found myself in my sanctuary alone, I drew as much strength as I could from the earth, but even that paled in comparison to what I’d once been able to do.
Wes’s departure had left a gaping hole inside my soul, and no matter what I did, it wouldn’t heal. His abrupt absence ached like fire under my skin, like acid in my veins. The physical pain was one thing, and it was agonizing. But the emotional turmoil of not having him near made the numbness even more profound, the hollowness from the liminal amplified. Atlas said Wes had probably left because he thought he was protecting us, that he thought he was dangerous and didn’t want to hurt us. If he really felt the demon was still inside him, I understood. But we were all suffering, and being apart wasn’t the answer.
By week three, I’d stopped sleeping through the night. And by week four, I could barely eat.
At least Atlas seemed to be in the same boat. We fed on each other’s irritation, and any reconciliation we may have found by surviving the liminal together slowly peeled away. We were always meant to be a three, and without Wes, our triangle would never be complete.
