“I can’t believe this is real.”
“Me neither. I love you. I’ll see you soon.”
“I love you,” I squeak, bouncing up and down in the mud like a fool.
I dress slowly, fingers shaking too much to lace my boots.
A ray of sun splits the cloud, spilling a bright blue stain across the white sky and flooding the darkest corners of the path with light.
I trudge up the hill with a little less force that I usually do, and I have half a mind to turn around and sprint back into the water to tell my dad the news, to tell him that I’m starting to forget what complete isolation feels like, to tell him to stop worrying about me.
But sometimes I think he probably knew in those thirteen seconds that he spiraled down toward the earth that I’d be okay. His belief in me never wavered before that day; I don’t know why that would’ve changed then.
Still, when I float in that lake, it feels like I’m talking into a paper cup tied to a string, and I’d kill for him to be holding the other end just one more time.
When I reach the Nightshade mansion gardens, Belladonna is there, hovering between the two cracked gargoyle statues that stand at the end of the path. She frowns when she sees me, looking at me like I’ve grown a second head. “What has you looking so happy?”
“I’m … just in a good mood.”
She leans in just an inch, cerulean gaze bouncing between both of my eyes. “Have you taken something?”
A small laugh slips out of me, which only makes things worse. “No, of course not. Can’t I just be in a good mood?”
“You give me the creeps, Winters,” she mutters, leaning back again. The faintest little glimmer of amusement sparks in her eyes as she turns to leave, and I wonder if she knows exactly what has me in such a good mood.
My phone buzzes in my hand, an endless string of excited texts from Alex’s sisters rolling through.
A small wave of guilt washes over me, like a whole family is being uprooted and moved because of me and my fear of flying. But like she’s living inside my messy brain, Elise sends a rare text.
Elise
This is good for all of us. Not just you, and not just Alex. If you saw the way the girls are throwing their clothes into suitcases you’d believe me. It’s a two-year vacation.
Ophelia
It just feels like it wouldn’t have happened if Alex hadn’t have met me.
Elise
A lot of great things wouldn’t have happened if Alex hadn’t met you. I love you. I’ll see you soon.
I slip my phone into my swim bag, craning my neck to take in all the Elizabethan grandeur of the Nightshade mansion. Save for the bullet holes in one of the doors, it’s kind of … beautiful.
It feels like a lifetime ago I was stood here for the first time, watching Vincenzo and Alex with a heart full of a hate and a life devoid of anything warm.
I was wrong—wrong about them, wrong about so many things. Sorrowsong isn’t my downfall at all. It’s my chance at a new beginning.
Chapter 29
ALEX
I reverse into Carmichael’s spare parking spot just as the rain begins, filling the mild September air with the rich scent of damp earth.
It takes a little over three hours to drive from our house to Sorrowsong Castle, and I’ve experienced all four seasons in that time.
I can’t believe it’s a year since I parked my car in this space for the first time, a bedraggled, miserable redhead in my passenger seat.
My life is unrecognizable from where it was then. Gray has split itself up into all the other colors. Ophelia has stitched a silver lining into the black cloud that lives in my head.
