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“That had to be excruciating, because that means he forced himself to stay conscious during all of that,” I tell her, shaking my head as more and more tears start trickling down my cheeks.
She slowly nods in agreement, and I look away, feeling my stomach roil.
“He deliberately made himself a target after Alton betrayed his own mate, and he heard what they did to her,” Kimber goes on, reading a side notation in the margin.
He heard Alton’s mate dying, and heard his brother breaking. “He was tortured mentally and physically, yet continued to focus on one thing. Saving you, Ella. Hell, it’s all that’s kept him sane,” she adds quietly. “Please stop reading this.”
“He’s planning to die in my place,” I say harshly, my voice almost feral, and she startles. Forcing myself to calm down, I stare into her eyes. “What would you do if this was Gage?”
“Ella, that’s different. I’m in love with Gage, but Slade has taken painstaking precautions to make sure you didn’t have the ability to love him. Hell, he almost slaughtered Leah, and—”
I wave her off, returning my attention to the pages. It hurts to keep reading, but I do it anyway, because I need to understand.
You’ve crafted a new existence, one where you’re no longer the same man who had to watch her die over and over
, always thrown aside so she can save you. You never saved her, not even once, as that man.
I can almost feel how angry he was when he was writing this, taste his self-disgust and helplessness in my soul. It’s exactly what I’m feeling right now.
You’ve rewritten facts, twisting them in your brother’s head so he’ll believe the same things, mostly about the bond.
You believe the bond to be broken after claiming the mate—because you believe this and have let it bleed into the remaining link, Alton’s shattered mind believes this. With his mate dead and his guilt eating him alive, his mind won’t be strong enough to know any better.
The lie is the only truth she can know, or she’ll try to save you.
You’ll leave calculated clues with the princess upon escape, after spreading just enough whispers of information.
You’ll let her learn the Gemini Twin bond as you’ve created the tale to be.
She doesn’t need the truth.
Ever.
“That’s why he created the legend the way he did,” Kimber states gently, as though it makes it easier to hear. “He wanted you to focus on a possible happy ending, while he focused all his energy into executing the rest of his plan. Ella, come on. Stop this. It’s just making it worse on you.”
“There’s still the prophecy,” I mutter with very little conviction.
How can there be a Gemini Twin prophecy if he made the whole Gemini Twin legend up?
More damn scientific formulas take over, and once again Kimber is forced to begrudgingly translate when I stare at her expectantly, not even bothering to point out that I’m not going to stop reading.
“These are too complicated for me to understand,” she states quietly. Her finger points to another set, and she sighs as she says, “But these look like a possible formula for channeling something through a grounding conduit, perhaps Alton, to provide one huge boost of power.”
I flip the pages, looking for words again, since her answers seem to be waning, her reluctance to understand why I need to save him starting to grate on my nerves as a steady growl rumbles in my chest.
You and Alton have to die, or she’ll die in your place in order to finish what you started. But first you have to be strong enough to die in her place, just this once.
A thousand and one times you’ve failed her, but this once, you can do it right, and it’s the only time that will matter.
You’ll stop seeing her deaths, and this will be a blessing.
If you’re still in prison and reading this with slowly returning memories, you have to know, she saves you. Keep holding on, because she does come for you, even though she doesn’t know you. But you can’t keep that memory.
Kimber dabs away some more tears, distracting me briefly, but I force myself to read on, staving off the emotions I can’t afford to feel right now. I’m damn close to losing every ounce of control I’ve worked so hard to get.
Seeing her free you can’t be a variable, since it’s too close to the original experiment that has proven highly ineffective.
Seeing her for the first time as a free man with no idea you’d see her that night is a new, uncontrollable variable you’ve released into the equation that will hopefully create many other new variables that will lead down a different path to the future.
