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In the dream, I wake up from a deep sleep and look over at Adam’s crib. Something about it always strikes me as eerily wrong. I’ll frown and get up, and when I walk over to it, it’s empty. The windows are open, curtains fluttering softly against the wind. When I rush to the windowsill, I can see Dad’s beaten-down little Honda driving fast through the night, headlights dwindling to flecks before they disappear into the horizon.
I know it’s retribution. Someone will take my son, the same way I took Ilarion’s. Karma is a wheel, and in my dream, it’s rolling away from me faster than I could ever hope to catch up.
“I…I am sorry,” I whisper. “For how I left. I didn’t have a choice.”
“Yes, you did.” His voice twists harshly. “You had a choice. You chose to run.”
I close my eyes for a second. “Okay, yes. I chose to run,” I admit. “But I was trying not to hurt anyone.”
“You were trying not to hurtCeline,” he corrects softly.
I sacrificed so much to ensure Celine could have the life she wanted. It’s only now that I’m beginning to see just how much it cost me. It’s only now that I’m beginning to wonder if it was a mistake.
I clear my throat. “D-did it work?”
The twilight is fading slowly. Golden shadows dance across his face. His eyes are sadder than I’ve ever seen them as he sighs.
“The thing about the assassination attempts: I could do something about them, and I did.” He takes a breath. “It was the time she tried to kill herself that left me powerless.”
10
ILARION
There were days I understood what she did. Why she ran. Why she took my child away from me.
But there were also days where I didn’t understand. And on those days, I was angry.
I was very, very angry.
It was on the angry days that I planned these words. I wasn’t about to spare her feelings simply because her heart was in the right place.
She sure as hell didn’t spare mine.
Her face pales the moment the words are out of my mouth. There’s a twinge of guilt in my chest that I extinguish with memories of the months right after she left.
She bartered away her happiness and sacrificed mine for her sister’s. Now, she needs to know what that sacrifice wrought. Actions have consequences. It’s time she learned that.
“Suicide?” she gasps.
There’s a slight breeze in the air. The sun’s all but gone now, and the wind has turned cold. “Did you think you were leaving Celine to skip off into a happily-ever-after?” I scoff. “If so, that was horribly naïve, even by your standards.”
“You’re not joking?”
“Why would I joke about that?” I snap. “I have no desire to see someone I care about die.”
Her eyes go wide. “W-why?” She trips over her words. “Why did she try to ki—to do that?”
I’m irritated that she even feels the need to ask.Actions have consequences.It’s as simple as that. You don’t get to just do what you want and get away with it scot-fucking-free.
I glance over at the river. Through the rushing water, I see stones in every shade of white and gray, their edges softened by the currents. I try to imagine my son sitting there and splashing, learning how to skip a rock.
But my imagination refuses to conjure up anything.
I sigh and turn back to Taylor. “The physical therapy was hard on her. She hated being helpless. She hated having to rely on other people for everything.”
“She was always the one looking after me when we were younger,” Taylor murmurs. She has the look of a woman losing herself down memory lane. “And just when I became more independent, Mom got sick and Celine started looking after her instead.”
“She felt like she was a burden to me.”
