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My temper flared, igniting my sadness like a steaming cauldron. I finally understood why sixteen-year-old Aslan had hated that word when he’d first been found.
It was an empty word.
A word that promised nothing and had the power to grate on your nerves and make a mockery of everything you hoped for.
Sitting taller, I did my best to collect myself.
I thought I could do this.
I thought I’d been prepared to do this.
When I’d started sharing my love story, I’d promised myself that by the time we got to this part, I wouldn’t shed a tear. I would stay cool and collected. It was in the past, after all. It’d already happened. It couldn’t hurt me now.
And yet...
I’d never felt older.
Never been more breakable.
Never craved the sweet oblivion of death more than I did in that moment of confession.
You can’t stop now.
Finish it.
Images of Aslan’s handsome face swirled in my mind’s eye. The rakish sable hair tumbling over his forehead with sun-bronzed tips. The wide, fathomless ebony eyes where dark monsters roamed. The perfect kissable lips that I’d tasted a million times. And the body that embodied power and longevity, only to prove that as immortal as our love made us, his bones could break, his blood could flow, his heart could stutter and splutter and...stop.
Wrenching my head up, I blinked and swiped at the torturous tears on my cheek.
Dylan withdrew his arm but didn’t leave my side.
Margot forgot all about her coffee.
The sleepy haze of conversation turned into painful sharpness of what came next.
I’d warned them.
I’d told them again and again that this tale had torture and pain and loss.
I was about to find out if they believed me.
They winced as I caught their eyes.
They stiffened as I inhaled.
Margot even shook her head as if denying what I was about to tell her.
They knew.
They remembered.
My chin tipped up; I said almost coldly, “I told you I’d give you two more years of happiness. I warned you that the end of our happiness would come the day I turned twenty. Two years have passed and—”
“Don’t,” Margot whispered. “I don’t want to know.”
Holding her hurting stare, I muttered, “Six weeks after the blue dragon sting, when my leg was all healed and life had returned to somewhat normal, Aslan decided to celebrate my birthday with every part of him. Three things. Three memories—”
My voice cracked.
I bowed my head as forbidden tears tumbled down my paper-thin cheeks. My heart bled all over again as I rubbed my left arm beneath the long sleeves of my seafoam green dress. I still wore one of his presents. It’d kept me alive. In some serendipitous way, my tattoo had kept me fighting even while ripping out my heart.
My lonely, lovelorn heart.
It’d haemorrhaged until there was nothing left inside it. It’d seeped and oozed and gushed every lifeforce until it’d become nothing more than a desiccated organ with no magic, no spark, no soulmate.
The headache that’d slowly been getting worse as my story crept closer to this pinnacle throbbed in my temples.
It was almost midnight.
My throat was hoarse.
If I was a better woman, I’d tell them to go. I’d take them to the door and send them back to their own homes.
But I had to finish.
I had to tell them tonight or not at all.
Sucking in a breath, I rubbed at my empty chest.
I braced my shoulders.
I fought so damn hard for strength.
Dylan cleared his throat and leaned nearer. Taking my hand, he squeezed my brittle bones. “Just remember you survived it, Nerida. Whatever happened, you survived it.”
Margot gasped quietly, tears rolling silently down her cheeks. Her skin had whitened, and her fingers shook as she clutched her coffee mug. “You might have survived it, but...he didn’t, did he?”
I winced.
My headache pounded.
And all I could give her was the weakest, saddest smile as I whispered, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry for what I’m about to share. Endlessly sorry that I wasn’t able to protect him. Eternally sorry that I wasn’t able to find him. And I-I—”
My voice cracked with tears.
An ocean roared through me, splashing up my ribs, wetting all my pieces. The salt stung, the cold weight crushed, and the sharks swimming in the tide chewed me alive, all while I silently screamed.
“Nerida...it’s okay.” Dylan shifted until our thighs touched, wrapping his arm around my shoulders again.
I shouldn’t draw comfort from him.
But I did.
I let myself be held by a man all while I sank into the tale of another.
A man who was my soulmate.
My always.
My ever after.
A man who suffered.
A man who broke.
A man who I lost forever...
Chapter Seventeen
*
Aslan
*
(Heart in Swedish: Hjärta)
DID ANYONE EVER TRULY KNOW THEIR LIVES were about to end?
What sort of intuition did you need to be able to sense death sneaking ever closer, breathing down the back of your neck, sharpening its axe, all while waiting for the perfect moment to strike?
