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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.
