AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Now I know better. Now I know there is no peace for me. There never will be.
And though the agony still ripples through my chest, I find myself melting into him. Find myself wanting him, wishing to drown myself in him. Aching to sear away the pain in the heat of his kiss, numb myself in his love.
It’s temporary, and it’s vain, and it won’t last, because no happiness, no relief of mine, is meant to last. I know that now.
It makes me burn for him all the more, knowing that one day, one day sooner than I can bear to think about, I’ll lose him too.
I crane my neck upward to stare into the beautiful face I know I’m destined to lose, as if somewhere, in some other world, my story is being woven into a tapestry just like Zora’s, just like Nox’s. But instead of my death being rewritten and rewritten, it’s losing every piece of happiness I’ve ever tasted, all at my own hand, over and over again.
His warmth envelops me, and I find I’m alight with desire, a craving stronger than any bloodlust I’ve ever experienced. Nox stares down at me, his ice-blue eyes melting me with such beautiful sorrow.
I lift myself upward and press my lips to his, intent on drowning myself in him.
But something is wrong.
His mouth, once so hungry for mine, is hesitant against my lips, almost immobile. And when he kisses me back, there’s something in the kiss that’s sterile, like he’s trying to…
Like he’s trying to…
Like he’s trying to convince himself he wants it.
I pull away, mortification heating my cheeks.
Fears I’ve been harboring for months assail me all at once.
Nox, living another life, his arms wrapped around another woman. Nox, cradling a child who only exists in another realm.
Apology paints his beautiful features, and again he rubs at his temples. “Blaise…” he tries to explain, but I’m already crawling off of him, shame threatening to suffocate me.
“Please, you don’t have to explain,” I say hastily. Because I don’t think I’ll survive it if I hear the reason escape Nox’s lips. If I hear his heart belongs to another. If I hear he returned for one girl, only to realize the Blaise he thought he loved never existed.
That he’s returned for a liar who betrays her friends.
Nox shakes his head. “No, it’s not…I don’t think it’s you.”
I suck in a breath. “Nox, please.”
“No, there’s something wrong with me, Blaise. Something that’s different about me. It’s like I woke up in this realm, but with something missing. I don’t know if it got lost somewhere in the eyelet. But there’s something…” He grasps at his chest, then looks up at me.
It’s then that the memory of the Old Magic’s voice returns to me.
My dear, why do you assume it’s you I’ve chosen to curse?
CHAPTER 51
MARCUS
My daughter is amazing.
My daughter is amazing, and I hate that I’m leaving her.
I watch Amity as she swaddles Evander and Ellie’s baby, keeping the child tucked in close against her chest as she whispers absentmindedly to her.
She likes to hold the child while Evander and Ellie sleep, both of them having a tendency to pass out from exhaustion despite attempting to take shifts awake with their daughter.
But they need not worry. Their little girl is in the best of hands.
Amity, of course, isn’t capable of single-tasking, and I watch her rifle through her grimoire with one hand as she lays the child gently down in her lap.
