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Later that day, Aurelius, my pillar of strength, knelt behind me, his body supporting mine as he guided my hand to cover the apple seed in rich, fertile soil outside our bedroom window. Within seconds, my fever broke and strength was returned to my body.
I turned and threw my arms around my husband, and for a moment, he seemed hesitant to hug me back.
I hated that.
But not as much as I hated the God of Death.
Sage
The memory washed over me like a tsunami, leaving me choking and sobbing and gasping for air.
I jerked upright, my heart slamming itself against my ribs over and over again, as though it were set on destroying itself. Because that was what was happening to the rest of me—I was being destroyed.
Piece by brittle piece.
Kneeling beside the bed, Soren spoke softly, “Sage—”
“No,” I cut him off. I didn’t want his sympathy, nor did I want him to see me like this, or Arkyn for that matter.
Soren, Arkyn—I was surrounded by betrayers, but their crimes did not cut nearly as deeply as Von’s—his was lethal.
I wanted to crawl into a hole, where I could be alone. To unravel. To shatter.
But I would not grant myself that courtesy—at least, not until I knew the rest. I brushed away the waterfall of tears that tumbled over the cliffs of my lower lash line. Blurry-eyed and on the verge of a broken heart, I turned to Soren. “Show me the next one.”
“Don’t you think you should give yourself some time to . . . process?” he asked, his blond brows weaving in concern.
I was tempted to laugh, my sanity teetering. Where was his concern that day at the cottage? He didn’t get to act like he had some now.
“Do as she says,” Arkyn commanded, his voice like a whip, striking our attention, our heads swiveling towards him.
“Are you sure?” Soren asked, his eyes returning my way.
“No,” I whispered honestly, lowering myself back down. I took a deep breath. “But I have to know. Show me the next one.”
So, he did.
And then the next.
And the next after that.
Each one mirrored the last—I was sick with fever, Von took me to some undisclosed location in the Living Realm, gave me a seed, and told me to return on my own to my husband.
Eventually, I did not need to ask Soren to show me the next memory, because the barrier that held them at bay had started to decay, and like a landslide, thousands of repeat memories of Von handing me a seed to plant came thundering down—each of them sowed so deeply with hate for the God of Death that it was becoming impossible not to feel that now.
I was drowning in those memories. Suffocated by them.
And yet, I couldn’t stop. Perhaps, a small part of me was looking for another type of seed—one that gave me hope, thatreassured me that the Von I knew in this lifetime was real and true.
But the further I dug into the memories of my past, the only thing I found was a repeat of a bitter truth—
Von hadneverloved me.
I was nothing more than a tool for him to use—to carve out his revenge.
And he did it with expert, knowing hands.
Sage
