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Everything comes flooding back.The excruciating pain, the items the oracle sent me after, the final one being the heart of a lover… And I had chosen my own.
How am I alive?
You don’t nearly die for someone you don’t love with every fiber of your being. This is real… it was always real. And I should have told Alaric the last time we were together.
But the past is written and cannot be undone.
“You truly are a slayer, my dear Clara, a slayer of vampires, a conqueror of hearts. You have slain me long before I realized.”
“I hate that title,” I say, frowning. I’m not sure what he means by that, but it doesn’t matter. There have been so many lost chances, and I refuse to lose another. Setting my jaw, I say, “I have to tell you something.”
His mouth crashes down on mine again, silencing me, but I break away.
“Alaric, I—”
He presses the tip of his finger to my lips. “Not here,” he says. “I want you to keep your promise first, and then you can say everything.”
I bite down a growl of frustration as the need to tell him how I feel rises to my lips, demanding to be released.
“I still don’t know if this is real,” he admits. “I would hate to hear the words I long for only to be shattered when they never come once you wake me from this spell.”
* * *
I sit up with a gasp. My heart cracks because Alaric has slipped through my fingers again. I’m back in the oracle’s tiny cabin.
Della shifts on the foot of the bed. As she watches me, head canted to the side, the corners of her lips tug into a frown.
My brows crash together, not understanding her expression. “What’s wrong?”
At my words, she moves, standing and adjusting the pillow so I can sit up. She pulls back the collar of my shirt, exposing a thick cloth over my chest.
“You’ve woken up so many times after the initial…” She trails off, clearing her throat. “But you always immediately fell back to sleep,” she explains while her fingers set to work, removing the cloth and wiping off the dried poultice underneath, revealing a bright pink scar. The skin is puckered and raw.
I open my mouth to speak, but flounder, unable to find the right words.
“Lie back down,” Della says as she smears a fresh poultice layer and places a clean cloth over it.
I push her hands away and sit up, much to her annoyance.
Cassius barges through the front door, eyes wild and bringing cool air with him. He kicks the door shut, and as soon as his eyes land on my face, he rushes over, towering above me.
“How am I still alive?” I ask them.
Cassius crosses his arms over his chest. “That is a good question.” He bares his teeth. “You are a demon’s damned idiot for trying to kill yourself. I would shake some sense into you if you weren’t already so close to the Otherworld’s door.”
His anger feeds my own, and I’m on my feet in an instant. Cassius reaches out to push me back down to the bed, but I sidestep.
“Should I have chosen you then—thanked you for your troubles with a blade through your heart?”
Spinning on my heel, I march over to where the oracle stands before the messy bench stacked with books and bobbles. She works with wax and herbs and symbols, her fingers moving deftly as she speaks words I don’t know in a low tone.
“The closer the heart to you, the more powerful the magic,” she mutters under her breath.
“How am I alive?”
Her movements still, and though she says nothing, Ophelia looks sidelong at Cassius. My gaze follows her. He hasn’t moved other than to face me, with arms still crossed over his chest and lip curled up in a vicious scowl.
“That should have killed me,” I say when no one answers.
