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At what point did I give up on Liv because she didn’t want to be saved?
“It means I’ll let Sasha deal with you. I assure you no one’s going to execute you. It’s not how the royals work.” I started for the closet. It looked like I would have to figure this out on my own.
I would have to mourn her. How could I mourn her when she was standing right there? When I could reach out and touch her? When I could feel her in my heart?
“So I stay a prisoner?” Liv didn’t seem ready to stop. She followed me.
I rounded on her. “What do you want, Liv? I can forgive you. I know you didn’t make those choices, but you are making this one. You are making the choice to be a coward. You think I left you behind? I didn’t make the choice to leave you, but this, what you’re doing here and now, is leaving me. Leaving Casey. Leaving everyone behind because you can’t handle what happened to you. I’m sorry, Liv. I thought you were stronger. I thought we could love you enough to get you through, but the truth of the matter is you broke and you don’t want to do the work to put yourself back together, and I can’t tell you how much that makes me ache.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You don’t know anything about my pain.”
I pointed her way. “I do. I know because I’ve had the strongest part of my soul cut from me, and it was you who did it. And I forgave you. Immediately. Wholeheartedly. Liv, you once sold me out to Donovan and I forgave you. You let me walk into a trap where the king was going to make the decision if I should live or die, and you didn’t give me a single heads-up. And I forgave you. I fell into another plane of existence and spent every second trying to find my way back.”
“You were stupid. You knew the prophecy. It’s your fault. You were so desperate to get Marcus back when you already had two husbands,” she seethed.
Oh, Myrddin hadn’t taken her anger. He’d left her with rage and hate and not a lot else. “He was important to me. Is. I would have done a lot to save him, but again, I didn’t choose to lose twelve years with my son and the husbands I love. Go away, Liv. It’s obvious you do feel something for me, and it’s not good. I could apologize a million times and without that piece of you it won’t matter. Nothing will be enough. I have to face the fact that you died that night. You died because you couldn’t live with what happened.”
She stared at me for a moment, so still I wondered if she was getting ready to attack. And then her shoulders came down. “I…I don’t know why I said that to you. I find this place unsettling. I suppose it has something to do with the tricks you’ve been playing on me.”
“Tricks? If you’re talking about what Evan did with Eddie’s blood, all I can say is don’t take it the next time she offers it.”
“How is this not as bad as what Myrddin did? He didn’t tell me what the blood would do to me either,” she argued.
I was done. “Take it. Don’t take it. You are making me not care, and I hate that.”
“It’s easy for you to say. You always have someone who’ll fight for you. Poor Kelsey.”
I wasn’t about to take that. “Get out. I’m done with this. If you want me to be done with you, that’s how it will be. I’m about to lose my husband again, so babying you isn’t my priority. When this is done, we’ll go back to the Earth plane, and you can spend your time in a cell. And before you call me a bitch, it’s exactly what you were planning for me except Myrddin would have killed me. He’s the one who sent me off plane. He would have taken Gladys and then slit my throat, and guess what, sister, it would have been okay because you can’t feel anything. The whole world can burn because Olivia Carey isn’t strong enough to fight.”
She’d paled, but I didn’t care in that moment.
I walked into the closet and saw the monstrosity of a gown Tix had left me. It had petticoats or something.
Not happening.
“I did, I think. Fight, that is.”
I closed my eyes in frustration because Liv didn’t seem to be done with me. “It doesn’t matter now. I’ll let you go if that’s what you want.”
“It’s hard to remember because I think so much of what I remember is false,” she said quietly. “But I know I tried to save Sarah Day. I had a way out, but she needed it. He was going to take Mia.”
I had seen what she did that day. “I know.”
“And then I was alone, and they put me in the camp. I think they hurt me there.”
“I’m sorry, Liv. I wish you hadn’t gone through it.”
“It wouldn’t have broken you,” she whispered. “I think that’s what kills me. You would have fought and won, and I’m the sidekick.”
“You were never the sidekick. You were my hero, Liv. You were the hero of a lot of us. We loved you.” I felt something stir in my chest, an odd fluttering. I put my hand there, right over my heart. How could she even think that? She’d always been important to me. She’d been the sister I needed so desperately.
She looked a bit haunted standing there in the doorway of the closet. Although the closet here was larger than her dorm room where we’d sat and talked most nights in college. We’d come such a long way, and I hated how distant we were now.
“I think he took it,” Liv said. “My soul. I get flashes of what might have happened at the ceremony, but I don’t know if they’re real or not. I remember being so proud. And then I remember being terrified. Is it surprising which one I prefer?”
It wasn’t surprising, but she had to face the truth. “It’s a choice you’re making. You might not have made the choice to become Myrddin’s enforcer, but you have free will here and now. I know you hate that collar and the blood you’ve been taking, but both have worked to put you in a place where you’re not under his influence. You can choose.”
“I’m under your influence instead,” she accused with a stubbornness I’d never seen in her before.
