“You’re still as valued as you were when you left. You never needed to prove anything to them about your worth, sweet girl. You only need to prove it to yourself.”
“But it’s all gone. Everything I was supposed to be, supposed to do—all gone.”
“I don’t know what the future holds for you when you return, Ara, and I don’t know what your people will say, but I know that no matter what you’re worth to them, you will always be everything to one person in this world.” His shaggy hair fell loosely over his brow, and his sparkling grin, as he ran his fingertips along my face, made me feel as if he was really here. “Find your way home, Ara. Find your way back to that one person, and you will never doubt yourself or your worth, ever again.”
“Who are you talking about? What one person?”
“Your true love.” He shuffled a little closer and I felt his knees against mine. “He will hold you, kiss you and adore you—come what may.”
“David.” I smiled.
“Perhaps.” He stroked the tip of his thumb down my nose. “Or perhaps not. Perhaps he is much closer than you think, waiting for you to return to your dreams again, so he can hold you there in his lonely reality for eternity.”
“You?”
“Come back to me, Ara.” He took both my hands. “Come back to me…”
Dark splotches distorted the image of Jason’s face. I blinked a few times, trying to make it clearer.
“Come back to me…” His voice echoed away.
“Jase?” His touch dissolved. I sat bolt upright in the dark of night. “Jase?”
But he was gone again, leaving me battling with the deepest part of myself that loved him once—loved him, but never got to say goodbye. I wish I could’ve told him how I really felt; wish I could’ve told him in a room where it would have mattered.
But each time that battle began in me, screaming at the heavens, telling me to love him, I fought it down—sent it away.
The girl I saw in my dreams was right: I loved him once, and I didn’t want to grieve him. I could grieve my mom, I could possibly even grieve Mike, but… just not Jason. It just made it too real, too final.
I covered my face, trying to sneak back into the world he and I shared. But it was always only a dream, one that equaled reality in all five senses. I wanted to go back there—to him. And that scared me. Because I knew, of all the things I had to face here, facing that truth was the worst.
I got up, got to my feet and started walking again.
He asked me to come back to him. He was here—if that was a dream or not, I didn’t care. I felt home. I felt him, and I just wanted that back again. Death, dream or reality. It didn’t matter anymore.
The trees thickened around me as I stumbled gracelessly over the dirt. Each entangled finger of branches seemed to deliberately slow me down, touching me, grabbing me, snagging on my dress and arms.
“Stop it.” I shoved a dry twiggy talon off my flesh. “Stop. Touching. Me!”
But none of them listened. They had me. They owned this part of the forest, and I wasn’t allowed to go there.
I swiped my tears away and stood still in the crowded cage of dense shrubbery.
Maybe the trees were right. Maybe I was headed in the wrong direction. In my mind, I was walking to him—to Jason—but I was supposed to be walking home. To David. My husband. The one who has stayed with me, married me, put up with all my temper tantrums and stupid ideals. The one who always would.
Maybe I was supposed to walk back to him. Maybe I could never go to Jason because the road to the underworld was guarded by things unseen.
I had to turn around. I had to get back home to life, to my people. To David.
Somewhere up in the night sky the moon had risen, offering a pale glow to the darkness that illumined the base of the trees in a soft dull-blue, giving everything a dreary, grainy appearance. I looked along the length of my forearm and twisted it to see my elbow: the tattoos glowed, as if the moon was calling to them, and they were answering. Perhaps they had a clue, a message of some kind that would tell me how to get out of this forest.
Everyone seemed to have had their own theories before I left: ‘Follow the North star,’ Walter said. ‘Walk the path before your feet and don’t look up,’ someone else had said, and Emily quite simply said, ‘Let your heart guide you.’
I looked behind me then to the path I’d been heading—to Jason—noticing that the trees had closed in, blocking that trail and making it impossible to get through.
Was that it? Follow my heart? Was I walking toward my heart, not the physical border of the forest?
I thought of David—saw his secret smile in my mind, felt the warmth of his love and let it fill me up from inside my chest, branching out like climbing vines.
“David.” I spun around then in a completely different direction, but I knew it was the way. Walk toward what your heart desires.
“David,” I said to myself, but as I took a step, something cracked under my foot, the sound making my eyes wide before my hair and arms went suddenly vertical and my feet carried my body on a direct and swift path downward.
I squealed, grasping at every branch to stop myself falling, coming to rest with a thunderous impact on my knees, my hands, then my head…
…A rushing sound, like an express train in a subway, forced my eyes open. Small needles of dry pine blurred my vision for a second. I blinked them from my lashes, eyes focusing on the waning daylight, while a woodsy, earthy smell dried my nostrils with each breath.
I lifted my face from the crook of my elbow and sat up, circling on my knees a few times in the barky bed I was laying.
“Wait!” I frowned and looked down at my hands, arms and the stained dress. “Déjà vu.”
My heart faltered. Everything stopped.
I sunk down into my elbow and rolled onto the ground, flat on my back. “Déjà vu.”
10
With my hands clasped over my belly, the ability to cry deflated from my tired soul, I decided to let myself stay put and expire.
As midday drank the cool in the air and infected it with a gooey heat, I laid watching memories like films in my head, while the bare branches above me joined hands again across the gray-white sky, applauding the movies as they ended. Everything seemed to move slightly around me, as if it couldn’t sit still.
Worse had come to worst. All the hope I thought I found was never really hope at all; it was positive thinking—just the thoughts of a stupid young girl who really believed that everything would be all right in the end.
But it isn’t. It couldn’t be. Why would it be?
It was all Emily’s fault. Listen to my heart. What kind of stupid advice is that? All it’d done was get me into more trouble. I should have listened to myself and just given up a few sunrises ago. Then I wouldn’t be even more tired, even more beat up and bruised.
“Okay, fine. You got me!” I yelled at the forest. “I’m not afraid of you anymore. You want me, I’m right here.”
I flopped back down.
Forget them. All of them. None of it matters now. The monarchy will die. The people will go about their lives. And if Drake doesn’t kill everyone, Mike will probably go home and marry Emily. David will probably marry her too—some foul three-way. Morg will be with Blade, Sam will grow up and never think of me. And Jason—his face stole my thoughts, making me smile—Jason will be lost in his illusory dreams until I lose consciousness one day and meet him there. We’ll hold hands and lay in the grass all day, every day, for forever.
I rubbed that thought away from my hot brow with an icy hand.
How could I think like that? I asked myself. How could I place my happy ending in some imaginary world with my husband’s brother?
“I love David. David.” I hit my temples. “David! David! David! David!”
“Sssure you do,” a slow, whispering hiss said.
“I do!”
“Then why did following your heart bring you back here?” It said very slowly.
&n
bsp; “My heart didn’t bring me here. I fell.”
“You fell through the web of your own lies.”
I scoffed, staying flat on my back, my lip lifting. “The other path was blocked.”
“Blocked?” It said. “Or maybe you needed to fight harder to make it through.”
“What would you know?”
“I know all.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t see what business it is of yours, evil-voice-that-doesn’t-exist.”
“It’s my job to see you find your way.”
“Well, you’re fired.”
“You can’t fire me.”
“I just did.”
“Then I won’t tell you what I came to say.”
“Fine,” I said to the nothing. “Then you’re unfired. Now, what did you want to say?”
“You need to follow your heart.”
I scratched my nose. “Did that. So, unless you can give me some good advice, buzz off and let me die.”
“Perhaps not advice. Perhaps I can tell you something you don’t know.”
“Like what?”
“Like what’s in your heart—what’s really in there.”
“I already know that. It’s David.”
“But you feel him, too!” It hummed.
“Who?”
“The brother.”
My chest lifted with a super huge sigh. “No. I keep thinking that, but it’s not true. It can’t be. And, so what if it is true?”
“The truth,” It hissed, “will be the one hope you can offer yourself. Only then can you give it to others.”
“What would you know about it, you’re just a figment of my”—I pushed up on my elbows—“gah!”
A shiny black snake hissed back at me, its wide mouth gaping, showing pointy fangs. I jumped up, stumbling backward over a rock and fell on my hands.
“Afraid?” It crept forward, seeming to smile with its soulless eyes.
“Get away.“ I screamed, brushing my legs with my hands. “You ugly, horrible little thing. Get away from me.”
“But I’ve come with a message,” it hissed without moving its lips. “One that will mark you on your way to being a great ruler.”
“What…?” I stopped wriggling, shrinking into myself with the snake’s advance. “What message?”
It stopped by my foot. “Get up!”
“Huh?”
“Hope is the light you follow; faith is believing there is actually a light—they are the refusal to give up when you have no reason to go on. Get up!” it hissed again. “Walk, run, but do not lie there to die!”
“I did. I walked!” I yelled at the slithering guru. “I walked, and I never got anywhere.”
“Then you keep walking until you do!”
I looked away, allowing defeat to swallow the fight in my voice. “I can’t take the pain of believing in myself and failing over and over again. Losing hope is worse than the actual failure.”
“Then walk, because there is no reason to believe you will ever get out, no reason to live, no reason to go on except that you must. You are stronger than you know. Now, get up!” It slithered closer. I tucked my ankle under my thigh. “Get up, and go on, or die.”
“For how long?” I cried out. “How much longer do I have to endure this?”
“Until you have fought with your last breath, walked every path which leads to nowhere and cried every worthless, faithless tear at the bottomless pits of Hell.”
“Why?” I wiped my eyes. “Why do you have to be so cruel?”
“It’s not cruelty; it’s a lesson. What does not kill us only shows us where to find strength when we are in the dark. And you have much darkness ahead of you, Amara.”
“But I can’t find any strength. I’m lost.”
“You’re not lost. You’re just not looking for the right question.”
“What do you mean?”
“Ask not why, ask not when, ask not what you need to do.”
“Then what do I ask?”
“Try asking, and I’ll tell you.”
My mouth sat slightly open and I looked to one side. What the hell was this slimy reptile droning on about? “What do you want from me?”
“I want you to know the question to the answer.”
“Well, what’s the answer then?”
“You!”
Me? Me? Why would I be the answer? And what is the question?
Me?
I looked around at the tops of the trees.
I’m the answer—to what? To the Lilithian’s future? Maybe. But what does that have to do with finding hope on this Walk of Faith?
Ask not what I need to do, but what I need to… learn?
I looked up at the black scaly creature. “What is hope?” I asked.
It seemed to smile but didn’t answer.
What is hope? Is that what I need to learn? I squinted, thinking hard. I knew hope was in me, but what was it?
“Close,” the snake whispered.
“Hope is a part of faith,” I started, going over the words in my head. “I came out here to find hope and bring it home to them. I came here to find…” I looked up, realization flooding me like a wash of cold water. “Myself?”
“Yes. You!”
“Well, I found her—she was making the oath.” I shook my head. “What now?”
“She is not you. She is a repeat manifestation of the lies that make you whole.”
“What?”
“Truth. Truth must be uncovered before you can find what you are looking for—before you can find yourself.”
“What is the truth?”
“That,” she hissed, “is exactly the right question.”
“Er!” I screeched and backed away as the snake launched forward. “Get away from me.”
“Tell me!” It slithered toward my foot, shifting in weaving patterns across the dirt. “Tell me the truth.”
“I don’t know any truth.”
“Yessss, you do.” It lifted its head off the ground and rocked from side to side, as if it had shoulders to sway from.
“I don’t know what the lie is so I can’t tell you the truth.”
“Then you are lying to yourself.”
“No. I know myself. I know my inner truths. I always follow my…” I paused. My heart. “My heart is the lie?”
“Or perhaps what’s in your heart.”
I looked at the snake and felt the tight pull of my brow at the center. “I already told you: David’s in my heart.”
“Is he?”
I nodded.
“Is he there alone?”
“Of course he is.”
“Answer me truthfully, girl. Is. He. There. Alone?”
“I…” I looked down at my dirt-covered legs. “I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do. Ask your heart, and do not deny the first answer it gives you.”
I touched a hand to my chest and searched deeper inside myself, already knowing the true answer. “I’m not capable of loving just one, am I?” I looked back at the snake.
“Aren’t you?”
“I am.” I nodded. “I know I am.”
“Don’t lie to yourself, Amara. You cannot find hope if you cannot see the truth.”
“No. That is the truth!” I shuffled away from the snake. “I love David. Do you hear? Never anyone else. I get confused. But I love him! Only him!”
“Lies. Black heart, black as the night. You, demon child”—It slithered, slowly edging closer—“you are nothing more than what I am: a sinister nonentity, a parasitical fiend, and you will perish in this Hell.”
“No!” I pointed to the snake. “You’re trying to trick me into admitting I’m something I’m not.”
“Trickster. Faker. Liar. Me? No.” It shook its head. “You are the worst kind of fraud, little girl, because you lie to yourself.” It glided toward me again. “You don’t have to like the truth, but in order to be free, you must admit it.”
“No.” I covered my ears, scuffling away. “You can’
t tell me what’s in my heart.”
“I don’t need to, child. You admitted this already. Admit it now. Admit it once and for all, and you will be free!”
“No!”
“Stubborn girl,” It said, forcing me to shift farther away with each inch it came closer. “It was all you had to do.”
My hand slipped on a sharp, rocky overhang, and the flaking sound of raining dirt and stones echoed off the gluttonous canyon behind me, narrowing my options: it was either into the path of the snake, or a fall—possibly to my death.
“What are you doing?” my voice quivered as the snake advanced, slinking toward my foot.
“Taking you back to Hell.”
“Get off me!” I smashed my foot into its tail, but the grappling, tubular body wriggled up my leg, and my scream trailed off as my hands met the absence of the rocky edge, reaching up, grabbing the cold neck of the snake as I went over, free-falling toward nothing.
And it was too late to say it; too late to admit what I truly felt in my heart. But I saw him as I looked out over the endless valley—saw Jason, saw his smile, felt my heart fill with blood for the longing to be beside him.
And that was the truth. I loved him, but I also loved David.
The quiet emptiness of falling into nothing stole a scream from my lips, but returned it as a silent breath, and my fingers unfolded, releasing the snake into freedom as the ground rushed up faster than I could control.
* * *
Hope, by definition, means wish, desire—a chance of success. Nowhere does it say faith.
They had hope, but they never believed in me, never had faith. They wanted someone to walk them from the darkest nights of their everlasting pain and bring them to the dawn, but they needed a warrior, not a little girl who was so broken from the past she couldn’t even love just one man.
The dawn came and went many times while I stumbled through this treacherous forest, and as I opened my tired eyes, my entire body burning and aching, I met the dawn again.
The last dregs of hope faded.
I had believed in myself. I had believed I’d make it out—that I’d be the queen they needed. But they just couldn’t see that. No one ever had any faith in me, and this was my only chance to prove I was strong, to prove I could do anything I wanted to. And I did want to now. I never wanted to be queen before, but I cared about those people, all of them, and I wanted them to be free, to live in peace.
Dark Secrets Box Set Page 167
