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A Matter of Forever (Fate #4)

Page 25

by Heather Lyons


  I tell him the truth. I tell him he’s right.

  For the next five minutes, he doesn’t say a single thing. He listens to me recall things I don’t ever want to think about again, ones I fear will haunt me until the day I finally die. And when I tell him the final truth, of my inability to let him go even in death, his hand leaves mine to lie over his heart.

  So many other words fight to leave my mouth, but I keep them in. But if I could, I would tell him, I would say Kellan, I love you. If I had to do it again, I would, no questions asked. I will always make this choice.

  Silence hangs between us so long that I wish I knew what words he was fighting to keep in, if they are even there at all. There are no visual cues for me to cling onto, no ticks, no twisting of bracelets. I have no idea if he’s glad I did what I did, disappointed, or angry. There is just Kellan staring at me and me staring right back.

  Finally, his head slants away, toward the window. Gulfs grow between us, ones built on hushed unease. It isn’t until I get up to go open the door to let his loved ones back in that he says something.

  “It’s funny how I always believed you owned my heart since the moment we met. And now ...”

  I pause, my hand on the knob as I turn back toward him.

  “And now it really is yours.”

  He says it all so quietly as he stares at the leaves blowing in the wind just inches away from the glass, so ... unemotionally.

  There’s no room to breathe in here anymore.

  “Does he know?”

  My answer is barely voiced. No, I tell him. No one does yet.

  His eyes drift shut, but not before he says, “Open the door and let them in.”

  I go to dinner with Will later that night; Jonah stays behind to talk to Kellan. To say my nerves are fraying is like saying the ocean is made of salt and water.

  “I would think you would be over the moon right about now,” Will says, shoving a Gnomish equivalent of wontons in a red basket lined in waxed paper toward me. “All is right in the worlds. Those bastards are dead.” A tiny salute accompanies a wry grin. “You are back in one piece. Jonah is fine. Kellan has woken up. Annar is in the midst of rejoicing.” The grin fades. “Yet, you look a wee lost. What’s going on?”

  For the hour following my confession, Jonah stuck close to his brother during Kate’s check-up. Concern traced lines across his forehead, but he stayed silent the entire time. So did Kellan. And now they’re together, alone, no doubt talking about what I’ve done. What I’m guilty of, even though I don’t regret my actions one tiny bit.

  “Do you ever look back on your past and wonder what things would have been like if you’d taken a different path?”

  Will sets his chopsticks down, both eyebrows raising high, then low. “I think every person does. I think it’s human nature to do so.” The chopsticks are reclaimed, now tapping against the side of an ornate bowl. “Are there things you wish you’d done differently?”

  Oh, to be sure.

  I wish ... I wish the first time Enlilkian had found me, in that bathroom, I’d not broken down and allowed him to set his sick game in motion. I wish I’d spent more time learning who Noel Lilywhite was, rather than resenting who I believed him to be. I wish I’d not broken the hearts I treasure so often and so easily; I wish I’d told my mother I loved her more when I was younger. I wish, with all the immense powers within me, my touch was delicate rather than destructive. I wish I could let go of Kellan; I wish his life to be everything it isn’t because of me. I wish I didn’t hurt my husband because of my bond with his brother. I wish I’d been here for Jonah when he needed me after Karnach, and that on that first day he came to California, I’d had the guts to talk to him, and him to me.

  I wish I could breathe without feeling tendrils of guilt lopping through the soft tissues of my lungs.

  “I think,” I tell Will, “that it’s sometimes hard to finally stand still when you’ve been running for so long.”

  “Oh, to be sure.” A wonton is flipped over and mashed in his bowl until its guts spread across the waxed paper. “I called Becca while you were gone.”

  Ah. He says this so evenly, like we’re simply discussing the weather. “Is that how we’re dubbing it?” The corners of my lips incline upward. “While you were gone? Isn’t that a movie name?”

  I like how he laughs, how his head tilts to the side so his hair falls across his forehead. “If it is, do you think it’s one I’ve watched?”

  I do my best to keep a straight face. I may be able to sweet talk Jonah into watching chick flicks with me, but never Will. “Perhaps there are lots of explosions in it. And alien abductions. Then you most certainly would have watched it many times.”

  He sticks his tongue out at me. I readily return the favor.

  A hint of a smile remains, sincere and soft. “The point is, I’m ready to let her go.”

  There’s a good five seconds of hush before I murmur, “Yeah?”

  Hope is such a fragile, lovely thing. No matter how many times it fails us, it’s still to be cherished. And it blooms in me again, this time for my friend.

  He cups the back of his neck and looks up at the ceiling. A long sigh fills the space between us. “Yeah.”

  I poke him in the belly with my chopstick. “Is it too soon to ask if this has anything to do with a certain lady whose name starts with a C and ends in an allie?”

  He bats the wood away, amused; no, exasperated is definitely a better word. “Most definitely.”

  “Do you feel at peace with this decision?”

  “Yeah,” he says again. “I really do.”

  “Then nothing else matters.” My hand covers his and squeezes. “Nothing.”

  He looks away, toward the kitchen and the clanging pots and sizzling fires, but not quickly enough before I catch the look of hopeful acceptance in his eyes. “Another thing happened when you were gone.”

  I lean back in my chair. “Did the boy and girl meet cute, perhaps in the alien spaceship?”

  “It’s eerie how close you are.” The side of his mouth quirks up. “Paul and Frieda eloped.”

  My chopsticks clatter to the table. “SHUT. UP.”

  He digs out his cell phone and scrolls through his texts until he finds just the right one. And there our friends from Ancorage and the Moose on the Loose diner are—wonderful, warm Paul and gothic, pale Frieda, and I’ll be damned. She’s smiling: genuinely, joyfully. It’s so incredibly brilliant to see that tears come to my eyes. The good kind, though. The kind brought up from the well of blessedness.

  I need to call her soon.

  “Seems like you’re not the only one who has been running to stand still.”

  I laugh quietly, marveling over how lovely our friends look in the photo. How happy. Hope explodes throughout me. “How very old-school U2 of you, Will.”

  He tips an imaginary hat at me; I gently expand the photo to focus on their faces.

  Love finds a way. It always does.

  I sit down in a chair and take in the view before me. Sophie Greenfield is handcuffed to the table, her eyes red and raw, her once enviable hair a snarled mess.

  The Guard found her just two days after I sent them after her. Lee Acacia, the Tracker who hunted me down in Alaska, found her without even breaking a sweat. She was on the Human plane, in her parents’ home in London, packing up some belongings as she no doubt prepared to run. She’d escaped Karnach’s carnage thanks to the Elders, only to realize she better get out of town immediately.

  And now here she is, sitting across from me in handcuffs.

  Jonah and I had a brief discussion with the Guard before going to the Council this week. We told them everything that Sophie Greenfield did in the Battle of Karnach. We offered up both our memories; once viewed, the consensus was unanimous. Conspiring with the Elders and committing murder against a Magical has the Council deeming Sophie a traitor.

  I’m here to let her know what her punishment is.

  She scoffs at me, her lips t
wisting in displeasure as she defiantly looks me up and down, and I can’t help but be awed over how, even now, even here, her scorn for me is thick and tangible as always.

  “Why did you do it?”

  She simply stares at me in return.

  I try another question. “How did your relationship with Enlilkian happen?”

  I already know, though. The Guard forcibly surged with her and took her memories. From what they could deduce, Enlilkian, via Jens, had conducted intensive searches for me after I’d run to Alaska. Somehow, he’d traced my, for lack of a better word, scent early on back to Jonah and subsequently Kellan. When he discovered Sophie’s obsession with Kellan, he viewed her as the perfect spy that could blend easily into Annar’s life without causing suspicion. He’d promised her the man she thought she loved if she could report my comings and goings to the Elders, even though chances are, he never would have come through. So all those times she stood outside my building and gazed up were her desperate, brainwashed attempts to hold onto someone who never loved her.

  When Zthane told me this story, I didn’t even know what to do with it. It felt like one of those absurd stories about scorned women, only ... Sophie was, I suppose, scorned. According to one of the Council’s Emotionals who evaluated her (not Jonah, because they said it was a conflict of interest), even prior to Enlilkian, Sophie had a healthy dose of narcissism and has been prone to unhealthy attachments to people from early childhood. After, though, she suffered a break with reality. Mentally, she was a sick girl whose mind and emotions were so heavily warped and hidden over months of abuse that it took days to break through what Enlilkian had done. The first Creator had mentally tortured her with Emotionals his people found and used, often forcing his victims to build her back up and believe she needed the Elders to get what she wanted. They lived in her apartment, using it as a base in Annar. All that love she thought she felt for Kellan was really nothing more than a manifestation of Enlilkian’s wishes, masked behind shields and emotional distortions so thick that Jonah and Kellan never saw her exactly for what she was for nearly a year.

  And it’s hard to hate somebody who is sick, even one who has done such awful, terrible things, and even as I have a hard time forgiving her for what she did to Mac Lightningriver. She’d dated him once, they were friends, and yet thanks to Enlilkian, she’d murdered him all too easily because she believed a madman’s absurd promises of forever with somebody who could and never would love her.

  “Did you know Mac’s wife is pregnant?” I ask when she stonewalls at all my questions. “Did you know that they’d gotten married just recently?”

  She looks down at her chipped nails. “He didn’t love her.”

  No, I think, that much is true. Mac told me more than once that his was an arranged marriage, and it ate at his soul. But he’d gone ahead and married Isadorna anyway, because it’d been expected of him. And now he’s dead and his wife that he barely ever talked to, let alone liked, is carrying his baby.

  “Raul Mesaverde died, too.” Oh, it hurts so much to say this, especially as it comes on the heels of his funeral. “As did several other people. Actually, a lot of people died, Sophie. Too many people.”

  She flinches, just a little. Just enough to give me hope that Enlilkian hasn’t corrupted her fully.

  “I’m here to tell you what the Council has decided.” I take a breath. Lay my hands flat on the table in front of her. “I will strip you of your craft, Sophie. You will no longer be a Muse after I leave you today. And then your memory will be blocked and you’ll be banished to the Human plane within the next few weeks.”

  She still doesn’t say anything. Just continues to inspect her nails like she’s debating whether or not to get a manicure.

  “I’m sorry,” I tell her.

  She blinks in surprise before narrowing her eyes.

  “I truly hope that you use this as what it is.”

  “And what’s that?” she scoffs.

  “A second chance.”

  It amazes me that, even now, she still regards me as a bug worth squishing.

  I stand up and come around the table. Finally, she shows me something other than scorn. Panic flares in her eyes; the Guard in the room come over to hold her as anxiety sends her limbs into motion. “No,” she shrieks at me. “You can’t do this to me. Don’t. Don’t, Chloe.”

  But I lay my hand on her—gently, rather than harshly. And I take every last bit of her craft out of her. It’s surprisingly easy; all I do is reach inside and pull it out, like it was nothing more than an extra shirt over her head.

  She breaks down sobbing, screeching how much she hates me, how I’ll be sorry, how someday I’ll pay. But I choose not to listen to her. She can’t hurt me anymore. Not now, not with Enlilkian gone.

  I stand up and leave the room.

  When I come home, I find Jonah and Kellan sitting in our living room. I’d asked them to stay behind when I went to visit Sophie; it wasn’t fair dragging either of them back into that mess, not when it’s time for us to put it all behind us.

  I perch on the edge of Jonah’s chair. “It’s done,” I tell them.

  My husband reaches up and takes my hand. “Are you okay?”

  I nod. It’s funny, I’ve just taken all of Sophie’s craft, and yet ... I don’t feel it in me at all. On the walk home, I let it go into the autumn winds blowing leaves through city streets. I have no need for her craft.

  I’m not Enlilkian.

  “When is she going to have her memories blocked?” Kellan asks.

  He’s been surprisingly distant since coming home from the hospital. I try to ignore the pleasure that comes from him finally acknowledging me. “I think in a few days? Maybe a week. The Guard is working out the logistics.”

  He looks at his brother and then at the window. And then he says, “Chloe, I am no longer a Magical.”

  My mouth falls open. Shuts.

  “After you two went home from the hospital a few weeks ago, I purposely stayed behind and asked Kate to run a bunch of tests on me. To figure out why I didn’t feel ...” He blows out a quiet breath. “Right. Or, the way I used to. Especially after our talk, you know?”

  Everything around me, us, it all just stops. Just ... freezes, not in the way that Enlilkian or I can make time do, but in the way that life forces on us when everything is precariously close to collapsing down around us and there’s nothing we can do to stop it. “But,” I say, but he’s not done.

  “I told you I couldn’t hear my brother. I couldn’t feel any of your emotions. I still can’t, Chloe. They brought in another Seer and then another. I’m no longer a Magical. I no longer have a craft. Fate no longer controls my life.”

  I can’t breathe. He’s not really saying this to me right now. This isn’t real. This isn’t happening.

  “Haven’t you noticed?” Kellan asks me quietly. “Haven’t you noticed how, when we’re in the same room together nowadays, you no longer feel me?”

  Stop. I need this moment to stop right now.

  He continues, “I am no longer a Magical. We are no longer Connected. Neither are Jonah and me. I’m ... I’m a non now.”

  What is he saying? Why is he saying this? “This isn’t funny, Kel—”

  “Breathe, Chloe,” Jonah is saying to me, but I don’t see him. I only see Kellan right now, gorgeous, wonderful, strong Kellan Whitecomb who came for me and died for me and now is saying he’s no longer an Emotional because I ruined him yet again.

  I’ve lost my Connection. Years of fervent wishing I wasn’t constrained by Fate’s choice mean nothing as I struggle to find the tug that tells me he’s here. Jonah’s—yes. It’s sharp and clear. But Kellan’s? Why can’t I feel it?

  He blurs in and out of focus. The muscles in my body tense. My world turns pinhole small as I focus down, down to his face. I’m frantic to find that thread that ties us together, if only to prove him a liar. Kellan Whitecomb is an Emotional. He is the twin of an Emotional, born to Magical parents. He is cursed wi
th two Connections. He is not a non. He is not even a Métis. He’s wrong. He’s just ... things are fuzzy right now. I brought him back, yes, but I brought him back.

  I had to have.

  “Jonah, please,” Kellan is saying, and then my husband leaves and Kellan is standing in front of me, and he’s saying, he’s saying as he pulls me into his arms, “It’s okay, Chloe. It’s okay.”

  Why do people keep saying this to me? Why does everyone automatically say when the shittiest things in life happen, it’s okay? Because it’s not okay. How can it be okay when he’s right? And why is he comforting me? I should be comforting him. I am not the one whose existence has been destroyed because a wildcard Creator couldn’t get it right.

  Here in his arms, I’m forced to admit I no longer feel the sharp tug of Connection between us. It no longer exists.

  Like so many times in the past, I tell him I’m sorry. But now that he can’t feel me, he’ll never know just how much because words are meaningless to the remorse that crowds my soul. So I just hold him and hold him and say it until I no longer think either of us assigns meaning to those pitiful words anymore.

  According to Etienne, there is no documentation of any Creator outside of Enlilkian ever bringing somebody back from the dead before. No Creator has ever rebuilt body parts, nor have any ever forced hearts to beat again, let alone belonging to someone they are Connected to.

  Nobody knows what to say about what I’ve done to Kellan. And they do know now, because I admit everything in an attempt to get answers.

  I insist on more tests, more specialists. More time to let his craft reemerge. He deals with all of my insistences gracefully, I think, more as an effort to appease Jonah and me than to really find out how we can get his craft back. I try giving him one—after all, if I can take one away, I surely must be able to give one, right? But Astrid takes me to the side and tells me that only Fate can disperse crafts, not Creators.

  How ironic that I can destroy them easily yet not create them at all. And yet, I try anyway, because I can’t leave a single stone unturned.

 

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