“Zo gave him a sedative,” she mutters.
I don’t reply. My voice is still frozen.
She speaks after a long pause. “His… his face was… wet with tears. Is it… impossible to forgive him?”
“No,” I breathe.It’s impossible not to forgive him.
“I don’t want to force you into doing anything, Lyn,” she starts crying. “But I can’t see him like this.”
My tears start falling again. My phone vibrates with another incoming call. I pull it away from my cheek and see Zo’s name.
I wipe my face and press the phone back to my ear. “I’ll call you later. Zo’s calling.”
She hums, still crying.
I pick up Zo’s call.
“Hello, Lyn.”
“Hello.”
“How are you?” he asks in his calm voice.
“I don’t know,” I say, looking up at the sky. I don’t know how I am. I talk to him for only a few minutes once a day, yet he stays in my brain the entire time. My aim was to give myself time, space, and peace after I talked to my dad that night. There is time. There is space.But there is no peace.
“He needs you. I would have never called you to say this, but this is urgent. Come back. Whatever you ask me to give you, I will give you. Even if it’s torturing Leo, I’ll do that for you. If you want him to suffer, I will arrange that for you. But not like this,this is breaking him apart.”
I open my mouth to speak, but my phone is snatched from my hand.
Papa sees the name on the screen and presses the phone to his ear. He listens to whatever Zo is saying, then speaks. “No. She won’t come back until he earns her forgiveness. I would not have let this marriage happen if I had known he would send my daughter back home in such a heartbroken state. What kind of man is he if he couldn’t earn it within one month? I am seriously regretting my decision to let him marry her.”
He listens to Zo for a moment, then scoffs. “I don’t care about any of this. If he wants my daughter back, he has to prove to me that he is worthy of her. Even if she forgives him now, I won’t send her back until I forgive the man who has given her nothing but tears.”
He cuts the call and hands me back my phone, his jaw tight, his expression hard. “One more time I see you crying because of this son of Alessio, I’ll kill him.”
chapter 34
Iselyn
I place my head on Nana’s knees, exhausted, staring at the living room of Nana’s cottage, the room where I spent countless afternoons making dresses for my dolls with her.
She pats my head in slow, gentle strokes. I close my eyes. I got no sleep last night, just bare shut-eye filled with dreams of him. More like nightmares. He was walking backward at the edge of a cliff, and I was shouting at him to stop, but he only smiled.
Nana hums in a low tune, I start drifting off to sleep. Another dream takes over.
This one is from the night he was chasing me in the woods. I’m sitting on a tree branch, my heart pounding, watching him come closer. But his footsteps stop. I look around, the forest has suddenly died. There are no green leaves, no grass. Everything looks rotting, stripped of life. There is no moon.
I mutter his name. “Matleon.”
He doesn’t answer.
I jump down from the tree, but the fall doesn’t end. I keep falling and falling, until I land in a pit. I shout for help, screaming his name.
I’m crying, thrashing, trying to climb out, but dark water pulls me under, dragging me deeper. Panic burns my chest. Someone grabs me and hauls me out.
I see Zo’s face. He’s crying.Zo never cries.
I clutch his leg desperately. “Where is Matleon?”
