I had been alone all of my life.
But now I had Ryder.
Tears leaked out of the corners of my eyes and slipped down my dirty cheeks. My heart raced in my chest with new feelings and restored emotions. My chest swelled and expanded freeing up space for my shriveled lungs, coaxing them back to life once more.
When Ryder pulled back my lips were swollen and my breathing was ragged with passion. He pressed his forehead to mine, with eyes still closed, and smiled.
He smiled and I had never seen anything more beautiful.
“I love you,” he whispered again, his voice grating against the depth of his feelings and heat of our shared moment.
“I love you, too.” There had never been sweeter words spoken.
“And God, have I missed you, Ivy.”
I couldn’t speak again. Tears started falling and I nodded frantically so he knew I felt the same way. I had missed him. I had missed him more than I knew it was possible to miss someone.
He wrapped me in a hug again, this time to comfort my inconsolable tears. And finally… finally it worked.
I felt better.
I felt healed.
I felt restored.
After a little more time, I finally pulled myself together. It wasn’t easy. I wanted to sit with Ryder for the next five years and sort through all of the things I had to cry about. It wouldn’t always have been about him or what we went through, but I had plenty of trauma rattling around in my head, desperate to come out in some form of wet sorrow.
“Ready to find your mom now?” he asked in a gentle voice.
His eyes moved over my face, carefully calculating if I could do this. I was a hot mess in so many ways. But in this way, onthiscrusade, I was surprisingly pulled together.
I was ready to get my mom. I was ready to face the Fates.
If for no other reason than I needed some goddamn control in my life. I needed to take these evil witches out and assume the reins of my life for the first time.
I was sick and tired of running… of being afraid… of letting other people tell me how I should live my life.
Ryder and I had a future to live out that was as far from this freaking mountain as humanly possible. And these crazy hags were standing in my way.
I also felt the stirring need to rescue my mother.
Ava didn’t deserve my help. I knew that. I felt it in my bones. But I couldn’t leave her here either.
She claimed to have saved me through her godawful treatment of me. She claimed to have neglected me on purpose. That every time she handed me over to Nix, every moment I had endured abuse and mistreatment, that every time my innocence was ripped away and replaced with something vile, she had wanted to motivate me to leave.
I couldn’t help but feel skepticism. I mean, how easy would it be for someone to come up with those excuses after everything that had happened?Pretty damn easily.
But whether she was lying or not, the outcome was the same. Iwasmotivated to leave. I was more than motivated, I was obsessed. And I had not stopped trying until I left Nix and everything else in this insidious world behind.
“I’m ready,” I told Ryder. “Let’s get her and get the hell out.”
“Have you thought any more on how we’re going to do that? I really would like to avoid going back the way we came.”
I slipped my hands into his and let him pull me to my feet. His skin had gone icy with the mention of the Underworld. “I’ll call Hermes,” I said quickly, hoping to dispel the worst of his fears. “He’ll come get us.”
Ryder pulled me along with him, down the path that would hopefully lead us to the Fates. “Will he be pissed that we took off without telling him?”
I laughed, but it sounded bitter and empty even to my own ears. “He’ll be furious.”
