Because he had betrayed her. She caught the pendant with her cold fingers and squeezed, feeling the carved surface dig into her skin.
‘Simon…’
‘Simon is dead. Gone. You know that. Lost. You should let go. Ari…’ And something flickered in his eyes, something she finally did recognise, a trace of him still there. ‘It’s not safe here. You need to go.’
She reached out one shaking hand and it closed on the material of his coat. She half expected it to pass right through him, but he was as solid and real as she was. The fabric was a rich, heavy wool, but instead of the warm softness she expected, it felt like it was dusted with frost. So cold. Beneath the clothes, she could feel the strong lines of Simon’s body.
‘Simon…’ she whispered and looked up into his face.
It was him. The pain in his eyes told her that. And yet it was not.
‘I cannot help you. I cannot save you. Ys is not a prize to be won. I should never have tried… Please, Ari. Please, just leave.’
‘But you…you’re here. How are you here?’ She leaned forward, still shaking, and pressed her face to his chest, just as she had done a million times. His arms came up around her, instinctually, so familiar a gesture, intimate and comforting. Even with the touch of ice…
For a moment, all she could do was breathe, the cold entering her body, seeping through her skin, swallowing her up.
‘Ari,’ he whispered and his voice sounded heavy with heartbreak. ‘I’m not here. It’s just a dream.’
But it wasn’t. She was awake. She was standing here, shivering in his cold arms. This was not a dream, not this time. She had dreamed too often of having Simon back that she knew the difference.
‘You’re here,’ she insisted. ‘Why are you still here?’
‘I’m not, Ari. I’m just a memory. An echo.’
‘But why? Why did you come back?’
And for one brief moment she thought he’d say, for her. That he’d come back for her. That he’d heard all her prayers, and all her tears, and he’d come back for her. That he was sorry. That he had made a terrible mistake. That he had never meant to leave her… For just a moment, before he spoke.
‘It was the mask. It transformed me. When I found it…when I found her…’
Dahut’s mask. He had found it then, before she did. How did it find its way back to the sea, lodged in a rocky crevice, guarded by an eel? It couldn’t have got there by itself.
‘You hid the mask, didn’t you? Why, Simon? If it proved that you were right…’
‘Because it’s too dangerous. It is a dark and ancient magic, created by Ankou, wielded by Dahut, cursed by all whose lives it took. She will use it. How could she resist? I had to hide it, protect it. And with it, Ys. When I died…’ The words seemed to fade away and he looked confused. ‘When I died…’ Simon frowned, memories and confusion playing through his haunted eyes.
But Ari had another question, one no one else could answer. It burned inside her, terrible, sickening. And it had nothing to do with Dahut or the du Lacs. ‘Who was she, Simon? The woman in your letter?’
He laughed, just once, a brief broken noise, but didn’t reply, taking on that cold, aloofness again.
She had to know. ‘Who was she, Simon?’
His eyes grew distant, his gaze shifting over her shoulder, down towards the cove, out to the ocean. ‘I couldn’t help myself, Ari. She was…she was like the sea itself. Before I realised what was happening…’ He held her tighter, just for a moment. Frost ate in through her clothes, speared her heart. ‘I’m sorry. Go home,mon coeur. Be safe. Live your life. Forget about this place. The sea has taken most of the people here. It always will. You were not meant to come here. The letter was meant to keep you safe, to keep you away. Forget Rafael du Lac. Forget me.’
And suddenly he was gone. Like a plume of smoke, he twisted in the air and he was gone. Ari was standing alone in a deserted graveyard, leaning back against the ice-cold metalwork of the gate, her arms wrapped around her chest, with tears like flakes of snow on her face.
CHAPTERFOURTEEN
Simon’s words haunted Ari all night, waking her from nightmares where he held her tightly and the sea rose around them. He’d warned her to leave, implied he was trying to protect her by breaking up with her. And yet he admitted he’d loved someone else. Far more than he had ever loved her, she suspected. By the time her alarm sounded, she had been tossing and turning for hours. Simon had hidden the mask and somehow she had found it. As if it was meant to be. But why had he hidden it? He had talked about protecting it. Protecting Ys. From what?
They were meant to dive that morning, but even as Ari dragged herself downstairs, she could tell something else was off. Jason was in a foul mood, stomping around the house like a petulant teenager.
‘What’s up?’ she asked Nico as he fussed over the coffee on the stove. A plate of crêpes from the local supermarket sat open on the table.
‘Thierry isn’t back yet.’
‘Thierry? Where is he?’
