Tears wouldn’t stop falling from my eyes, but I was too scared to wipe them away. To think the moment I so much as blinked, she’d fall off the edge without me. I took another step forward, needing to be closer. “If you jump off that cliff, Fallon, I’m jumping with you.”
Men and women of the town approached from behind, calling out to me, threatening me if I hurt her. They had no idea what she meant to me. They cursed me, called me names, and demanded to take me to The Wicker Mannow. I heard them all, and Fallon’s terrified gaze darted from me to what was going on behind me. I shook my head, caught her attention, kept it with mine.
Neither one of us needed to explain ourselves. To anyone.
“Don’t listen to them, Fallon. They’re all liars, but we’re not,” I whispered, less than fifteen feet away from her.
Fallon’s toes were at the edge of the cliff, her opened sweater being pulled with the harsh breeze. My muscles tensed. I thought this would have been enough, being here, but it wasn’t. I didn’t know what else to do!
Fallon looked to me, and I saw the shift in her expression instantly.
The finality.
Then she tore her eyes from mine and looked down.
“I’ll find you,” she said, but I couldn’t make sense of the things she was saying when my heart was beating out of my chest.
“Fallon, no,” I threw my palms up, and she took a single step back. “Fallon, STOP!” She lunged forward, bent her knees. “NO!”
She was jumping, and I was sprinting after her, not stopping until there was no ground beneath me and all of me was in the air. Then I was holding her, twisting with her in my arms until my back hit the hard surface of the ocean. All air knocked from my lungs. A fierce cold shocked me, an instant sting from my flesh to my marrow, freezing me still.
Everywhere, the waters of the Atlantic consumed me. And Fallon wasn’t in my arms. My arms registered before my brain did. Fallon wasn’t in my arms!
Fallon
I felt myself drifting, and it made me feelweightless.
I was weightless, and all around me was black except for above me. At the surface, Julian was splashing and twisting in place under the sun, his legs kicking out from under him. As long as he was at the surface.
This dark and cold ocean was my funeral, my final resting place. And maybe because the curse would be broken, Julian would live. It was all I ever wanted as I was drifting, drifting, drifting.
The sun had these streaks that glinted off the surface of the water. They looked like stars from down here. I wondered if everyone knew the ocean had its own sky, one where Julian was. A sky that was poetry all on its own. I was sure above was warmer than down here, because down here, the cold had already frozen me, but I was prepared this time. I didn’t fight the cold when I wanted death to take me.
And death was so quiet and cold and fierce, like Julian.
Then Julian flipped around and dipped under the waterline, and his head shifted back and forth as he searched the bottom. That was when my calm heart stopped being calm. His wild and panicked eyes locked on mine, and he pushed his arms against the water, swimming down toward me. I shook my head, pointing to the surface, trying to tell him tostop! To leave me be!
I tried to move, sink deeper faster, to put more distance between us. Julian fisted my clothes, yanked me up to him until he had me in his arms. I struggled against him, water bubbles exploding from my mouth. The sea slipped between my lips, filled my chest, my lungs. And my bones, they felt like ice that had shattered inside me with sharp edges cutting into my flesh.
His eyes were strained and desperate as he fought against me, struggling to lift me from the depths before running out of oxygen. His fingers dug into my flesh to keep me one with him, but I pushed back against his chest.
Julian grasped the back of my head, and our desperate and defeated eyes met. His eyes said so many things at that moment. But once he knew I wasn’t going to go with him, that I would fight him every second of the way, his eyes calmed.Okay, his eyes said.I’m not leaving you.
We’re going to die.
Together.
Then they said:I love you, Fallon.
I shook my head, begging for him to let me go and save himself. In a last-ditch effort as my body jerked for air, I tried to pry his body from mine. Julian refused to let go. He only held me tighter.
Then he slipped down his mask, and he pressed his mouth to mine, breathing all of his last breath of warm air into me.
Together, we were sinking, sinking, sinking, just like every other time we kissed. He never stopped fighting, and I loved him.
The thought of it all changed something inside me.
Instead of slowing, it felt as if everything was reversing, heightening, pacing. My blood felt like beams of moonlight. A glacier rushed through my veins. Around me, it was no longer a black abyss, but a soft-white glow lighting up the tinted sea. The bottom of the sea stirred, creating a sandstorm on the ocean floor. Shells and seaweed and sand sifted up and clouded the waters. Julian’s eyes sprang open, darted around. It wasn’t him. It was all coming from me, and a fierce energy was humming inside me.
