It was a fucking goodbye.
I felt sick at that moment. Like that feeling when walking up a flight of stairs, and you arrive at the top before you thought, and you step up onto the last step that was never there. This was the feeling living inside me.
“I feel like you and me are ashes,” I whispered, and Stone’s eyes were bloodshot when they swung to mine. I’d never seen them bloodshot before. Ink and blood. “We’re ashes,” I repeated. “We hold our shape until someone pokes at us. We last hundreds of years. We don’t dissolve or float; we sink, andoh,do we sink. But at the end of the day, we’re still ashes. Simply born with tragedy in our bones.”
It was quiet again, aside from the stupid song.
Another drag. Another exhale.
And then, “Adora, I cannot keep going on like this.” And just from the way he saidAdora, I could already feel my heart breaking all over again. “I can’t see you with him. I can’t exist in the background while he’s touching you and kissing you. It’s killing me, and I can’t bear it any longer,” he said. “You are my obsession, and if neither of us lets go, there will come a day where you’ll suffer the consequences of my actions.”
I cannot keep going on like this, my mind repeated, slowly, as though it couldn’t make sense of it.
“Please don’t do this to me,” I whispered, anxious, feeling something that took up so much space inside me slowly slipping away. “I have ten more days with you. Hang on for ten more days.Give me ten more days. Then you can hate me. Then you can never want to see me again.”
Stone looked up at me, dumbfounded. “You’re absolutely helpless.” He flicked his cigarette into the fire and stalked toward me, taking my head into his hands. “Before I go, just tell me one thing,” he said, eyes sliding between mine. “Right here, right now. Nothing less than honesty. If you had the choice to leave, would you have come with me that day I asked you in the lighthouse?” He shook his head. “Would you leave with me right now if we could go?”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “Neither one of us has that option.”
“It does matter!” His eyes never looked as dark as they did then—a slice of the night sky. He lowered his voice, more gentle. “It matters to me.”
“Why?”
“Because it will be whatyouwant. Not what the town wants, or your coven, or your fiancé, or your father. If you had the power to choose for yourself, would you ever choose me? Even if it’s a three-letter fairytale?”
His eyes bounced between mine.
If he knew me at all, he would already know the answer.
My sisters were here. I couldn’t not be here to ensure safety and fairness while Augustine was high priest. I couldn’t not be there to hold Fable when she would cry herself to sleep again. Or witness all her special moments, should she have any, like a wedding, her ascending ceremony. There was then Ivy, who I had already disappointed so many times. I couldn’t leave her alone. Not after all we’d been through together. At least if I were here, Ivy and I could be broken-hearted and alone together.
I would sacrifice it all for them, so how dare he ask me to choose.
I’d prepared for a life without love.
I’d never prepared for a life without my sisters.
“No,” I finally said.
Stone ripped his eyes away and blew out a breath. “And to think I was coming here to finally get somewhere with you before time ran out.” He clenched his jaw and dropped back a step. “You pretend to be many things, Adora, but I didn’t think you were pretending with me. You’re one hell of an actress.”
“I wasn’t pretending.”
“Then you’re afraid.”
“You’re scared too!”
“No, Adora,” he said, a grin. “I’m not afraid to admit what I want.”
“What do you want then?”
“Only you, and nothing more.”
“Then tell me you love me,” I said in a whisper, desperate. In two weeks, I’d either die or be trapped in a loveless marriage. This could possibly be the last time, and how could I go on never knowing how it feels to hear him say it? “Even if it’s just a three-word fairytale.”
His body turned rigid, his expression stunned. “You are incredibly selfish. You’re giving another man a lifetime, only to leave me here to rot,” he said, frustration screwing in his throat. “In less than two weeks, you’ll have his last name, he’ll have you in ways that’ll make me sick, and I’ll be another cursed Heathen who will forever desire a girl who will never be mine.”
“So, fight for me!”
