Then it hit me.
What Morty had said after he’d shown up unexpectedly. About going back to the beginning. One moment that changed everything I thought I’d known about Camelot Court.
Whether he’d meant Vivian’s attack, the truth about beingThe King’s Maiden, or Landon saying no, it didn’t matter.
Each moment lined up with what he’d said during my firstElementslesson with Ben. And what he’d said tonight.
If I went forward without piecing together an extra turn, I’d take the obvious path—the one Desi must’ve confirmed with Merle last year—but there was a second one.
If there was an extra S, an extra left turn…
I dabbed my shirt on the spot next toElements. Then I clicked the lighter on and held it beneath the schedule.
My mouth dropped open as the word appeared.
Elements ofSurprise.
With nothing but faith in my gut, I took off down the tunnel.
Landon
Memories tore through. Moments, emotions, and meaning I’d been searching for my whole life.
Why I always followed him.
Why I trusted him.
Without fail, even when I didn’t know why, it thrummed beneath the surface because it was part of me.
He was part of me. Who I was, who I am, and who I’d become—it didn’t exist without him.
I was his.
Guilt tore through my chest at the memory of my mother, and my reaction to it as I stood before him. Flooded with feelings I’d had back then, I couldn’t stand it.
But I was older now than I had been then.
And what she’d done, what she’d shamed and brought straight to Drake D’Arthur needing to tear us apart, it was her—shehad been wrong.
Not us.
Certainty pulsed through me, rippling like a wave over a midnight blue lake and coursing through my limbs.
I had to find him.
As I raced through the party, searching everywhere for where he’d gone after I left, my phone beeped, but I ignored it.
I couldn’t stop. Couldn’t stand another moment without telling him I remembered him.
I remembered us.
He stood by his father, his eyes unfocused as his father spoke, a hand constantly brushing down the front of his suit, and I remembered how he always used to do it. The first time I saw him do it that day at his father’s house, I knew what it was—I felt it—and I’d stared at him as his father spoke about what I was meant to be for him.
What I might become.
I noticed each time his hand brushed his clothes.
His fear, his uncertainty—it resonated in my bones, and Ichose him.
