Lore's breath hitched.
“Show me,” he whispered to the pool. “Show me what I need to see.”
The shadowed version of Lore in the pool turned its head, looking directly at me rather than its reflection. Its mouth moved, speaking words I couldn't hear but somehow understood.He belongs to me.
“It's not just showing me the past,” he said, his voice tight. “It's showing me what I'll become if we fail tonight.”
Chapter 53
Lore
The pool waited, as patient as a predator.
Each breath came harder than the last. Sweat beaded on my neck despite the stone's chill. The cavern's echoes reverberated in my chest.
Reyla stayed with me, watching. Waiting to make sure I didn't need her.
I always would. She was a hand stretched out in the dark, the warmth of a soul on a frigid night. There would never be a time when I wouldn't need her by my side.
The surface rippled, and I braced myself for what was coming. Kneeling made my legs ache, but I didn’t flinch. This was mine to face. My heart pounded too loud in my ears.
The second my fingers hovered over the water, the surface shifted.
My throat clenched, and I leaned closer.
Two figures stared back.
Panic jolted through me, and I remembered beingsplit. Torn in half. We’d healed. I knew that. Reyla had done it with all the love she so willingly gave me. She’d said she loved all of me.
But doubt clawed through my mind.
One side of me was arrogant and cruel, yet equally conniving. The other part of this man had stood strong, accepting that this was the way it had to be until we found her.
At dawn and dusk, we stared at each other in a mirror, spoke together, but we could not fully reach across the divide.
As I watched the arrogance and cruelty of that part of me, I remembered those I'd let down, how unkind I'd been when someone asked me for even a simple thing. My arrogance resulted in pain for those I claimed to care about. The ache inside my chest deepened. Even now, reunited, I wondered if the fracture had ever healed.
What if the pieces of me she’d loved most didn’t exist anymore? I may have lost the best parts of Lorant and Merrick.
The figures in the water wavered and another image appeared. I knew that corridor. I knew that ten-year-old child.
I stood in the corridor. Alone.
My mother’s voice echoed, whipping me even now. “You shame this family.”
My chest clenched. I’d forgotten her icy disappointment and how her words had wrapped around me like chains. I'd loved her, but what I’d loved most had been stolen when my father died.
The boy flinched and straightened his spine. As he'd quickly learned to do, he bit down his fear.
Prager stepped from the dark behind him. Pressing close, she whispered into his ear. “She will never love you.”
The boy froze. And for one moment, he believed her.
I jerked back from the water, gasping. The vision held me captive, forcing me to relive moments I'd buried deep.
The corridor faded, and the vision warped, snapping into a new place.
More. My feral smile grew. Come for me, then.
