“There’s something else I need to tell you. Something that’s happened to me,” she started, her voice smaller than I’d ever heard it. Uncertainin a way that Violet never was. “And it’s going to sound. . . impossible. Insane, maybe. You’re probably going to think I’m delusional or need psychiatric help or—”
“Violet—” I tried to interrupt, to reassure her.
“Just listen, okay?” She cut me off, still not looking at me. Her gaze remained fixed on some point across the room, as if meeting my eyes would steal whatever courage she’d scraped together. “Let me get it out before you react. Before you decide I’m crazy.”
I nodded, even though she wasn’t watching. “I am listening.”
She took a deep breath. Her hands twisted in the sheets, wringing the expensive cotton like she was trying to strangle it. Whatever secret she carried, I could tell it was heavy.
My mind immediately spiraled through possibilities, each scenario worse than the last.She has discovered the supernatural world on her own. She has been attacked by a vampyre in some dark corner of campus. Hunted by a werewolf who caught her scent. Seduced by a siren who tried to drown her in promises. Marked by something ancient and hungry that I cannot protect her from.
The thoughts crashed through my skull like an avalanche, burying rational thought beneath layers of protective instinct and mounting dread.
“I’m notjustthe twenty year old Violet you grew up with,” she said. “Iamher. But I’m also. . . older. With memories from a different life.”
The world opened beneath me.
I felt the actual physical sensation of freefall, of solid ground dissolving into void, of everything I thought I understood about reality restructuring itself into impossible new configurations that my mind struggled to map.
My heart stopped. Actually stopped for one horrible second before slamming back to life with enough force to make my ribs ache. I knew—with the bone-deep certainty born from my own impossible experience—that she was telling the truth.
We are the same.
The realization detonated in my chest like a bomb, scattering every thought I’d been trying to hold together. Whatever fears I’d harboredbefore—the supernatural world reaching out to grasp at her from beyond the veil—thiswas so much worse.
Chapter 23
Violet
Iremembered everything from last night. Every touch. Every whispered command. Every shuddering breath he’d drawn when I’d ground against him.
But now was not the time to dissect what we’d done, what lines we’d crossed, what it meant that I’d fallen apart in his arms while he’d held me together.
“I’m not really twenty,” I started, feeling my pulse echo in my ears like a drum. My body still sang from last night’s pleasure, muscles loose and sated in a way I hadn’t felt in either lifetime. “I lived before. In another time, another body.”
The words felt like pulling shrapnel from a wound—necessary, agonizing, leaving me raw.
“I was nine when I was abducted. Thirty-three when I was murdered.” I hesitated, struggling for words that could possibly contain the enormity of what I was trying to explain. “Then I woke up here. Younger. Safe with my family somehow. I thought I was free.”
The room was quiet except for our breathing as the world continued around us—distant traffic humming below, the building settling, the whisper of wind against glass. I felt foolish trying to explain something that sounded ripped from science fiction, but I didn’t know how else to begin.
“But waking every day, wondering if this life was a dream. . .” My voice cracked, and I forced myself to continue. “Struggling with nightmares that felt more real than the sheets I woke up in. I couldn’t ignore thepossibility that the man who destroyed me might still exist in this timeline. That he might be hurting other girls the way he hurt me.”
Rowan remained still beside me, his presence solid and grounding. I looked towards the darkened television screen, noting how much taller he sat compared to me even slouched against the headboard. His white-blonde hair was tousled from sleep, sticking up in places where my fingers had tangled through it hours ago. His pale eyes looked unearthly in the morning light filtering through the windows—blue-gray like winter ice, like frozen lakes that held entire worlds beneath their surface.
I clenched my thighs together, remembering his hands on my body. Patient. Careful.Reverent.
Everything I had never been able to feel with Edward. Everything the few high school boys I’d dated behind Daddy’s back had failed to provide—clumsy fumbling in backseats, more concerned with their own pleasure than mine.
“My daddy. . .” I stopped, shaking my head. “No. Charlie. Shit.” I took a ragged breath. “I don’t know how to begin explaining the family situation.”
Rowan’s hand found mine, his fingers lacing through mine with gentle firmness. “I am aware of your father’s and Charlie’s situation. Their rebirths.”
I gasped and turned to face him, but his gaze remained fixed forward on our reflections in the black mirror of the television. “How. . .?”
Rowan sighed, the sound heavy with its own weighted history. The way his attention stayed fixated on the screen led me to believe he was searching for the right words, mapping out his explanation before speaking.
“It is complicated,” he said finally. “But it does sound similar to what you have experienced.”
