Amaris froze. “What if it’s something else?” Her voice was frail. Pricilla would believe her; she’d be about the only person who would. What if someone had learned she was from a different world and that was why they tried to kill her?
“Why else would someone want you dead?”
She swallowed hard. “Do you remember what was in that journal you lent me?”
Pricilla tilted her head, studying her. “Yes…why?”
“What if I told you that it was true, all of it.”
Pricilla’s silence settled through the air like an ominous fog rolling through the dark on a humid morning. Immediately, Amaris wanted to hide within the ruffles of her dress.
“Are you saying it’s possible to travel between realms?”
Amaris bit her lip, stopping herself from taking it all back. “I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t.”
Pricilla’s gasp rung through the tower.
“I know you may not believe me,” Amaris continued. “I can barely believe it myself most days. I come from the world Wineman described, a different part of it, but the same one.” She swallowed a shaky breath. “The night they found me in the woods was when I fell through whatever portal he described. It’s why I’ve been trying to escape, not only to get back to my life, but to my world.”
Pricilla didn’t reply. She sat with her lips parted and her eyes wide.
“Please say something.”
“Do you still plan to go back?” Her whisper carried through the tower in a loud echo.
Amaris dreaded her words, fighting the sting they brought to her chest. She hadn’t told Theodoric what his words meant to her. He’d offered her the choice of a different life. Not that it mattered now. The duke wanted her sent to Elric, and someone wanted her dead.
“I don’t belong here.” The words felt like a lie. She may not have remembered the Conjugation, but she remembered the question she’d asked herself while getting ready with Adelaide.What if I stayed?
“But what if you do? Maybe this is all supposed to happen. What if it wasn’t a coincidence?”
Amaris felt as if the world was dropping onto her shoulders. “Is it a coincidence that, for a whole year, I’ve been verbally abused and berated at night to wake up to a completely different man who wants nothing more than to love me?” She coughed, attempting to keep her composure. “I only ran because he hit me.”
“Amaris,” she breathed, “I didn’t know—”
“No one did, because I hid it. I was too afraid of what it would mean if I gave it true meaning. I faded away until all I had was healing people. I stopped drawing. I stopped living. I lived for others, risking my life, my friends’ lives. I haven’t been able to stop it. My life has spun out of control, and every time I look in the mirror, I fear the coward I’m becoming.”
Pricilla took her hands in hers, not even knowing it was everything Amaris needed. She didn’t have her mother to hold her after her fights with Derek or to tell her it was going to be all right.
“I may not know what your realm is like, but I understand pain. You may feel the burden of the realm on your shoulders, but it isn’t yours to bear alone. You were brought here for a reason,” Pricilla said, squeezing her hands tighter. “Everything happens for a reason.”
“I don’t know what to do.” The fear lingering in her heart screamed to run, but something else tugged and whispered for her to stay.
“Do you truly want to go back?”
“I don’t know what I want anymore.” The truth liberated her, and she sighed. Who was she? All her life she’d wanted to become the next firefighter legacy. She wanted to help people and enjoyed being a paramedic, but what was she living for? For a year, she’d been lying to herself that she could fix her relationship with Derek, and now she’d pulled back the veil. She saw Derek for who he’d become, and it frightened her.
“Then stay,” Pricilla said.
Amaris’s eyes drift through the tower. The worktable was cluttered with opened jars of herbs, and a pipe sat on the corner. The sheet beneath her was no longer a foreign fabric, instead soft and warming. The tower was hers. Derek couldn’t walk up the steps and demand she unlock the door or use the key he kept hidden.
All the signs had been there. For how long had she believed her relationship was normal when everyone around her had seen something different?
“But what about Viv? Is it selfish to leave her?”
“Only you can answer that.” Pricilla rubbed a hand over Amaris’s back. “But fight for the life you deserve.”
Amaris wiped the snot from her face. “But the duke—”
