One beat
One song
My heart jumps from Milo to Eli to Atom, tears flowing freely. I don’t let myself turn around to look at Kelter. I don’t run and ask all the questions flitting through my mind. Or smack him upside the head like he deserves. I stay with Eli. With Milo.
Kaleida holds Milo’s hand. His cough spews deep red blood over us. He manages a final, soul-brightening smile and tries to grip Eli’s shirt, only finding the scarred skin of his chest. He closes his fist, weak and trembling, and rests it over Eli’s heart.
It stays there through his next shaky breath. And the next and the next, pulling in more blood than air. Until his fist falls. Until his chest is still. Until he’s gone.
I’m dizzy with pain, but it’s his body—the limp limbs and empty blue stare—that fills my lungs with cement. I want to undo his death. I want to go back in time.
I want it to be a vision.
But it’s not. I pull his ring off my finger, the only real one I carried all this time, though the others are already back. Then I tie the red string around his bloody pinky. And knot it twice so he doesn’t lose it again.
The pain on Eli’s face, the twitchy control he can’t sustain, the tears he fights to contain—they hurt as much as the loss. An unbearable weight crushes my existence. His chest heaves, and he looks at me,petrified. His body quakes, violent shakes and shudders, those consuming brown eyes begging for another reality.
And it all strikes me at once, a massacre, a caffeine injection direct to my heart. Every carefully constructed wall falls. My defenses are bombarded with forbidden feelings, stepped on by a defiant march of emotion across my chest. My heart is exposed, blasted with memories and moments… with Eli. Of songs and drums. Of knives and cuffs. Of grins that slip past his control. Memorable firsts and facing fears. Of whispered needs. Of confessions. Of each kiss that he couldn’t hold back.
Every wall I thought was within my control belonged to him. And now, he’s dropped them all. I grip my chest. This man. This man who arranged my abduction a year in advance, who locked me up and pushed me with triggers. Who laid bare his secrets, his soul. Who treasures my underwear and favors my ears. I feel everything he wouldn’t let free in me.
Only now is my heart my own, able to choose. And it’s as simple as Ametrine made it sound. I know how I feel. I let those eyes of his see as deep as they dare. He needs to know. “I—”
“You don’t,” he interrupts, near hysterical, my voice now under his control. And silenced. “You keep your fucking promise.”
My eyes sting. My nose and mouth clog as though I were dunked underwater. Sound is distorted. I can breathe, but my lungs hurt anyway. Or maybe that’s the ache of my heart as it overflows. But when the sensation passes, I’m left hollow, incomplete.
Eli clutches his ear, his face twisting with heartbreak. The whites of his eyes go gray, the irises too, a storm inside. His body lurches, every limb rigid and tight. Milo slips from his lap. His face is taut, neck corded, jaw clenched. He falls forward and catches himself on his hands and knees.
“What are you doing?” I cry. Gray flames burst from the marks on his back, reaching four feet high. He roars in pain, his neck circling, back rolling up and down. “Eli!” I rip off my shirt with an excruciating pull past my shoulder and whack his back to extinguish the flames. They finally surrender under my constant attack. Smoke billows and escapes in wisps. His scream falters, his throat too raw to continue. Then his head swivels in my direction, but with his eyes grayed over, I can’t tell where he’s looking. “What happened?”
His neck ticks to the side. “You broke your promise not to love me. You triggered the second half of the curse.” His voice is low and unfeeling.
My blood crunches inside my veins, crystalized and clogged, hardly slogging along. “And now what?”
He blinks, and when his lashes rise, his eyes are solid black, so shiny that my own reflect back at me, like indigo stars on a cloudless night. But I still see the struggle, the pain deep in those tunnels. He’s trapped, his words revealing just how far I’ll have to go to free him from this curse. “Now, Everielle, I kill you.”
THEre is no END to Never.
