Her voice wraps around me in delicate tendrils.There’s more to Cam than you think. Or less, depending on how you look at it.
What’s that supposed to mean?
You made Cam.
I made her what?I snap.You think it’s my fault she betrayed me?
You created her in your head. You gave yourself someone to trust, someone to hold your hand through the hard times. You believed she was real so you weren’t alone.
No.My body pulls taut with denial, as well-constructed as a brick wall.She held my hand. She gave me my rings. One for every home that didn’t want me anymore. She was real.
You made up the rings to have a piece of her with you always, a piece of yourself that loved you unconditionally, even when the rest of you couldn’t.
But my rings. I let myself back into reality enough to feel them in the dark, the cold metal caked in dirt. They’re right here,real. Ametrine waits, quiet in my mind as I face the facts.
It can’t be. But Eli’s words as we lay surrounded by coffee trees run laps through my mind, kicking dust in my eyes and forming tears to wash away the lies.What other rings?he had asked.
He couldn’t see them.I sob, the memory hitting hard enough to stop the flow in my veins, to round up every moment of my life and throw it up in doubt. I suck in crumbs of dirt and cough until I taste tears and snot.
Because they don’t exist,she says.And neither did Cam.
What about at the falls? She threw the babies. She tackled me. Sh-she tried to force the elixir down my throat to make me cooperate.My body tries to kick and squirm, but I’m stuck in place with my truths.I killed her.
That was you battling to choose between facing the pain and numbing it. You chose pain over ignorance, then killed a piece of yourself. I felt it. You trusted Eli, and he let you down, so you took the only good you had created for yourself and destroyed that too. You betrayed yourself.
I clutch her stone harder, but it doesn’t help the way I fall apart inside. I grapple with the question I don’t want the answer to.Why would I do that?
Because you care about him,she says, as though it were as simple as that.And if someone hurt you more than he did, if you did something awful too, then you could justify how you felt about him. You could open your heart to someone as dark as you felt inside.
But I can’t let him in. Not all the way.I want to stop at that, especially as the urges edge their way back in with renewed force, but I continue.I don’t love him. Even though I want to… and don’t want to.
That’s not—she sighs—that’s not your fault. You have to askhimabout that. And I know you have questions for me, but right now I need you to survive. I need you to escape. I have plans for you.
I tried! I even tried magic.
Get angry, my fierce one.
Her presence wanes, leaving me buried in the darkness. But not quite alone as I mull over her parting comment. What is getting angry going to do? It’s pointless. No one listens. No one cares. It’s a waste of uncontained feelings.
But even as I try to stop the swell of rage, my thoughts stoke its flame. My buried body. My hungry stomach. My bleeding limbs. My burned cheeks. Each contributes to the ire. Even my worn-out heart. It turns toward the fire.
I scream.
And the ground rumbles. Harder and harder. Until it’s shaking. Mypocket of air is lost to the shuffle of dirt. It covers my face, my chest. My eyelashes grow heavy with the clumps. I inhale chunks through my nose. And the panic ripping through me is knife-sharp.
The earth around me is as far from stable as possible, much like myself. And crying isn’t an option. Nor yelling. And I can’t help but wonder if all those feelings finally found a purpose, if I made this happen, if I can be as destructive on the outside as I am on the inside. The ground grinds with a final, violent shift, and the bottom drops out.
I fall.
And fall.
Into another room. Dirt lands on top of me, cold and heavy and suffocating.
Chapter 32
EVER
Never!”
