With a sharp cough, he let me go.
Stalking away, he found his ruined trousers strewn over a smoking bush. Yanking them on, he muttered quietly, “If you don’t want to be flat on your back again, I suggest you get dressed.”
“But my necklace—”
“Put some clothes on, Rook.” His voice was strained and gruff. “Hopefully by then, I’ll be able to concentrate instead of suffering the very real agony of needing to fuck you again.”
With my heart pounding and neck terribly empty, I found the only part of my outfit he hadn’t turned to ashes. At least it’d dried from the fires instead of sopping wet from the falls.
Shaking out the filthy white skirt, I pulled it up past my breasts and fashioned it into a simple strapless dress, knotting the waistband to keep it up.
Only once I was appropriately covered did Lucien roll his shoulders and fix his gaze on mine. “I have a hundred questions that need answers, but for now...let’s focus on your necklace.”
Hope leapt through me. “Do you have it? Did you find it?”
“No, I didn’t. And I’m glad it’s gone. Even if you hadn’t lost it, I would’ve destroyed it. Because tonight just proved I was right.”
I frowned. “Right about what?”
He tapped his fingers on the piece of metal trapping his heart. “You had a vitalsync core...just like I did. Only difference was, you could be trusted to never take yours off and mine? It needed to be surgically implanted to prevent me from destroying it.”
“I...don’t understand.”
“All of this—” he arched his chin at the burning valley “—started thesecondthe vitalsync core was defibrillated back in the bed and breakfast. It’d only been dead a few minutes before I almost melted the damn bathroom.”
My breathing quickened.
“All along, I thought it was the reason I was burning but...I had it wrong.” He shrugged. “I was burning anyway. I’vealwaysbeen burning. The longer I’m free, the more memories are returning. I’m almost certain that I was born this way and the vitalsync core was the cage to stop me. Marcus kept me weak because he knew the second I was free, he would be dead. And the blood harvesting? I reckon he’s doing something else with it—not just running the Brimstone reactors.”
He came closer, his voice softening. “But all of that doesn’t matter because...if they truly are after my blood and know what I am, then...I hate to tell you, Rook, but they’re after you too. You’re just another version of me. Theoppositeof me. And that necklace of yours? It was just another cage to keep you weak.”
My ears rang as my fingers wrapped around my throat. “But...mymotherwas the one who gave me the necklace. Shetold me it could counteract my dizzy spells and headaches. She said it’d been especially designed for me by her team at Snowflake Corp.”
“I thought you said you only started having episodes when your parents died.”
“I...” I frowned. “That’s right.”
“Then why did you need something to help...while they were still alive?”
I froze solid.
It was like he tore a blindfold off that I’d willingly worn all my life.
Little snippets that never added up. The fact that I’dalwayshad headaches. Always felt weak on certain days or triggered by strong emotion. The fact that sometimes—in my earliest memories—I’d woken to my room completely white. That occasionally, when my nanny gave me a bath, it’d snowed inside. That one day, when I was five or six, I squealed with joy as my father gave me a new toy, only for the carpet to become an ice rink.
“I...” I swallowed hard, shaking my head, backing up as truth kept chipping away at my naïve stupidity. “But...she said it was tohelpme.”
“And did it?”
A tearing in my heart. “No...” I couldn’t hold his stare, fearing he’d judge me for how ridiculously obvious it was now he’d pointed it out. “I grew worse. I started fainting from the pain. I’ve...spent the last seven years running away from life because I literally can’t survive it.”
“Are you still hurting now?” he asked gently as if aware how hard this was for me to accept. “Are you in pain now the necklace is gone?”
I sagged with despair.
Because the awful thing was...he was right.
I wasn’t in pain.
