My heart was in a million pieces.
“I’ll still be here,” I promised, but it wasn’t the same. And he knew it.
I didn’t want to givehimup, either. I wanted to keep that memory of how he felt when he worked that glass in my mind forever.
“It’s the only thing that keeps me grounded, listening to you breathe,” said March through gritted teeth, and it was like he ripped my soul right out of me. I moved, fell against his chest, grabbed the collar of his suit and hid my face under his chin.
“Ineedyou in my head, Velvet,” he whispered, his hands on the sides of my face, and I wasn’t sure how I was still standing when every inch of me was shaking.
I needed him in my head, too.
I was crying.Hard.
“We’ll find another way,” he said, but he knew as well as I did that we couldn’t. There was no other way to unwin.Thiswas how we got our freedom back.
I didn’t tell him that, though. There was no need. Instead, I raised my head, and with my eyes half closed, I found his lips with mine. Kissed them slowly. Tried to savor one last second.
He squeezed his eyes shut and held onto my face, and I felt his pain as if it were mine.
“I love you,” I said, the words both foreign and familiar on my tongue. Either mine or borrowed, just like his memories.
March stopped breathing. His chest went still under my hands.
“Find me, Heartling.Find me.” I would be forever waiting.
I kissed him one more time, and then my body moved all on its own. I leaned back, raised my hand, and put the mask over his face.
48
My eyes blinked slowly.
The sun fell on my face, warming my skin.
I was standing, though I could have sworn I was sitting on the bench in our front yard just a moment ago. I could have sworn I was looking at a large fancy carriage traveling down the hill across from our house, coming toward us.
Comingforme.
Yet now I was standing in a completely different place, surrounded by trees on one side and people on the other.
So many people.
They were far away, seated in rows. They were cheering and clapping and screaming, and a few of them even called my name.
How strange.
“Uh—hi!”
I turned, looked around, closer to me. Looked at the people who were standing on the grass with me, eight of them, barely a few feet between each of us.
We were standing in a perfect circle, and they, too, were looking around.
The girl who’d spokenwas a little taller than me, skinnier, with wide green eyes and smiling lips, the rich brown of her skin shimmering under the sunlight.
“Hello,” I said and offered her a smile in return.
“I’m Mimi.”
Mimi.I liked that name.
