I ran mindlesslythrough the streets of the town, ignoring the stares, the whispers, and the creatures I could now clearly see. Their glamour, as Elandra called it, was not working on me. I ran like a wild animal, trying to find her freedom. Trying to run from her captors.
But I didn't have captors. I wasn't caged, not literally, yet it felt as if the world around me kept getting smaller, closer, its walls pressing into my sides as I tried to escape the fate that was written for me.
I had hoped that coming here, finding him, would somehow appease the darkness spreading through my body this past year, but just like with many other things, I was wrong.
I thought I was ready for the fact that he might have been gone, but hearing it and realizing my biggest fears were my bitter reality made me wobbly, tilting my entire world.
The secrets my mother harbored were no longer important. The truth Elandra and my aunt spoke of was no longer interesting, and I just wanted to disappear. I just wanted this pressure in my chest to leave, to let me fucking breathe!
The wound I thought was healing had reopened again. That cut in the center of my heart was a valley of broken dreams, forgotten promises, and pain I would never be able to erase.
My legs screamed in protest as I kept pushing through the crowd, trying to get away from the curious eyes and the lips whispering my name, my fate, as if they had any right to do so. As if they could talk about me while I broke in the worst possible way.
I ran from the girl I used to be and the girl I was becoming. For all my bravado and all my courage, I was still ten-year-old Kaira somewhere deep inside my core, asking her mom to read her just one more story, one more chapter. Just one more day.
One more hug.
One more kiss on my forehead.
One more memory.
Just one more.
But there were no more memories with them for me. There were no more kisses, no more softness in my mother's hands and no more laughter coming from the bed opposite of mine where Thalia waited for her turn. There was nothing but darkness, this eternal void, spreading through my body and claiming me for its own. My skin vibrated as my heart thundered, begging me to stop, to breathe, to remember where I was, but I couldn't.
I couldn't even remember how I got to the edge of the town, surrounded by silence and that dark forest to my left. I couldn't remember at which point I managed to escape the crowds, with my aunt frantically calling my name, she and Elandra probably rushing after me. I had no idea how I still stood tall as I stopped running, for the first time allowing my lungs to fill with air they couldn't get as I sprinted away from that place.
It wasn't my aunt's fault I had failed to prepare myself for the worst, but I couldn't face them with all these… These feelings coursing through my body. This devastation I didn't know what to do with.
My mother would've said the truth could only set me free, and it was better knowing than staying in the dark. But rightnow I'd have rather stayed in the dark, imagining the day when I would see my biological father and feel his love. The love I missed out on since my family died. The love I craved because it was the only thing that could mend me together.
I read once that there was a technique they used in Japan to mend broken things by pouring gold into the cracks, making them even stronger after the process, but no amount of gold could repair the cracks in my soul. No amount of mending could fix the tears in my body.
Wind slammed into me, waking me up from my tearstained stupor, making me finally see where I was at. My eyes landed on the vast sea in front of me, on the violent waves riding toward the shore. Before I could even grasp what this place was, my feet carried me toward the edge of a cliff, ignoring the cawing of crows somewhere in the distance and the roaring thunder over the sea.
I knew this place. Maybe I knew it better than the back of my hand at this point.
The tips of my toes came to the edge of the cliff, and even before looking down I knew what I would see—the black sand beach, spreading around the island, expanding in some places and moving closer to the cliffs on others. It looked just like in my dream—violently beautiful, almost painful to look at. With my hand in the air, my fingers moved against the wind, feeling its force on my skin.
And I felt it then.
The awareness.
The silent call from behind.
Just like every single time in my dream, it felt the same this time.
I looked down, expecting the crimson to spread on my stomach, to make the pain known, but nothing was there. Yet,hewas. I knew it even before I turned around, and instead offeeling the pain that always followed my dreams, I allowed the tiny glimmer of excitement to pass through my body.
Taking a small step back, I turned around, and my eyes zeroed in on the spot where he always stood. Where the shadows hid the face of a man I kept dreaming about, preventing me from seeing him fully. But there he was now, standing tall, staring at me with those same emerald green eyes and the pain I knew as well as my own.
I would recognize those eyes no matter where I went, no matter how many lives I lived. He haunted my dreams, my days, my every thought, but he was unmoving now, looking at me as if he were seeing me for the first time in his life. There was something to be said about my foolishness in this moment, especially knowing someone was after me, but none of that mattered.
Nothing mattered right now.
His dark hair danced in the wind, longer on the top and shorter on the sides, strands falling over his forehead, touching his dark eyebrows. His full lips pressed into a thin line as I took a step closer, my tongue tied, unable to say a single word as we stared at each other. His skin held a slightly darker tone than mine, almost as if he had spent too much time out in the sun, but seeing the weather on this island, I highly doubted there were many sunny days.
Wide shoulders filled the black shirt he wore to the point of stretching it, and if it wasn't for the small twitch in his cheek as he stood there with his hands in the pockets of his pants, I would've thought I had conjured him straight from my dreams. The closer I got, the better I could see the column of his neck, the muscles visible at the open area where he failed to close the buttons and the tattoo on his neck.
