Archer let out a hollow laugh. “I understand better than you think.”
“I doubt that,” Bridget snarled, despite immediately regretting the cruel words. There was an honesty in Archer’s eyes she couldn’t deny, but the truth he’d effectively seeped intoherhad left her reeling and spinning for a feeling other than misery.
“Did you know everyone in the Gemini coven has a twin?” Archer asked, effectively shutting her up and cooling the acid burning in her throat.
Bridget did know. From Cora. She closed her eyes, willing the Witch to disappear from behind her eyes.
“That’s why I decided to work with her.”
It took Bridget a moment to process his words, to get past the pounding of her heart. “Quinn?” she asked.
“A few years ago, my brother died of cancer. I was just a bartender living in Philadelphia when Quinn found me. I don’t know why or how, but she told me what I was and said she wanted to work with me. Wanted to train me. She told me enough about Vassuryn and Elyria, that it was easy for me to cross back and forth, and officially become part of the Gemini coven.”
Bridget’s throat tightened as a prickle of guilt wormed its way into her heart. For months, he had helped her take care of Nylah. He’d even been the one to find her in New York for her. And not once had she ever asked him about his past, or why he worked with Quinn, or ask why he even bothered to stay with her at all.
“She promised things,” he continued, eyes darkening. “Dangerous things. Things the Sanguis could do with the right runes… like bring him back.”
Her breath caught. Bridget could almost feel the promise of that kind of power. Tangible, seductive,cruel.
“The more I worked with her, though,” Archer continued, voice thickening, “the more I began to see the true cost of their magic. I watched her shrivel away to please someone whose name she wouldn’t even dare utter. I watched countless people die just so she could get the Bloodstone. That’swhen I understood… some things aren’t worth the cost. Some things are supposed to stay dead and buried.”
Bridget flinched. “It’s different,” she whispered. She wasn’t like him. Or Quinn. She wouldn’t get so wrapped in blood magic, any magic, that she destroyed lives around her. Sheknewwhat it cost. Magic had already taken her memories, carved through her body, and torn Cade from her piece by piece. She wasn’t chasing power. She was only trying to make sure it didn’t take anything else.
“She started talking in her sleep too,” Archer said. “And seeing things. It was like her personality would switch every other day. She’d be quiet one minute, and then vindictive the next, using spells I’d never even heard of… But she kept pushing. She couldn’t let go.”
A wave of nausea swelled in Bridget’s stomach. Dreams. Visions. Voices. Was she unraveling the same way? Letting magic seep into the cracks until she didn’t recognize herself anymore?
She took a few deep breaths before answering. “And you think Cade has… let go?”
“Bridget… Youdied. Your heart stopped. He must have sensed it. Why else has no one come through? Why hasn’t he sent anyone?”
The truth turned her veins to ice. Did Cade really think she was dead? Ever since she’d been released from the hospital, she’d felt like a ghost. Like someone who didn’t fit anywhere anymore. Instead of spending time with her sister, she’d hunted for information and waited for any sign from Elyria. She’d visited the gate to watch for someone coming through more times than she’d had dinner with Nylah.
All she had wanted in Elyria was to get back to her sister. Now that she had, she was doing everythingbutbe with her. And she couldn’t stomach thinking about Cade mourning her.She was alive. She wished she could shout it at him from across the void.
“He knows I’m alive. You’re wrong,” she argued, but her voice wobbled, like her conviction.
“Most of the time I am, and I would gladly let you spiral.” Despite his words, he poured them both another shot and clinked her glass before he downed it. “I’m not saying this to you because I care. A little girl cares. And she wants you back.”
Bridget’s heart cracked in two. She closed her eyes to stop tears from falling. Nylah was here. Nylah needed her. She couldn’t keep trying to live in both worlds.
“If I accept no one is coming…” Bridget croaked, stunned she was able to even get the words out. “If I... let him go. It’s like everything meant nothing.”
She couldn’t accept that after everything they’d been through, this was it. They were never supposed to just… end.
“How can you say it meant nothing? Cade fought to make this happen, including making a deal with father. He wanted this for you. He wanted you to be reunited with Nylah. And now you are. That’s not nothing. He didn’t send you back to be a ghost. He wanted you to live. Solive.”
Bridget couldn’t argue. This is exactly what she had wanted. The human realm. Nylah. No magic. No curses.
He’d given it to her. And the passports, IDs, and money that Archer had found stashed away in their old apartment… one last gift from him.
But every fiber of her being still yearned for him and screamed his name every waking moment. How was she supposed to let him go? The weight of missing him pulled at her every breath. At night, all she could see was him struggling against the binds from his father and trying to tell her one last thing.
“It’s not going to happen overnight. Just… try,” Archer said, giving her hand a quick squeeze. After a long moment, Bridget gazed up at him and wondered how they’d ended up like this. When the king had ordered him to take her through the gate, she never expected him to stick around or be her friend. Her closest one, at the moment. She had never expected he would willingly track down Nylah in Manhattan for her, or break into Cade’s old apartment to get the suitcase with their fake passports so they could start over.Together.
“Why did you do it?”
Archer didn’t have to ask to know what she meant. He was the only reason she had survived. Without his CPR, she would have died in the Connecticut forest. He could have left her there and moved on in the human realm… without her trauma and insistence to stay near the Astraeus gate. No one in Elyria would have ever known.
