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The words hurt more than they should and I rub at my chest. “Do you think I’m incapable?” Was Marisa ‘Sara’ Wren a pushover who allowed powerful minds to use her? It seemed like it. But I wasn’t her. I was me.
We’re still her.
“I think there was a time when you allowed yourself to be so…sidelined and—” He steps back, rubbing a hand down his face. Christian was already dressed in a finely tailored suit. The midnight black material deflected the snow’s glimmering crystal light, framing him in the menacing way I’d come to know him.
“Just tell me what we have to do tonight.” I straighten my shoulders. We were getting out of here, and the rest could be untangled later.
“I laid a dress out for you. We have to show our faces before the hunt and act naturally.” Christian turns to walk away pulling me with him.
I had done nothing but act naturally for weeks about this situation. If anything, I had been the most levelheaded. Ironically, I think my saving grace was my lost memories.
The hazy sight returns, and for a moment, a shift almost like a splicing of my vision, mixes in with a crisp image of the estate from what appears to be another time. Side by side, the vision shows me the past interposed over the present. In the past’s scene, I watch as a woman stands next to a man. He leans against the patio’s crumbling railing with careless ease, his shoulder brushes hers but his gaze fixes restlessly on the water below. Wind tugs at his hair, laughter lingering on his mouth even in the deafening silence. The man turns towards the woman, his face blurring at the edges, mouth opening as if to say something important.
I know he’s saying something to her, because I am pulled into the interaction.
I am her.
I am facing him.
It is me and Kieran.
A hand brushes my shoulder.
“Are you going to run back to him now?” Kieran’s angry with me.
“What do you think? It’s always been him. I’m not sure where you harbored this idea that I loved you all these years.” The words fly out of my mouth.
The sound of the waves crashes harder, white foam blooming against the shore below.
Then—
The sound of the sea coalesces with applause. The scene of the patio warbles from an intimate moment between us, to me leaning against the ruined bannisters, alone. It’s a wedding.
Guests laugh softly as another woman with neatly cropped hair and a crisp white dress lands a wet kiss onto Kieran, whose eyes remain on me. The woman’s body I’ve inhabited hitches a breath, her heart pounding.
A hand brushes my shoulder again.
“Marisa?” Christian’s voice is even. “Everything okay?”
I blink. The sound of the sea and the wedding is gone. “Did you see that?”
“See…what?” he asks.
My gaze flickers to him. Concern is etched across his brow. The wind brushes his dark hair against his face.
“Nothing.” I don’t think it matters for me to share the memory with him, but the vision does make sense of what Christian isn’t telling me—Kieran has some possessive hold over me.
You still love her, Daisy’s voice echoes.
Still, what occurred between Sara and Kieran, was in the past. It has no bearing on the decisions I will make. The plan now remains, find the relic, bring the living back to Devil’s Bay, and make sure Kieran is punished for his sins.
“Did you bury the pictures in a safe place?” I ask. Christian’s duty was to secure the evidence so when we return, Kieran would be held accountable.
“Everything is in its place, we just have to play the parts we’ve always been playing, and hopefully that gets us out of here.”
I’m not too confident that when we return to the above, that soul harvesting is a charge in the court of law. If the tapes tell me anything, it’s that Christian has additional proof he’s not sharing with me.
The wind shoves harshly, quickening our stride into the house.
